Are these pics "Phography" or Art?

[Mike_E]

All depends.....What's ART?

It's a stylized form of communication.


Communication requires at least Two people.

So, if you're doing it for yourself, and alone, then what you are doing rhymes with relation














but isn't.

:lmao::lmao::lmao:











OBTW, if it makes you happy, do it. Just don't let your ego get all balled up if people don't bow when you walk past. (this is meant as a general statement and not pointed at anyone in particular) ((really))

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Photography is a form of art.

No it isn't.
What you should have said was 'Photography can be used to produce Art'.
Photography is no more a form of Art than anything else. Nor is it even an Art form. It's what you do with it that matters.
Painting can be an Art form but that does not mean that painting the walls of my living-room Dove grey is Art.

The crux of the initial question is not 'is it Art' but at what point does a photographic image stop being a photograph and become an image based on a photograph?
There is no question that a 'straight' photograph with no manipulation is a photograph. But once you start digitally manipulating an image you move into a fuzzy grey zone outside of Photography proper.
How much manipulation - and of what kind - is permissible?
This is not a question that can be answered with any certainty but it has a lot to do with Photography's relationship with reality.
For example, once you remove an object from the image - or indeed add one that wasn't there originally - then the image could be seen as having ceased to be a 'perfect' representation of reality (and so is no longer a photograph) but has become a photo-montage instead. Although this does raise questions about the 'cleaning up' of blemishes like moles from a portrait.
Colour, contrast and similar are very much harder to pin down but a good rule of thumb would be that once the image stops looking 'natural' and looks manipulated then it has stopped being a photograph as such and becomes a photography based image.
It's a question that is worth thinking about - but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. It's a pretty trivial point in the scheme of things and only really matters if you are stupidly obsessed with having clearly defined labels for what you do and what you produce.
I, for one, am not.
All that matters to me is: is it good or is it garbage

 

[Mike_E]

"No it isn't.
What you should have said was 'Photography can be used to produce Art'.
Photography is no more a form of Art than anything else. Nor is it even an Art form. It's what you do with it that matters.
Painting can be an Art form but that does not mean that painting the walls of my living-room Dove grey is Art."

You are of course correct Hertz (except that I was making a broad statement about art and not photography specifically ).

I stand behind the sentiment as it relates to the OP however. Ottor was speaking of a conversation between himself (?) and some friends of his and brought up emotional attachment and frustration with the way they felt about his work. Sure signs of attempted communication in my book.

If you want to go into whether or not the audience has to actually understand an artwork for it to be any good (not many people can truly appreciate a finely painted Dove Grey wall for instance) go ahead but I think that I'll give that one a miss. :mrgreen:

 

[Hertz van Rental]

If you want to go into whether or not the audience has to actually understand an artwork for it to be any good...

Of course the audience doesn't have to understand a work to appreciate it - although this may be necessary to appreciate a work fully. That is not what Art is really about. What it must do, however, is elicit a response. It doesn't matter if it is love or hate or any other emotion just so long as it is a reaction of some kind.
A work can truly be said to have failed as Art if it evokes no response of any kind in any one. But then, perhaps a lack of response is a response in itself...
As it happens, I love my grey walls. I call it Bankers In The Mist and I'm putting it up for auction next month. All bids in cash, please. Buyer collects.


If anyone wants to get an understanding of what Art is - or isn't - then read up on the controversy surrounding Marcel Duchamp's Fountain.
It is a gents urinal and was first exhibited in 1917. When told by the exhibition organisers that he could not show it because it wasn't Art, Duchamp is reputed to have posed the following conundrum:
'It's in an Art gallery, it's signed by an artist and you can't p!ss in it. So if it isn't Art you tell me what it is.'
The argument has been raging ever since.
But Duchamp had a wicked sense of humour and I personally think that Art world just missed the joke.

 

[Mike_E]

I once left a toilet (a clean one) on the top step of the local college of art here. As a donation of course.

As I understand it, they didn't appreciate it either. The more things change...

