Photography as Art?

[TheLostPhotographer]

Does a photograph have to be technically perfect (technically superior, or even above average technically speaking), to be good or to be considered art?...

No. Not to my way of thinking. There are different measures of technical excellence. The effect aimed for by one artist may well be considered as a technical error by another.

My own preference is for photography to replicate reality as accurately as possibly - technically excellent to my own standard.


On the creative/technical skills front: technical ability is possibly the least important skill today. Digital technologies and modern cameras have made technical knowledge redundant to a large degree. I know I want the greatest depth of field possible so, I just put camera on AE, take a few spot readings to be sure and then focus purely on what's going on in the viewfinder.

Creative magic will never be replaced by computers. It is a skill that will become valued more greatly as time goes by. However, as Herzt the Van Man said; not everyone will recognise it. The Van Man also said Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson were good business people. They were both great marketeers. Look at any successful artist or, photographer today and you will see a great marketeer or, a marketing machine behind them. Perhaps ability to sell is the most important skill in any walk of life.

 

[jon_k]

OK, I am going to be way brief here since I am typing this on my Blackberry.

You know you're addicted to TPF when.....

Anyway...

Photography can be artistic, or at least I view it that way. Never would I purchase somebody elses photograph / artpeice.

But, you're always welcome to present a photo to me. If I can look at it and say "This guy captured exactly what he wanted to capture, and presented it in a way that nobody else could." Some people have this feeling about Ansel Adams for instance. I'd say black and white photography borders closer to art. Perhaps it's my age speaking (I'm 22). B&W photography seems to have more impact and makes you focus on your subject vs the color noise.

My goal in photography is to get to that point, in which I can present a photograph and everyone can instantly relate and realize what I was portraying. Seems I've got a while to go yet! ;-)

 

[JC1220]

I'm struggling with this. Why are ideas supposedly better expressed through language? What if you're not so eloquent in your language skills? Say, you're better at explaining your new idea through visuals.

That quote is total and utter crap to my way of thinking. Language has to be the oldest idea of all. Ug!

Visual arts, fine arts, are about feeling, about the artists interaction with his surroundings at the time of the making of that art, discovery, etc. And, that is what one is expressing through their art, that deep interaction, not an idea, you will fail to communicate your idea nearly 100% of the time.

For example, the large majority of "artists" where I live are concerned about social issues, they almost always want to express a specific point, an idea, lets say, the homeless. They go out with this idea in mind of photographing the homeless, then have a show of the work, which is always accompanied by text to explain their work and direct the viewer to their idea. This is documentary photography, photojournalism perhaps, because they made these photographs based on an idea, not discovery, and it usually shows in the quality and lack of seeing. This is somewhat of a simplistic explaination as there are several camps in conceptual art in postmodernism.

Photographing is always by feel and intuition and is never based on ideas, although it is informed by intelligence. Expressing ideas should come after the fact.

I think Mr. Read had it right, perhaps you don't, we all work differently.

_________

As for technical being import, it is highly important and should be learned to where those technical abilities are so refined they become a non-issue. Not saying it has to be 100% perfect technically, there are almost always very small issues, a spec of dust not spotted, etc. BUT, you must understand your medium, whether it be oil paint, film, or digital. Fail to be technically proficient and you will fail to communicate your vision.

If you have the chance to specifically view AA's work prior to around the mid 40's, they are almost always contact prints and his work is stunning, filled with emotion. After he was caught up in his overly technical world, and enlarging, I feel his work waned in the prior emotion. He use to spend hours in the darkroom trying to get a single print to come out as he wanted. To me, this shows a disconnect in his knowledge of his materials and technical ability.

I believe it was Frederick Scott Archer who is little credited with being the real father of the Zone System.

 

[TheLostPhotographer]

...

Photographing is always by feel and intuition and is never based on ideas, although it is informed by intelligence. Expressing ideas should come after the fact.

...

Think I understand the point you're making a little more clearly now. I agree to a certain extent. If I take my cameras out on a theme shoot the ideas certainly come after the feeling.

Last night I took Three old Olympus Trip 35's out to a games club for a little discrete social documentation which is actually research for a project I will be shooting on LF B&W film at a later date. The ideas for the final shoot will evolve from many visits with small cameras. I will learn about the technical aspects of the environment. I will get to know the many characters a little better. Find out more about the gaming culture, etc. All the time I will be building my ideas about how the LF shoot will work and how best I can convey my emotions and the emotions of the people there.

