I would submit that unless you are technical, documentary photographer (ie, a medical or scientific photographer for the most part), then every photographer is an artist to a greater or lesser degree. They may not always think about it, but I'm willing to bet that most people using a camera whether consciously or un, apply some degree of personal approach to taking a photograph.
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to do like to make a record of people / places / things or do you prefer to make art ?
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New Day Rising
Veteran Member
I know your position is that photography can never be art at the point of capture and is inherently a form of record keeping. In your opinion, can a photographic image be made into art through post-processing?
You may well have covered this previously, but I don't recall.
Mackiesback
Veteran Member
What argument for photography being art would you ever see as logical? This repeated discussion is a complete waste of time.
TacticDesigns
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Yes. Just by picking up a camera and deciding to take a picture can be an act of creating.
Not so much a Marcel Duchampian type thing.
But just thinking of taking a picture of a building.
The building was designed by someone. It could have been designed as a piece of art or architecture.
We might really like a portion of it and take a picture. So we are taking a picture of the pre-existing art that is already there.
Same with taking a picture of a dancer or an athlete (like gymnastics or cheer).
The choreographer has already created the dance. The athlete has implemented that art and probably added a bit of themselves to it as well.
Us as a photographer are capturing that art. And then . . . we may add our own little angle to it as well.
It can be a masterful step, just recognizing the art that is already in front of us!
Take care & Happy Shooting!
New Day Rising
Veteran Member
Hmmmm... I wonder about this thing of creating art by photographing someone else's art.Yes. Just by picking up a camera and deciding to take a picture can be an act of creating.
Not so much a Marcel Duchampian type thing.
But just thinking of taking a picture of a building.
The building was designed by someone. It could have been designed as a piece of art or architecture.
We might really like a portion of it and take a picture. So we are taking a picture of the pre-existing art that is already there.
Same with taking a picture of a dancer or an athlete (like gymnastics or cheer).
The choreographer has already created the dance. The athlete has implemented that art and probably added a bit of themselves to it as well.
Us as a photographer are capturing that art. And then . . . we may add our own little angle to it as well.
It can be a masterful step, just recognizing the art that is already in front of us!
Take care & Happy Shooting!
I really like taking photos of street art - there is some amazing work around the area of Melbourne I work in (well, work in when I am not in lockdown). I like to photograph it so that I can enjoy looking at it at other times, and also because a lot of it is temporary.
That street art is photographed by many people - I don't pretend that I am seeing something in the world around me that other people don't see.
I will photograph the entire work when I can, but often that is not possible due to the scale of the work (I bought an ultrawide lens just for these photos, but don't always have it with me) or obstructions. So, often I will photograph parts of the work and will also do this because sometimes the photos look better that way. But I don't pretend I am doing anything particularly creative by determining what parts of the work to photograph - the artist has already provided the creative input to the entire work and every part of it.
All I can really hope to achieve with this photography is to get the technically best photo I can. There is some creative input in determining the angle and timing of the photos, but they are more an extension of the technical process than anything else. I think this is true of photographing other forms of artistic expression as well, like dance, or sports.
Where the potential for art and genuine creativity comes in is during post processing, where you can transform the image into something different, unique and new. I would not intentionally do that with someone else's art, but I will with less artistic structures, like road bridges or whatever.
New Day Rising
Veteran Member
Are you saying you deliberately started this thread as a pssing contest?
Some threads lend themselves to debate and discussion much more than others.
A thread that is essentially a technical question can be answered in one or two posts and anything after that is repetition.
Some threads are on topics with only a narrow appeal with photographers interested in particular niches.
Threads like this end up being based on opinions and as the old saying goes, we all have them. Those opinions can be quite polarised and people get passionate about them. That's why we end up with some topics - like this one - being repeated over and over again, often with members saying pretty much the exact same thing every time.
It's not my responsibility to refute my position.
if I had a logical argument against my position, it wouldn't be my position.
