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Is photography art?



 
 
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  #21  
Old September 29th 03, 09:22 PM
Pete Black
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Default Is photography art?

Yes, but I am fond of annoying my musical friends by saying that music
includes 4 things......Beat, Words, Harmony, and Melody...


Words are not needed at all.

And rap has three
of them: Beat, words and melody,


Some one else's prerecorded music that they just talk over, not even sing
over. Rap people are nothing more than disc jockeys that talk over the whole
song, not just the intro.

But modern jazz only has two: Beat, and
harmony....


And Melody?

So which is more like music? (I am obviously not a lover of
modern jazz....)


What is "modern" jazz? Do you mean "new age" music?

I like Jazz, but I am not a big fan of New Age.


  #22  
Old September 29th 03, 09:32 PM
Alan Browne
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Default Is photography art?



jjs wrote:


Citing the Encyclopedia or Dictionary is the last resort of a desperado.



....saying such as the above is a common retort of the fellow who's view
is being contested.

  #23  
Old September 29th 03, 09:34 PM
Pete Black
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Default Is photography art?

If you keep pounding the word "art" into some sort of shapeless mush such
that it no longer has any meaning, what word will you invent to mean what
"art" used to mean?


Yes. Just like the words "bandwidth" "troll" and "spam" are not used
properly, so has the word "art" been stolen and is now being used incorrectly by
most of society.

Instead of us having to come up with a new word for what "art" used to mean,
people should come up with new unused words to describe their new
definitions. But in most cases, what people are calling art today already
have words to describe what they REALLY are.... Photographs, etc.

Or are you so insensible to the concept of real art that
you just don't think it's important to have a word for it?


"Art" by itself means "real art". Then they put words in front of it, like
"modern art" to describe children's paintings or paintings that require only a
child's abilities to paint. As people got more lazy and less talented, even
"modern art" required more talent and ability than what the next generation of
self proclaimed "artists" could do, so was called "contemporary art" as to not
get confused with the much more talented "modern art" which consists of nothing
more than gluing some garbage together and spray painting it.

What will the next generation of talent less art be called when a new word needs
to describe it as to not insult the slightly more talented "contemporary
artists"?

"fool's art"? "citizen art"? "photography"?


  #24  
Old September 29th 03, 09:41 PM
Pete Black
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Default Is photography art?

How about the talented artist that abandons his talent and produces junk
just to make lots of money.....(Picasso is a good example)


Picasso was talented? Picasso was an artist? This is debatable.

Is everything
that he/she produces art?


Is anything he produces art?

Does a capable artist produce art always?


No, sometimes he takes photographs.

Again,
is the process important, or just the end result?


What is important is that the art produced looks as realistic as possible and
is made or painted by hand and contains talent that most people do not have.
The fewer people that can duplicate or create it, the more it qualifies as art.

Not many can paint the Mona Lisa. Anyone can take a photograph.



  #25  
Old September 29th 03, 09:59 PM
Pete Black
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Default Is photography art?



NJH wrote:

"Russ Holister" wrote in message
...
No. The camera is doing that. The photographer is the operator of

the
machine. Absent the machine, very few photographers ever "create an
image on film." (It has been done, but not very often.)

The camera, camera's controls, choice of film and lighting are some of

the
*tools* which provide control over the variables which result in an

image.
Therefore, if those controls are being manipulated by a photographer,

it
is the photographer that determines what that image will be.

The operator of a one-hour photo processor may also "manipulate

controls"
that "determine what that image will be" just as much as the controls
manipulated by the photographer. Does that make that operator an

"artist"?

BRAVO!! Great point! Why doesn't the photo processor get the credit

for
making the art? He is the one who puts the image on paper!

What a great way to end a most silly debate that actually entertained the

idea
that a photographer is anything at all like an artist.


Thank you very much. I've been feeling sort of outnumbered here. ;-)

Neil


Keep in mind that you are on a photography newsgroup, so of course most people
here are going to want to believe that what they do is art. If you were to
bring the same discussion to an art newsgroup, you would have much more support.

This would be like going to a newsgroup called alt.photo.minolta.fanatics and
having a debate on which cameras were the best. If you said anything other
than minolta, you would be outnumbered, but that doesn't mean that minolta is
the best camera, it just means you are on a newsgroup with a concentrated group
of biased individuals.

