Can photography be art?

I tried and did not find any serious content that doubted that photography could be art.

French for "squirt", I think. I think the translation as ejaculation is the satirical version. Which it fully deserves in my opinion. Silly art world marketing. It's ink.

I agree that some though not the vast majority of photography can be art.

In a similar way some paintings (perhaps by art club members filling in time) is definitely not art.

The word giclée was adopted by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working at Nash Editions. He was looking for a word that would not have the negative connotations of “inkjet” or “computer generated”. It is based on the French word gicleur, the French technical term for an inkjet nozzle. The French verb form gicler meant to spray, spout, or squirt. Duganne settled on the noun giclée, meaning “the thing that got sprayed” and also, in French slang, ejaculation (a connotation Duganne did not know).

Pedantically, I’d respond that all photographs can be art but many – and yes, it’s highly likely it’s the the vast majority – just aren’t. It’s more down to maker’s intention than skill or execution. I have a simple inner dialogue definition of art that works for me, but requires a little mental flexibility, so of course it was torn apart by jackals, along with a virtual piece of me, when I had the audacity to share it on the other DPR (or maybe it was on Ars Technica) so I won’t bother. I’m okay with it, and it helps me understand my goals and motivation for making individual images. Some are art. Some are records. Some are just for the hell of it. Images can move between categories over time — the latter often become my best art in-spite of themselves.

LeeJay is not going to change, nothing said here will make him waiver one bit. Its been that way on these forums for years. He seems to have fairly rigid and clinical definitions for things, and that's OK. Whether LeeJay sees photographs as art or a craft has no bearing on what the rest of us think. He has his clear vision and many of you guys kind of don't. We are getting into a gray areas of which actual photographs qualify as art, and that is severely subjective and undefinable. I fall into that camp as well. At least LeeJay doesn't have to fuss with it. Maybe that's his goal all along, just keep it simple.

i don't think you should see them as ends of one pole. I'd rather think of them as different axes.

It means using a word processing is not an art form. Composing the novel is.

The performance is not art, the composition is.

And, as I've already said, that's fine. The tool is not capturing what's already there (despite the famous "removing the unneeded bits" quote).

[quote[
you seem to have forgotten that photography reduces three dimensions to two. There are choices in that which can be artistic.

It's "Lee Jay" (my first and middle names, but the forum software doesn't allow spaces), and I haven't been given a reason to change.

Well, I'm an engineer and scientist and mother nature is not flexible about her rules.

Neither what I think nor what you think has any bearing on anything outside of the language we have all agreed to use. It doesn't affect the photography itself at all. It's just a way to categorize activities.

How about this. Photography that seeks to accurately represent the scene, regardless of the aesthetic intent or quality, is not art, it's craft. Photography where either the scene is created or the photo is so severely altered that it no longer represents a remotely accurate portrayal of the scene is art.

It's a bit sad that the discussion ended up about word definitions, but as we've gone in that direction, I don't feel these definitions are correct.

"Craft" is the technical skill involved in making something. Something that was never intended to be perceived as art can certainly be described as craft if it is skillfully done. On the other hand, unless randomness is an important part of the process, a piece that has pretensions to be considered art, can also involve craft.

Ansel's work for example, has a high component of technical craft - it wouldn't be what is is without the high technical skill level applied to making it. However, lots of people say there is more to it than the craft, despite the reliance on craft. AA's subject selection, choice of viewpoint, choice of lighting (when to shoot and when not to), the printing stage where he decides which tones to darken and which to lighten, these things all involve artistic judgements, even though craft is involved in the execution of the vision.

It's not one, nor the other.

HCB's decisive moment: that's an artistic decision. Craft is involved in successfully timing the moment to press the button so the camera captures the exact moment in time desired (given the mechanical constraints of the camera), but the decision about when is the precise moment to be captured is pure artistry. A moment earlier or later, the exact same craft is employed but the image captured is no longer art, but a failure. The mis-timing can be caused by a failure of craft, but it can also be the result of a failure of artistic vision - the photographer simply fails to realise that a piece of art awaits if only she chooses the right moment.

Have you seen his contact sheets? He was less spontaneous than most folks think.

I haven't but Mike Johnston has and he says something to the effect "I've seen HCB's contact sheets, and he missed the decisive moment a lot".

But let's be fair, one of the most key pieces of gear for any photographer is the waste bin. You really don't want people seeing all the other shots you didn't use. Ruins the mystique.

I wonder what percentage of images captured in the digital era are ever seen. I remember Michael Reichmann saying his was 1%, something like that. I imagine that for sport or wildlife photographers it is a lot less. I don't do wildlife photography much but my retirement present from work was a day spent shooting birds of prey. I think I shot about 6000 frames in one day and used about 50 in the end. Horrendous keeper rate!

Photography can and does aim to do much more than capturing a scene.

I don't wander about looking for scenes to capture. I look for things that intrigue me, be it subject colour, texture, the contrast of light and shadow. The actual scene is secondary.

As an example, last fall I sat on a beach admiring a sun rise, I was fascinated by how the sky and water merged with a few islands 'floating' in a surreal sea of blue. I took a series of images over about 1/2 hour to capture that surreal feeling. The scene was secondary.

I ended up respecting HCB a lot more after seeing the contact sheets. He tries various approaches, settles on one, waits for everything to come together, makes a few images, and moves on. It's not just being in the right place at the right time.

But they're painted by a person, not captured by a device.

Well, indeed, I'm rather fond of shapes and patterns that make up cracks in a wall

Or just capturing a mood. Subject often incidental. This is not a photo of St Paul's it is a picture of a shiny, silvery tone.

So, what makes it a failure is that he missed when he wanted to shoot it? What if he wanted to just miss it? Then it's art?

What makes it the right moment? Because that's the moment when you like it?

I have tons of shots where I timed the shot within a few milliseconds of my intended timing, and for a particular reason. Does that make those shots art? Why?