I answer to both but prefer Lee Jay.
tony field
Veteran Member
I perceived there is definite art with lighting setup and post processing. Constructing wardrobe and other details should also be considered Part of the art. YMMVLee Jay said:
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Charles Darwin: "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
tony
http://www.tphoto.ca
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New Day Rising
Veteran Member
Doesn't it follow that if you have determined your position to be the logical one, you would necessarily deem any other position to be illogical? Therefore, you are simply challenging Rob to post an argument you will automatically dismiss, therefore totally wasting his time.
Are you prepared to change your position in response to a superior argument?
No. I could have simply missed a logical argument.
I dismiss his arguments because they always follow the form of a logical fallacy.
In response to a logical argument, yes - always.
As I've said before, I'd be more inclined to consider it art if the photographer also constructs scene.
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Lee Jay
Probably not, unless the photography is essentially over-painted. I have a friend that does that. But it can if the photographer creates the scene, such as in building a set for a feature film.
I've seen these conversations and always find myself going back and forth. What makes photography non-art for you? Or maybe the better question is, do you have a working definition of art in general? I'd be curious to understand the thought process here.
New Day Rising
Veteran Member
What do you mean by "over-painted" in the context of digital photography processing?
But then isn't it the scene or set building that you are seeing as the creative part? If someone built a set and then photographed it, would you consider their endeavour any more creative than if they built the set but someone else photographed it?
Very simple.
If you look at the list of the commonly-accepted "arts", all but one of them start with a blank slate and then a human manually creates something from their mind onto that blank slate. A painter with a blank canvas, a sculptor with a chunk of rock or clay, a composer with a blank sheet of music paper, a choreographer with a stage and a dancer, an architect with a site and a use-case for the building, and so on. Only photography uses technology to record something that's already there (not just in the "artist's" mind) onto the medium.
If one item in a classification system is different than all the others then that item doesn't belong in that class.
This list is from Wikipedia. I would argue that every one of them starts with a blank medium and then something is created by the artist from the mind of the artist - except Photography.
- Visual arts
- 3.1Architecture
- 3.2Ceramics
- 3.3Conceptual art
- 3.4Drawing
- 3.5Painting
- 3.6Photography
- 3.7Sculpture
- Literary arts
- Performing arts
- 5.1Dance
- 5.2Music
- 5.3Theatre
This seems to me to be a simple problem of classification - photography and sound engineering are not the same as the other accepted arts since they use technology to record something created elsewhere (nature, composer, musician, whatever), and therefore should not be included in that class. One is already excluded, why not the other? It's inconsistent.
If you have a logical argument that counters that argument, then I'd ask that you present it.
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Lee Jay
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I have a friend that takes a photograph and uses a tablet and Corel Draw to paint over the photograph. This substantially changes the original image from a photograph into a painting. The background can change, the brush strokes can be visible, colors can change, and even clothing can change.
The combination of that and the way it's photographed.
Usually a set is designed to be photographed, so I'd consider the combination endeavor to be "art".
Okay, I had thought this was your approach but wasn't sure.
Just some thoughts - with drawing and painting, if the subject is an actual physical scene and the artist is really just painting it or drawing it, is it only art if they embellish and give it their style?
And with Music - we call someone an artist if they sing a song they didn't write. So do we only call the creators the artists? Or if someone does a cover song and adds their vocal and musical variation and style, are they also an artist?
It's a good analogy.
I'm not looking to make arguments at this point, just listening.
I would still consider photo-realistic painting an art, in most cases because it can be an image of a scene that never existed or that couldn't be photographed.
Performing music is a gray area for me. I would definitely consider a composer an artist, I would definitely consider a jazz musician improvising an artist, I would probably consider a performing artist that is embellishing a composition an artist, but a classical musician that's just accurately re-producing the composer's intent, I'm less sure.
I definitely consider covers to be art because they essentially always require the step of arranging the original to match the new performing type. For example, my favorite group is an acapella group that largely does covers but the covers are usually very different from the originals because the originals used instruments and the covers do not. Example
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