I am also currently working on a project that creates 3D light sculptures floating mid air just after dusk. I have a very clear idea of what I want to create and where and when I want to create it. Quite literally painting with light into the camera. The lights I use and how I use them will hopefully convey the feelings and emotions I want them to convey in harmony with the natural and man made landscape. It's an idea I've been working on for Three or, Four months now and I have a very clear goal I'm aiming for.

Ideas can initiate the artistic process. They don't necessarily come second to the feeling and emotions.

e2a; Here's where the idea for the light sculptures came from. This is also another example of an idea initiating an artistic process.

Long Distance Portraits:
http://www.totalism.co.uk/LDP/index.htm

 

[skieur]

?

In other words, one of my favourite artistic photographers is my mother who started into colour photography with Kodachrome 2 and twin lens reflex cameras in the 50's, I believe. if I remember correctly. Her work was published and she competed against some well known Canadian photographers in professional salon competitions and won them. Even at 79, she was out on top of a train in the Yukon, still doing scenic work.
She is the one who got me into photography at a very early age.

skieur

 

[abraxas]

I have pretension of art, in the sense that I work up pieces specifically to be printed large and hung in my house.

I own two "major" pieces by other artists, one by Ruud van Empel, and one by Simen Johan. I say major because each cost me over $10,000.

However, I purchased both specifically because their process goes beyond photography, in the sense that their work is of a composite nature. I am only buying work that focuses on a process that I could not emulate.

Thanks for the link to Johan!

 

[skieur]

Is that also true of a blind dingbat

Yes, and it fits most of the comments in this heading. :thumbdown: I am inclined to agree with Max.

skieur

 

[Trenton Romulox]

To me art is representing something deep within you in a form others can see. Art isn't technicalities, art isn't techniques, art is raw human emotion characterized in a piece. Anything that was born in human emotion is art. And if photography is someone's way of channeling emotion, than that photography is art.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

To me art is representing something deep within you in a form others can see. Art isn't technicalities, art isn't techniques, art is raw human emotion characterized in a piece. Anything that was born in human emotion is art. And if photography is someone's way of channeling emotion, than that photography is art.

That would make Dachau and Belsen 'art' because they were born of the human emotions of hate and fear. And a lot of people suffered for them.
You could make an argument supporting this - as in De Quincey's On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts - but I'm sure this interpretation is not what was intended.

The 'normal' definition of Art is that it interprets and communicates.
That is to say an artist interprets what he sees and then communicates his vision to the viewer.
Looking at 'art' through this filter it can be seen that technical ability counts for a great deal. Mastery of your medium means you can communicate effectively and the viewer has a richer experience - and also feels confident that the work he is looking at has not come about by accident.
It also means that a lack of technical ability indicates someone who is not a very good artist (but it does not mean that he is not an artist of sorts).
Technical mastery does not mean, however, that you have to use it. Part of mastery is knowing when you don't need to use it.
I see nothing wrong with recognising degrees of ability. To describe everyone who produces anything as an 'artist' and everything produced as 'art' is to devalue the whole concept - and is also insulting and arrogant.
Calling someone an 'artist' with no differentiation is putting them on the same level as Raphael, Duchamp, Turner, Michaelangelo and all the rest. And if the person so called had little ability then this would be the same as saying that skill and ability count for nothing (or the person making the claim had no discrimination). Or that artists have no need to learn or practice: that every piece that they produce is equally as good as every other. And it also says that everyone else's work is equally as good.
This is quite obviously nonsense.
What is wrong with being an 'art student', 'aspiring artist', 'struggling artist', 'starving artist', 'artist', 'great artist' or even (as in my case) 'failed artist'?
People generally have more respect for you if you put the ego on the back burner and are honest.
And most people can figure out which one you are anyway.

But TR's 'definition' also has repercussions for Photography.
"Art isn't technicalities, art isn't techniques, art is raw human emotion".
Where does that leave a digital photo that has been filtered through various bits of technology and software?
A digital image could be described as being nothing but technically produced. And even traditional film has a fair bit in there.
So Photography cannot be art.
This was always the argument. Photography was seen (as TLP still likes to see it) as replicating reality as accurately as possible. That's partly why it was know as 'The Magic Mirror' at the time of Daguerre (that and the fact the Daguerreotype turned everything into a mirror image). And Fox Talbot called it 'the pencil of Nature'.
This accuracy of reproduction appears to be inbuilt at first sight.
But wait!
Reality is based in at least four Dimensions and a photograph (excluding the thickness of the paper) only has two. Depth and time have been squeezed out.
So a photograph can never be more than only partly accurate.
And then we can distort with lenses, camera movements, long exposures...
The more you actually examine the process the less accuracy you find it is capable of.
So if Photography is not capable of accurately reproducing Nature what can it do?
Well, if we can use the various tricks and techniques Photography allows us to we can distort reality. And if we have control over these techniques then we we can play with the image. Or, to put it another way, interpret what we see and present our view.
As in my (though I did not invent it) definition.
Photography isn't art by default - but it certainly has the potential to be used to produce art.
And similarly, photographers aren't artists by default but Photography has the potential to produce them.

