Is photography art?

This is a question that has lead to many a heated discussion. Is landscape photography art? With programs such as PhotoShop, an edited version of a photo may have nothing in common with the image the eye detected. Many a time I have had a photograph critique saying clone out this branch, or that log should be removed from a water fall. I am a firm believer that if nature put it there, and you are photographing nature, it belongs there. I will bend a branch that is blocking a view, or clone out a man made artifact, such as a power line. But I will not paste in a "better" sky, or change the color of an object. I once had a art teacher tell me, "art is your representation or feelings of a scene, not an exact copy. If you want a copy, use a camera". The bottom line is where does photography end and art begin. Your thoughts

Tags: art, landscape, photography

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Permalink Reply by Luigi Clemente on December 13, 2009 at 8:12am

I wouldn't call photography an art, but a craft. Too many bounds.
I would call art drawing, painting, writing. And so on.
Just what I feel.

Cheers

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Permalink Reply by Greg maklae on December 13, 2009 at 9:10am

Craft is the perfect word. It requires a high degree of skill of the person behind the lens, but the resulting image does not distort the scene, as it is naturally presented.

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Permalink Reply by Randall Sherman on December 25, 2009 at 10:50pm

I can run with "craft"! I am proud to be a craftsman. I think "craft" applies well to "photo art" as the various steps required in photoshop or equivalent are certainly "craft" -- not art. With "push button" filters like Topaz or onOne this is more true than a few years ago when manual dexterity with a tablet was required to achieve some effects.

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on December 26, 2009 at 1:46pm

Randall, obviously this is a very touchy subject and I don't understand why it is. Is photography art? Yes! Is photography a craft? Yes. It is both an art and a craft. Is painting art? Yes! Is painting a craft? Yes, of course it is. You can have craftsmanship without art but never art without craftsmanship. My working definition of visual art is, "it is a visual representation of what is in the human soul". In all photography there is the danger that a mechanical representation of an object can be substituted for a true emotional response to the same object which is why I believe that the artist must print their own photographs. If the printing is done by other than the maker of the original image, the final image isn't that of the artist but rather a collaboration of the two. Others may disagree and that's okay; no need to argue. When Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa it became a work of art, no question. If a painter copies perfectly the Mona Lisa that copy, by almost universal definition, isn't a work of art but a crafts-manlike representation. It may be indistinguishable from the real Mona Lisa but it isn't a work of art, at least not in the sense that the original is.

In my view you are exactly right when you are talking about the preloaded or plug-in filters available for Photoshop. In a very real sense users of Photoshop may have shot themselves in the foot because much of the art consuming public aren't sophisticated (in the good sense of the word, not the snobbish) enough to understand the difference between genuine creativity, such as that in Huntington Witherill's floral studies, and a pre-designed plug in filter in Photoshop or one of the other myriad of programs available.

Photography is not like Paint by the Numbers crafts sets. It is a completely separate artform with a completely different set of paradigms and requirements. As an aside to this, I have several friends who are accomplished painters and I never hear them talking about their brand new XYZ set of brushes. They most often talk about technique and style or the content of their paintings. That's why I detest photographers talking about their brand new CanoNikon cameras. It's the content of the art work that's important, not the tools used. So to paraphrase a popular Christmas phrase, yes Virginia, photography is art.
.

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on January 7, 2010 at 1:55pm

I was reading after Ansel Adams today and found this quote that was very enlightening in terms of this discussion. Here it is

“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term -- meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching -- there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”

Ansel Adams

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Permalink Reply by Greg maklae on January 11, 2010 at 2:41pm

How true that quote is. This is why i like to shoot alone. I may just sit at a location for 20 minutes, just watching and listening, to feel what is being offered by the scene. Digital has taken a lot of the thought process out of photography. I may shoot 10 exposures or more exposures, varying the shutter speed, DOF or filters on a single subject. In the old days (film) you gave it thought, if for no other reason, you could not afford the processing costs of shooting an entire roll on one subject. Now memeory is cheap, the cost of a 1 G card is the same as a roll of film. Shoot every possible combination, download a 100 images and hope you have something good on one of then. Technology has taken away our need to think and be creative. Ansel Adams would be ashamed to see what his art of photography has turned into.

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on January 12, 2010 at 7:35am

If you want to understand what Adams was talking about go out and do one exposure only. No backup, no 20 exposures at different settings, no HDR, no over processing. One exposure, perfectly exposed, exactly where it needs to be. That's what Adams was saying. Technology has only made it more convenient to take bad photographs. If you doubt the truth of this statement read his account of photographing the face of Half Dome from "The Diving Board. He did one piece of film, one photographing like a sniper. One bullet, one kill. Adams was saying that masterprints are the result of considered effort, not random circumstance

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Permalink Reply by Allison Carenza on January 13, 2010 at 6:49pm

I didn't take the time to read all these, I thought I would leave my opinion at that...an opinion. Art is an expression! Photography is an expression, even with photoshop. It's just a tool to express your art.

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Permalink Reply by Julienne Marie on January 14, 2010 at 10:08am

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!??! was that a for real question?
Photography expresses peoples feelings through a lens. Not just a canvas,isle, and paint or Paper, markers or crayons. So the answer to your question is YES PHOTOGRAPHY IS TOO ART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on January 15, 2010 at 11:18am

I wold agree with you on that... "was that a for real question". However, it reflects an attitude (not on the part of the starter of this thread) that is all too common. People commonly ask, "are you an artist or do you make photographs"? Sad but true.

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Permalink Reply by Katie Vanderhaeghe on January 16, 2010 at 11:31am

This is an issue that I deal with almost every single day. I currently go to art school, with my main area of interest being photography. So, on the surface, yes photography is a type of art, because it is offered at (what I assume is every, but I will say almost) art schools. From another angle, art is and can be anything and everything. Art can simply be an idea (such as Fluxus). However, this does not mean that every photograph is art, the same as a painting is not necessarily art. I think that it is important to remember that what art is, is defined subjectivly by everyone. If an unaltered landscape photograph is art to you, then that is really all that matters.
In my opinion, saying "if you want a copy, use a camera" is incredibly ignorant, especially coming from an art teacher! Any photographer knows that any photograph is never an exact replication of what is in front of them, and that the idea of photography as authentic representation is a myth.

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on January 16, 2010 at 11:51am

Katie, Great reply. My only response is that you are exactly right. Art, as I understand it, is an interpretation of material or the visual expression of an idea. God art/bad art is a whole other discussion. As to... "the idea of photography as authentic representation is a myth". That is true as well, except in forensic work where we try to make the work as accurate to the original scene or event as possible.

What art school are you in and what is your specialty there?