By the way, is Dove Grey a 13% Grey? Keeping properly exposed in an upbeat fashion? LOL Good luck with the sale, I hope the housing market is better over there than here.

mike

 

[Invictus]

I'm sorry but ..... that's funny..

x2

 

[Hertz van Rental]

I once left a toilet (a clean one) on the top step of the local college of art here.

I'm afraid that I shall have to mark you down for plagiarism.
And if you didn't sign it then it isn't art anyway.

I used to have a friend called Art. I ought to look him up as there are a lot of people around these days taking his name in vain...

 

[ottor]

I think that my brief bout of frustration comes from the fact that I'm extremelly new to photography, and ... I have an "Art" backgound (Oil Painting).. In my simple opinion, a Photograph is capturing something, and Art is creating something.... Just kinna felt that my two displayed pictures were capturing something, and then altered a bit with "PHOTOshop" However, after seeing some of the ideas presented here, I can see where they're coming from also.. I just wanted to take a photograph and have someone give me a good or bad review .. but I didn't expect to hear "Thats not a photograph anymore..."

Trust me - I'm not irrepairablly damaged .. I just got to wondering, hence, the question..

Great replies !!

thanks,

 

[m2v]

Trying to define photography, or art; or to draw a line between them will get anyone crazy.

However, I do want to believe that photography is creativity beyond just technical knowledge in operating the gears accurately.

Just do anything to please yourself. And if the work happened to please the audience, it's the most gratifying experience.

 

[Mike_E]

Hertz if it wasn't a urinal, it wasn't plagiarism. Besides, I was simply donating materials.

Rick, thanks for bring this up. Things were getting boring around here.

M2V, Photography, as Hertz kindly pointed out, is nothing more than making a real-time graphical representation. It is personalized by making the representation illustrate you own point of view. Communicating that point of view brings it into the realm of art. The better you are able to communicate- the better the art. And when you can communicate Your views and the emotions brought out by those views and even bring out associated memories from your viewers to support that point of view- then you get to capitalize the A in art. (just like that guy Hertz knows )

 

[flea77]

I agree this is highly subjective, so I will add my highly subjective opinion:

A photograph starts with what is captured in the camera, be it film or digital. Any PP done to make it look more realistic, or more like the real world vision (including cropping, contrast, WB, removing items accidentally in the shot) still maintain the photography status. Once you do something that removes the realism, it is now a work BASED on a photograph and no longer actually a photograph.

In my very biased opinion, the two images at the start of this post are not photography at all, but they are based on photography.

To me what the OP did was no different than if someone printed the photograph out, then grabbed some crayons and colored over the top. It used to be a photo, now it is not.

Allan

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Toilet. Urinal.
It's all sanitary ware. You are merely playing with semantics, sir.
What was done first in 1917 has often been copied but never equalled. :greenpbl:

Any PP done to make it look more realistic, or more like the real world vision (including cropping, contrast, WB, removing items accidentally in the shot) still maintain the photography status.

Removing items from an image that were originally there stops the image from being a representation of reality because you are altering reality in retrospect. So one could successfully argue that any image so altered is no longer a photograph.
'Make it look more realistic'? A photograph is a 2-D representation of a 4-D world. How realistic is that?

 

[table1349]

Well Gee..... now that we have a definitive definition as to what Art is, what is reality???

 

[Hooligan Dan]

Photo illustration is what we call them in the print/media world.

 

[Garbz]

Wait a second Hertz, If the dictionary definition of art includes "the products of human creativity" Then wouldn't any photo not taken with a 50mm from viewing height be technically art? I mean we use lenses to distort perspectives, we use wide apertures to blur out objects, we get down on our knees all not because this is what we normally see the world from but because we are trying to create a picture from a subject using a bit of creative thinking and our gear.

How is HDR or darkroom effects any different than just using a 600mm lens, or a 10mm lens. None of that represents reality as we see it, and all has creative input.

I'd put it to you that Photography even Photojournalism is art. Case in point is the Time Life MLK assassination that was posted here a few days ago. It wasn't the event that spurred the emotions but the result of the creativity of the photographer in taking the photos.

To the OP they are both photography and art, but more importantly they just look plain crap. (my opinion)