Is photography art?

"Pete Black" wrote in message
...
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.

Or "primitive," used (perhaps invented) to describe admiringly the paintings
of the obviously unskilled and talent-free Grandma Moses.


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"?

;-)

Neil

"Pete Black" wrote in message
...


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.

Yes, I'm sure you're right.

It's still hard for me to understand, this yearning to have one's
photographs called "art." I love photography (or anyway have been
enthusiastic about it on and off for 50+ years) and love to look at my old
photos. Many of them touch me in ways that only a photograph could, but none
of them are art. I honestly do not think that in my entire life I have ever
set out to make an "art photograph," though I have done a fair amount of
experimental stuff.



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.

Right. But of course Minolta really IS the best camera. ;-)



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.

No doubt. Happily that is one example of disdain I will almost certainly
never experience.

Neil

"Constantinople" wrote in message
...
"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.)

Yes, you're probably right.

Now that I think about it, I'm not aware of any non-representational school
of painting that existed before photography.

Neil

Pete Black wrote in message
...
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.


Endless runs that all sound alike, reguardless of the song that was
started....I used to go in the jazz clubs in San francisco and listen to the
stuff that was being played....It went like this: 16 bars or so of some
recognizable tune, like, "Cheek to Cheek", or "Don't Get Around Much
Anymore" (One of my favorites) Then they would launch into ten minutes of
Jazz runs....(I use the word, "runs" for a good reason) Then they would
return to the melody for another 16 bars or so, and end the song. - If one
were to hold ones hands over ones ears for the first and last 16 bars, all
the "runs" would sound the same, and one wouldn't be able to recognize what
they were playing. This kind of music is the ultimate crap to me, and it is
why I claim that, "Modern Jazz" has no melody. Just making it up as you go
along is not a melody to me, and if you can't tell one song from another,
then what's the point? I claim the following: If a composer spends hours of
his valuable and knowledgeable time writing a song, and works at perfecting
it, throwing away passages that he doesn't like and replacing them with
others that he thinks sound better, until he pronounces the song,
"finished", and ready for publication, then how can some trumpet player, or
sax player, right off the top of his head, in some smoke filled nightclub,
improve on that? - I claim that all he can do is screw up a perfectly good
song that a perfectly good composer sweated over for a long time.....Again,
originality, just for the sake of originality, is not good art.

Pete Black wrote in message
...
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.

They call these, "Primatives"......

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"?

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.

Oh yes....Picasso was a wonderful painter....I suggest that you look at some
of his early work. When he was 18 he painted a scene of a sick old man in
bed being attended to by a couple of nurses....A fantastic
painting....Picasso could paint brilliantly....He just turned out crap later
in life to make money, and (I suspect) to laugh at the art lovers for whom
he had little or no respect.....

Constantinople wrote in message
...
"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.)

And don't forget people like Dali who painted surrealism, or things that
don't really exist, except in the mind of the artist....(He's the guy that
painted watches melting and dripping off the edge of tables, and stuff like
that...) Of course, nowadays people like Stephan Spielberg could probably
make it happen for the camera more realistically as Dali did.......

Word has it that on Mon, 29 Sep 2003 20:59:35 GMT, in this august forum,
Pete Black said:

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.

Rubbish. I know quite a few artists, & they all consider photography to
be just as valid an art medium as oils, acrylics, sculpture, etc. The
only point they'd be likely to argue is whether any given work is good
art or bad art, but of course they'd be likely to do the same with any
randomly chosen painting as well.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

Word has it that on Mon, 29 Sep 2003 20:41:09 GMT, in this august forum,
Pete Black said:

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

Crap. Representational art is only a tiny portion of the set of 'real
artworks'. You should spend some time reading about art history.

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.

Anyone can take a crap photograph, sure. Not everyone can take a good
photograph, much less one that's a good work of art.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

NJH wrote in message
...

"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


To the guy who was there, and who painted the scene, they show the important
things....The things that he remembers...Which is OK, because you are seeing
it through his eyes....He only leaves out the things that he forgets...the
things that were unimportant to him......The photograph, if there was one,
would attempt to show it all...Better in some ways, but worse in others....