Can photography be art?

Potatoes are more important than art, but it doesn't mean art isn't important. I think you get into trouble as soon as you start trying to rank the importance of things. I don't personally have any pretensions about "art" at all. I don't need someone to tell me whether something counts as art, that's up to me. But I have a good idea about what things I want to hang on my wall.

Here's a little portfolio that I keep a link to. It continues to amaze me how a photographer can turn the mundane into an art form

www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/elegance/bicycle/

It's beautiful, isn't it?

Pretty sure that portfolio would get you an ARPS.

I didn't say art couldn't use tools, just not tools to capture something already there. A sculptor using a hammer is fine. Using a 3D-printer to create a 3D shape from an existing formula (i.e. sphere, Mobius strip, whatever) is not.

I've never seen a photograph that I would classify as art.

Not to me, but whether someone likes something or not is about the worst criteria there is for lumping something under the "art" category.

Good photography captures a subjective view of what is "already there," similar to paintings.

Some paintings do that (the ones I like, generally) but many paintings don't seek to reproduce anything that actually existed, ever.

I don't recall ever seeing much art that doesn't involve some for form of technology. Maybe the most ancient charcoal drawings on a cave wall. But at some point people started creating tinted "paints" using the primitive technologies they had. And tools for carving. And making papers, brushes, canvas, etc. etc.

Fair points. Then we created a mouse, a keyboard and software.

Danny.

I'm not saying art doesn't involve technology, just not technology that captures something already there and puts it to media.

A sculptor can use their tools and it's still art, but a robot copying an existing object by carving it isn't.

Thanks - I feel like that's a big help in understanding your point of view on art vs. non-art. However I'm afraid like it gets increasingly unclear with the example and the statement below:

Here's my (non serious) photographic statement on art:

... still the one true artist! by simple.joy, on Flickr

Oh well, it's art to me and no one can take that from me.

Similar, but different

Danny.

People are always welcome to decide what they like, and don’t like. However, this question is pointless and moot because photography has been firmly established as art for over 100 years. Just because someone comes up with a novel thought, or doesn’t agree, doesn’t change the facts. Flat-Earther’s claim to believe that the Earth is flat, and they will argue their point however, simple photographic analysis from space, not to mention firmly established circumnavigation throughout the centuries, has proved otherwise. So, anyone who engages in an argument, or debate regarding photography as art, or earth is flat, is doomed to a pointless waste of time.

Would that mean a reproduction, in the form of something like a print of a photo, or a watercolor painting, or charcoal drawing, etc not art? If I purchase a signed, numbered, limited edition print has that ceased be art? Is a robot copying an existing object different in some way?

I don't have an absolute answer to those questions.

That's a false comparison.

The shape of the earth is a matter of objective reality and thus not subject to opinions. Assigning activities to groups is a human creation, not a matter of objective reality.

It's a reproduction of art (perhaps). I doubt anyone would refer to the printing press as an "artist".

It is a true statement that there are many people who know more about art than I do. Expertise in art is a specialty field like any other.

I know what I like, and what affects me with a particular kind of response (attract/repel/indifferent). I may or may not agree with said expert but that does invalidate their expertise.

No. But I’d consider arguments regarding the engraver.