Can photography be art?

How do you decide if it's documentary or not?

Here's a picture I took of the Library of Congress. Documentary? I did choose the focal length (9mm on crop).

@LeeJay should be banned for disrespecting the artform so badly. Can I at least block this person? Doubt I need their opinion much if it's just gonna be a total slap in the face to what I'm out here doing day in and day out, exploring new things to do in photography whenever and however I can.

I could rant a lot more but there's no point in making myself angrier or getting tossed for rampant name calling.

A lot of art is not readily approachable and takes effort and learning to appreciate. I'm thinking especially of

Some jazz music.
Some abstract art.
A lot of 20th and 21st century orchestral music.
Some photography.

That doesn't mean that it can't be rewarding for those who take the time and trouble to educate themselves.

I make judgements regarding art and artists solely for myself and am happy to let others do the same. Personally, I think the world would could use more energy being expended on creating and less on criticizing, but that's just me.

Reading a number of your posts I am inclined to agree that you are not an artist. You seem to have put art and photography into constricted little boxes they are not allowed to wander outside of.

In my experience, that is not how artists think, or how art works.

Therein lies the conflict for many. It’s easier to reject than to consider.

I agree. However, I also think that no photographers are artists. There are photographers that are quite good at the craft of capturing scenes in aesthetically pleasing ways, but if they don't create the scene itself, then I wouldn't call it art, I'd call it craft.

@OpenCube

No one should be banned for their opinion or point of view of art and photography, no matter what it is.

You like vanilla, I like chocolate chip, so what.
Maybe we could start a Chevy vs Ford discussion. lol

Seems to me this question has been answered for quite some time. Photography has been exhibited in galleries as art since the 1850s.

That something has been done for a long time doesn't make it right.

If you look around for uses of the terms, photography is an "art" and audio engineering is a "craft". Yet, they are very similar. Photography is much more similar to audio engineering than it is to the other arts so why don't the two fall under the same name?

I also think way too many things are being called "art" these days, including, for example, good performances in sports.

Whether or not it's right is irrelevant to the fact that photography has been exhibited, reviewed, appraised, sold, and collected as art since the mid-1800s. It's undeniably art.

Really? I strongly disagree at the age of 18, not having listened to a lot of jazz I picked up Keith Jarrret's Shades (I liked the album cover). Loved the whole album. It just spoke to me from day one. No work or learning. Actually I just pulled up Diatribe on youtube. Have not listened to it in a long time. Edit: OK, now listening to the full album. Damn, so good.

I feel the same about abstract art. I was gobsmacked the first time I saw a Jackson Pollock. Other stuff like white on white and black on black, coloured bars on canvas have never done anything for me.

To me, art is very personal. It speaks to you in some visceral way, or it does not.

Webster 1913
www.websters1913.com/words/Art

The arts are divided into various classes. The useful, mechanical, or industrial arts are those in which the hands and body are more concerned than the mind; as in making clothes and utensils. These are called trades. The fine arts are those which have primarily to do with imagination and taste, and are applied to the production of what is beautiful. They include poetry, music, painting, engraving, sculpture, and architecture; but the term is often confined to painting, sculpture, and architecture.

The liberal arts (artes liberales, the higher arts, which, among the Romans, only freemen were permitted to pursue) were, in the Middle Ages, these seven branches of learning, -- grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In modern times the liberal arts include the sciences, philosophy, history, etc., which compose the course of academical or collegiate education. Hence, degrees in the arts; master and bachelor of arts.

Depending on what your stance is on Museums and Galleries, as well as folks with Phd's in art/art history, yes photography is art. There are many books on the subject of how photography became accepted by other art forms, academics, and the general population. One of the things about the net, there are a lot of opinions but few subjective discussions backed by rigorous study and presentation of some form of in depth presentation of a pedagogical model based on rigorous study. Opinions are just that, what an individual believes, not a determination of what is valid or not. So, I vote for art.

Unless it's not. No one person gets to make the judgement on what is and is not art for the entirety of humanity ... or even the dude next to you ...

People were treated as property for millennia. Doesn't make it right.

Totally agree with you on that and a lot of what LeeJay has said in here. I know what art means to me. Not any one else or a written word, just me, myself and I.

Danny.

I said some jazz music, and some abstract art. But I'm glad you enjoy Jarret and Pollack.