Can photography be art?

But Duchamp's urinal was not a toilet it was a fountain. ;-)

Context, concept.

Because a toilet or urinal can be found in a gallery and called art, does that make every toilet art? If so, can one expand that to say that every object is art?

Art is (can be?) a concept that can include context. While one cannot exclude anything specifically from being art, including photographs, one also cannot automatically include everything either.

I think that Duchamp's Fountain is an encapsulation of this conversation.

Just a reminder that LeeJay has been offering his position on this for years. I thought it might be helpful to refer back to where he ("Lee Jay" at the time) and I left it three years ago:

www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4502943?page=5#forum-post-64131926

That exchange suggested that the problem with art as a topic - and also photography's position as a subset of it - is not just about language and definitions. The problem is also about attempting to resolve the answers through logic, which is how he wanted to do it. But as it turns out, logic is not always applicable to human thought, and logic won't necessarily work for this particular purpose.

You're the one who defined photography as not art because of accuracy. Photography is not art because it all it does is simply capture the scene, nothing more. Those are not my definitions, they are yours. And yes, that photo taken with a telephoto lens is automatically art, by your definition. And no, fisheye projection is not an accurate depiction of a scene either. You are just going around in circles at this point.

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

"Photography that seeks to accurately represent the scene, regardless of the aesthetic intent or quality, is not art, it's craft."

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

I defined it as not art because it doesn't create something it uses technology to capture something already there.

No, it captures the scene. I didn't build the lake, the plane or the sky.

Well, your eyes are fisheye lenses. Just stating a fact.

Those are all consistent.

I disagree. You used the camera to capture and create a beautiful moment. Some minor alterations might improve the image, at least in traditional terms, but as is it stands as a well-crafted creation…with enough intent to meet my internal definition of art.

Okay, how is that different from using an audio recorder to record a concert, assuming it comes out well and you like the music? In that case, I'd call the song writer and maybe the performer the artists.

I took pictures as the plane flew past me. This one just happened to have a nice smooth reflection of the sky in it.

And therefore, by your definition, any photo with black and white, blur, distortion, polarization, flash, noise is automatically art.

You pulled the background closer to the plane and blurred the background.

I never said that they weren't.

I never said that they weren't.

I never said that. Someone else suggested that and I asked about it.

Actually, no, I stood in the only place I could (on the shore) and the background isn't blurred by the camera, it's blurred by the water.

You just said: "I defined it as not art because it doesn't create something it uses technology to capture something already there"

Black and white, blur, distortion, polarization, flash, noise are created by the camera and added to the scene through deliberate choices made by the photographer.

You used a telephoto lens thereby pulling the background closer to the plane than it is in real life.

Blur was added to the scene by you the photographer because your choice of focal length, f-stop, and shutter speed. Water is not blurred by default.

You just said: "I defined it as not art because it doesn't create something it uses technology to capture something already there"

I don't think those alterations make them art. Some others do.

61mm and f/8 on 1.6-crop.

I was gonna make a joke about losing your marbles but...:)

LeeJay, while you and others are free to decide whether or not photography can be art, you don't get to make that decision for collective humanity. Human societies around the world have made up their minds about this going back multiple generations. Photography is an art medium and artistic works include photographs. That's simply a fact. Whether you or others choose to accept that reality, is pretty irrelevant to the fact that it is the reality in which we live.

As I've said above, repeatedly, just because it's been done for a long time doesn't make it right.

It's different because there's no audio recorder, concert, or music. You've put up an analogy which attempts to recast the active participant in creating something (an image) as the passive observer with little control over what is being created in a different scenario. It's a diversion from the event which actually occurred. Composing, capturing, and creating an image can be assessed and discussed on its own merits without resorting to an analogy with a different scenario and circumstances. The parallels between music and photography can also be brought much closer together.

There are connections, of course, between music and photography; including a good deal of shared terminology. In music, you have compositions and composers. You also have composition in visual arts like photography, where the composers are known as photographers. Music is composed from a range of individual tones along a scale which form the tonality of the music. Visual artists, like photographers, also use a range of individual tones along a scale to produce tonality in an image. There's more along the same lines and there's always Ansel Adams' frequent remark that the negative is the score and the print the performance of that score... but you probably get the idea. The medium may be different and the tools may vary, but the intention is the same.

I don't know whether there's anything anyone could say or any analogy which would have an effect on how rigid or flexible your definitions and divisions between art and craft or creativity and capture might be. For myself, the definitions are very broad and dividing lines very fuzzy — for you, perhaps not so much. You feel moved by an artist's expression or you do not. You feel some connection to an artist thru their expression or you do not. You determine how narrow or broad your view or definition of art is for yourself alone in the end — when everything has been said and everyone has finally said it. The most important thing, in my opinion, is to enjoy people and their self-expression as best you're able and don't worry too much about semantics, definitions, and divisions. Let others do the worrying.

Well, these two artists were awarded residencies at my local nature preserve by the good folk at my local art museum (press release, PDF format).

Our spring resident, Katie Shanks, is currently working at the preserve. We had a great conversation about her current thoughts and the purpose of her work at the preserve. Katie weaves photos (and other materials) together to add an additional dimension to a simple 2-dimensional photograph. The additional dimension can be of time, location, direction, or even material (paper, fiber, or plant leaves or stems). The weaving pattern can change to emphasize one over the other in the flat 2-dimensional plane.

In this short stop-action Facebook Reel (video) she demonstrates her weaving process with two photographs taken at the preserve:

Now this makes me think and that's supposed to be a good thing about art. Is Katie post-processing photos? How is Katie's post-processing different than my post-processing? They both create objects in the physical world that represent our respective mental visions.

my accountant every time he fills out a tax return must sit back and go wow what a work of art that form was 😁

sorry, couldn't resist 😊 (just kiddin')