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Photographs as Art

Rod Witten

pro member
Are all photographs considered Art? For instance, have photographers who photograph the Mona Lisa made Art or is it a form of plagiarism?
 

doug anderson

New member
Are all photographs considered Art? For instance, have photographers who photograph the Mona Lisa made Art or is it a form of plagiarism?

This kind of argument keeps academics employed. It gets ridiculous. I saw a show in California where the photographer had photographed photographs, and by virtue of their duplication called them art.

I consider the photography of art a necessary utility and one that is very difficult. Most of the art books I see pale in comparison to the real thing. I have tried it in museums: sculpture comes off much better; painting is nearly impossible to get right because film/digital cannot yet capture what the eye actually sees.

I had always been bored by Edward Weston until I saw a show of his photos. Wow. What delicacy and subtlety. Almost impossible to reproduce in a printed book, and I had only seen his work in books.
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Are all photographs considered Art? For instance, have photographers who photograph the Mona Lisa made Art or is it a form of plagiarism?

Postmodernists may say that it is art if the goal was to create art :)

Or it could just be a tourist's snapshot!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Are all photographs considered Art? For instance, have photographers who photograph the Mona Lisa made Art or is it a form of plagiarism?

Rod,

As the great man Bill Clinton replied, "it depends what you mean by is", art can mean so many things depending on the context and use by stakeholders in the work to be considered in some way as art.

Stage 1. Personal Art: For the personal products of one's own passion, these are art as they mean something more than the objects they are to their creator. However, they may have no value to anyone else.

Stage 2. When personal work moves others and the thirst for this is spreads in a community, then some esthetic currency exists and now commercial value occurs since the physical artwork is valued and there's a market for it. At this stage, marketers, managers, dealers, collectors and museums might come into the process and so the artist becomes established.

Now what constitutes work of an artist? We have come to accept that coming across a scene or person of interest and getting some essence of this in a photograph can be art too. This in a way is like found art. We walk along the beach and find driftwood and then show it off as "found art". In some way taking pictures might be like that. Finding the urinal and making it one's own art by signing it and declaring it so worked for Duchamp, a kick in the teeth to classically trained artist who have the skill to make such a piece in any material. However, the next person to add their signature to a urinal merely owns a toilet fixture that needs cleaning. Why because now there is no thought challenging rebellion and the act is trivial and of no value to us

If someone can earn living selling photographs of Art then for sure that is ART that sells to a particular market. However, unless it also brings some unique added beauty, esthetics, meaning or argument it will not sustain its place long term. Finally, time is a filter for what we call art.

Asher
 
Art is fundamentally same as religion, -and fashion-: we are the only other animals that have them. It all appeared about 50k years ago when suddenly we began drawing images of people with animal heads in caves, and we had the urge to make a ceremony when someone close died. All humans seam to have this basic necessity for non linear thinking, but we can't say that your God is not "real". If you say it is your God, then it is. Same with art. You want to call your cat art, then it is.

Having said that, not all religions are the same, some are more 'important" than others. They are so if followed by hundreds of millions of people, so in that case you really don't want to say that a major God from one of those is not "real".

Same with art. Millions of people may think that Mona Lisa is a work of art, so that makes it important. Your Photo of the Mona Lisa may be also art, but may also be less important....

For example, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier was one of the most important artist of his time in Paris. Many people have never heard of him. A contemporary of him, on the contrary was considered a pathetic pretend artist that could not draw a believable hand in a month...
... his name... Édouard Manet
12-Manet.jpg


Manet



Meissonier_-_1814,_Campagne_de_France.jpg


Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier
 
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Kathy Rappaport

pro member
It's art

It's art if I say it's art and it's mine to call it that.

Someone made my day today when they came in for tour of my studio. I have a photo I've previously posted here from France that is 24x30,. A man came into the studio where it's waiting to be framed and told me it looked like a painting. It's art. When it's framed it will be Art$$$.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
It's art if I say it's art and it's mine to call it that.