Of course MOST of the people on a photography newsgroup are going to argue that
photography is art. But if you went to a newsgroup of real artists, then they
would all laugh at you if you suggested photographers were artists.



  #26  
Old September 29th 03, 10:26 PM
Pete Black
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Default Is photography art?

jjs wrote:
Citing the Encyclopedia or Dictionary is the last resort of a desperado.


What a ridiculous statement. Obviously someone just proved you wrong by
looking up a definition to a word for you to make such a statement.

...saying such as the above is a common retort of the fellow who's view
is being contested.


Obviously.


  #27  
Old September 29th 03, 11:46 PM
NJH
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Default Is photography art?


"Pete Black" wrote in message
...
How about the talented artist that abandons his talent and produces junk
just to make lots of money.....(Picasso is a good example)


Picasso was talented? Picasso was an artist? This is debatable.


Actually Picasso was a very fine artist before he started doing that goofy
stuff, people with their parts on the wrong side and so on. Since it was the
latter stuff that brought him fame and fortune, he abandoned
representational art and never looked back. That doesn't tell us much about
art, but it sure tells us a lot about nonsense "art" and marketing.



Is everything
that he/she produces art?


Is anything he produces art?

Does a capable artist produce art always?


No, sometimes he takes photographs.

Again,
is the process important, or just the end result?


What is important is that the art produced looks as realistic as possible

and
is made or painted by hand and contains talent that most people do not

have.
The fewer people that can duplicate or create it, the more it qualifies as

art.

Not many can paint the Mona Lisa. Anyone can take a photograph.


Absolutely.

Art calls for skill, talent and WORK, which is what many of these shutter
release-pushing "artists" can't seem to understand.

Neil


  #28  
Old September 30th 03, 12:14 AM
Constantinople
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Default Is photography art?

"NJH" wrote in
:


"Pete Black" wrote in message
...
How about the talented artist that abandons his talent and produces
junk just to make lots of money.....(Picasso is a good example)


Picasso was talented? Picasso was an artist? This is debatable.


Actually Picasso was a very fine artist before he started doing that
goofy stuff, people with their parts on the wrong side and so on.
Since it was the latter stuff that brought him fame and fortune, he
abandoned representational art and never looked back. That doesn't
tell us much about art, but it sure tells us a lot about nonsense
"art" and marketing.


I suspect that photography is the main culprit in killing off
representational art, especially photorealistic art. Why hire a highly
trained artist when for a tiny fraction of the cost you can have a
photograph made? This is not to say that there's nothing to art but the
painting of a realistic imaga; but that aspect is what paid the bills.
People hired artists to do (for example) portraits, i.e., representations.
Artists had to turn to other things once photography marginalized them as
highly skilled makers of realistic images. They needed to differentiate
themselves from photography, to get away from head-to-head competition with
photography, in order simply to survive economically. (That's my guess,
anyway.)



  #29  
Old September 30th 03, 12:21 AM
NJH
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Default Is photography art?


"Constantinople" wrote in message
...
"NJH" wrote in
m:

"Art photography" makes pretensions to being a fine art and to some
degree is accepted as such, which makes its categorization more
difficult. But Westons and Adamses will never be regarded as
Rembrandts and Michelangelos, and will never even come close.


I avoid the use of the art/not art categorization and I don't find the
concept of "fine" art to help matters, but I would agree with you on this
point: that Rembrandt and Michelangelo achieved more, and are justly more
famous. And the reason a photographer doing straight photography like

Ansel
Adams, even with great craft and care (the zone system), cannot achieve as
much, is that they do not have the same degree of control over their

medium
- specifically, the point-by-point control exercised by a painter with his
brush and a sculptor with his chisel.

At the same time, this very limitation is what makes photography
worthwhile. Not because it lets us be lazy. But because a photograph is a
mechanical reproduction rather than a point-by-point-painted (or

chiselled)
work. Its mechanization is what limits the photographer's control. (The
photographer can, of course, choose to exercise point by point control,

but
the more control he exercises the less we can trust the image as "a
photograph".) This same mechanization is what makes the image "a
photograph", and we value photographs over paintings in certain contexts,
because their mechanization makes them a more direct, unfiltered

impression
of reality. History, at least in my own mind, is divided into two periods:
those times before photography, and those times after photography. We in a
sense can really see how things were in any period that had photography;
but we can only infer, from paintings, how things were in pre-photographic
times. I have in a sense looked upon Lincoln with my own eyes, because I
saw his photograph; but I have never seen Washington, because I have seen
only painted impressions of him.