Someone made my day today when they came in for tour of my studio. I have a photo I've previously posted here from France that is 24x30,. A man came into the studio where it's waiting to be framed and told me it looked like a painting. It's art. When it's framed it will be Art$$$.
Yes, Kathy,

When does a photograph become "Art" or "Fine Art". Michael Fontana in a quip remarked that Art is sold in an Art Gallery and Fine Art is what's found in a "Fine Art Gallery"! This, at least puts a gallery's reputation and standing, (at least in the community of art collectors), on the line. However, it does not say what michael would find essential when looking at other people's photographing or selecting from his own work.

On a personal level, yes, it's art if you feel it functions that way. However, what are you standards. That is can be sold, is I believe no sufficient, but at least it means that one person is taken by it.

Can you complete the statement

"A fine art photograph, that I would choose from other people's work or my own, is one that ........"

without any reference to selling the piece?

Asher
 

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
Sanpshots

Then by your reason it would mean that a snapshot is art because at least someone is taken by it.

Art is beyond a casual photograph that would be taken to tell a story although not exclusive to it. People admire the image of the bride in my studio. By my standards, she is art. She is not just a snap of the shutter. Much went into making her photograph worthy of being art. However, in a fine art world there are limited buyers for the piece, usually relatives. That does not make her a snapshot or a piece of art with a wide audience. A landscape on the other hand might have a much broader audience. The dogs in the window of the studio are highly admired. Yet no one but their owners would want the images - generally speaking, although I did have a conversation with a lady who came by with her digicam to take a snap of one of the dogs on canvas.

So what is art?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Then by your reason it would mean that a snapshot is art because at least someone is taken by it.
Sure, but only in that limited personal sense. I'm asking for that art to survive the public's reception. This might take time.

What I'm really asking is for your standards, for example,

What characteristics of a photograph would you want to be present for you to select it from among thousands of others available that you have taken or that you might see around to stock your private gallery of "Photography" that you would feel would stand the test of time and be likely appreciated by the average person who likes photography and visits galleries and exhibitions.

Asher
 

Charlotte Thompson

Well-known member
My two cents and a half-


Define art. What is the first thing that comes to mind? Do you picture a famous painting, statue, musical or literary work? I think one of the best definitions of the idea of art is that it is something that asks the observer a question. Should this three-letter word be abstract and hard to define? Perhaps, considering the fact that one classic painting, statue, symphony or literary work cannot sum up the meaning of the word or the depth that it implies. My suggestion to the casual observer would be that he or she stop and consider what the artists’ intent was at the time of a work’s creation, especially if the meaning of that work seems elusive.
Some would define art as a large form of sheet metal welded together, painted dull orange, and placed in front of the Federal building downtown. While that particular example frustrates me personally, it may have hidden merit. After all, according to William Rubin, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "there is no single definition of art." Not all works of art have to be pleasing to the eyes of the masses; we don’t all have to ‘get it’. There may be something worthwhile lingering beneath the surface of even the most absurd looking creations.

Charlotte-
 

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
Interesting thought

As photographers I think we each have to define for us what the ingredients are for a good photograph. If you were to go to some of the major exhibitions of fine photography you might find across all genres of photography. They would include landscape, film, journalism, florals, wildlife and nature, documentary, portraits...the list is long. The result must be pleasing or thought provoking, From a tehcnical perspective it does not necessarily have the criteria that means it's all crisp and focused. It may or may not even have subject.

I do remember putting shells on photo paper in the dark room and creating a print that way under the enlarger. Some people for the project used leaves, or hands, or even hats/clothing. All of it was considered art as medium. Our levels of appreciation are all as different as our DNA.

the basics for photography, in my opinion are that it has a subject and reasonably have good to decent technique to create the image. Beyond the accepted rules there may be a different stancard than some of the more modern images. the bottom line is that it is accepted to behold and enjoy or create emotion - negative/positive or otherwise.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
As photographers I think we each have to define for us what the ingredients are for a good photograph.............the bottom line is that it is accepted to behold and enjoy or create emotion - negative/positive or otherwise.

Excellent! To me that's art's function, at least in good measure, to have engraved in it physical patterns or forms that evoke human feelings.

Asher
 
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