Yes, I agree with you completely. To some degree that is true even after
photography.

I'm a World War I history buff, especially with respect to aviation. I have
many, many published photographs from that period and also many published
paintings. Unfortunately few of the photographs have stood the years very
well. Most of them are not very sharp and are seriously lacking in tonal
gradation and sharpness. One simply cannot see all the details he would like
to see. The paintings on the other hand are still magnificent, those done
contemporaneously as well as more recent works. But who can say how
realistic they are? We see, for example, pilots looking over their shoulders
as they circle each other in a Fokker D.VII and an SPAD XIII. The fighters
are pristine looking, all the details sharp, all the colors and markings
correct and "accurate," but would they actually have looked that way in
combat? Comparing with the poor B&W photos available it's impossible to tell
what the planes really looked like in color. The paintings LOOK realistic to
people today who think they know (based on old photos and general knowledge
of the aircraft) what they would have looked like.

As far as details are concerned, the paintings are more "informative" than
the old poor photos. But we just don't know whether the added "information"
is correct. The photos may be less satisfying but (with the exception of a
few well-known fakes) we can rely on what information they do supply,
however incomplete.

Neil


  #30  
Old September 30th 03, 01:03 AM
NJH
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Default Is photography art?


"William Graham" wrote in message
news:nhKdb.624579$uu5.100533@sccrnsc04...

NJH wrote in message
m...

"William Graham" wrote in message
news:Ocndb.600021$YN5.443639@sccrnsc01...

[ . . . ]

on a map) And there are many other examples of projects/disciplines

that
take years and years of practice and study to learn. Can you quantify

the
difficulty of the medium that is required before you are willing to

give
it
the distinction of, "a fine art"?


The fine arts as far as I'm concerned are pretty much limited to the
traditional ones: painting, drawing, sculpture and related procedures as

far
as image-producing stuff is concerned.

Cinematography can surely be an art, and a very important one, but I

can't
see it as a fine art.

"Art photography" makes pretensions to being a fine art and to some

degree
is accepted as such, which makes its categorization more difficult. But
Westons and Adamses will never be regarded as Rembrandts and

Michelangelos,
and will never even come close.

Other photos, including lovely images of sunsets, pretty flowers, etc.

that
are sometimes presented as "art" by the people who took them, are not

art,
fine or otherwise.

Neil

Well, then. at best, you have to admit that the definition is,
"fuzzy"......


There are several definitions for "art," as with most words in the English
language. Some of them require that the definition be somewhat "fuzzy." That
does not mean that the definitions can be discarded.

In the field of politics for example, do you suppose "liberal" means exactly
the same thing to all people? Or "conservative"? Those terms are defined,
but what they mean EXACTLY, in detail, depends to some extent on one's
political position and viewpoint.

Some words are less likely to be argued over. We discussed frying eggs
before. It is unlikely we'd ever get into an argument over what "frying
eggs" means. ;-)


As a mathematician (my degree) I tend to think in
absolutes....I don't like fuzzy definitions, although I have to admit that
they exist....But I always try to bring any discussion to its obvious
extremes.....Sort of, (in mathematical terms) investigate the end points,

or
inflections of the equation.....I instinctively reject the idea that there
are only five fine arts, for example......


Those five make up what are called "the fine arts." In this usage "fine"
does not mean "better than any other kind of art" necessarily (though they
do generally have that sort of stature), it is just used to distinguish
those five arts from all other kinds.


I think that the neurosurgeon that
you mentioned above, will sometimes create wonderful artistic work inside

of
the heads of some of his patients.....


One hopes he does good work, but it isn't art. Millions of people do very
good work that isn't art.


It's just a pity that we can't see it,
or know about it, because we weren't there to see it done, and/or haven't
got the capacity to understand it if we were......I guess what I am trying
to say is that the world is too complex a place to be able to pin the
definition of "fine art" on only 5 or 6 disciplines......


The definition is what it is. It may be expanded to include something else
at another time; who knows?

Neil


 




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