Words define things, and definitions limit them so you have to be very careful when choosing your words

I have no doubts that, had the technology been around in his day, Leonardo would have photographed the Mona Lisa and a C-type print would now be hanging in the Louvre :lmao:

 

[TheLostPhotographer]

...
This was always the argument. Photography was seen (as TLP still likes to see it) as replicating reality as accurately as possible...

Great post with plenty to think about. I may well find time later to come back to the many issues you raise. In the meantime I'll try and clarify my own view on the 'real' quality of photography as an art medium.


It remains the most accurate reproduction of reality for myself. Even lacking the time dimension it still appears to represent nature more accurately than moving film. A good quality LF print at 5' x 4' is the most convincing representation of nature I've ever experienced. The scale and resolution play a big part, but the composition and skill of the photographer are still the ultimate factor.

Also, on a personal level the continuous relationship between artist and light is important. I lose this joy when I use digital. As soon as the image has sunk to a set of numbers the flow breaks down. In this respect digital photography is a very different medium to traditional film photography.

I appreciate that we all view the world from a very singular view point and that the reality represented is only a single opinion of the reality. However, the beauty of a good photograph for myself is that the subject is undeniably something that existed in a real moment in time in a real place.

I'll stop there before going down the 'everything can be digitised' or, digi v film debate. It doesn't interest me as an artist and this thread is about art. It does interest me on a scientific theory level.

And, after saying all of the above, I am currently working on a very abstract use of photography as art. Something I feel I need to do just to understand why the reality is so important to me.


Nice to see so many people giving this thread some considered thought. Not very often you find that on the web. I may well be back this evening (local Spanish time) after a glass of Rioja or, Two.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

It remains the most accurate reproduction of reality for myself. Even lacking the time dimension it still appears to represent nature more accurately than moving film. A good quality LF print at 5' x 4' is the most convincing representation of nature I've ever experienced.

It appears to replicate Nature accurately, but a lot of this is merely illusiory.
There appears to be a degree of congruence but for starters (and as I have stated) reality as we experience it has three dimensions (forgetting time for the moment) whereas a photo has only two. This alone should be sufficient to show that there are differences in the way we aprehend reality and the way a photo represents it.
We accept a photograph as representing three dimensions because the illusion is so convincing. In fact the illusion is, in some respects, better than reality. The photograph could be seen as hyper-reality.
Reality as we experience it is in a state of constant flux. Things change from one moment to the next. Nothing remains the same for very long.
Photography allows us to 'freeze' reality and examine just one sliver at our leisure.
It is this capturing of the transient that gives Photography most of it's power, and all of it's magic.
Portraits can 'reveal' the inner nature of the sitter - but this is because a fleeting expression is caught: a smile changing to a frown, perhaps. Something we do not usually observe as we monitor the flow of things rather than the individual moment.
A photograph re-presents reality in a novel way.

But can we trust what we see? How accurate is our experience of reality?
It's hard to say, except that it is not as accurate as we believe.
For example, colours do not exist outside our heads.
We 'reconstruct' reality inside our minds from the sensory information we receive. What we aprehend as 'colour' is just the way our brains handle the information coming in.
I'll give you an example of something that we see differently under different circumstances.
Look at the following image.
See the grey circle in the middle?
Now close one eye and stare at the black dot with the other from about 12 - 18 inches from the screen.
What happens to the grey circle? And how does it make you feel?



I can explain what is going on and why it happens but here is not the place.
But if you can't trust your eyes, how can you trust a photograph? :mrgreen:

 

[TheLostPhotographer]

...
I can explain what is going on and why it happens but here is not the place.
But if you can't trust your eyes, how can you trust a photograph? :mrgreen:

Not entirely the wrong place. Optical illusions and other tricks to fool visual perception have been used by artists for centuries. The first uses of perspective are just illusions really.

I studied a little visual perception theory as part of a degree in multimedia. Fascinating stuff and understanding how we perceive reality is good knowledge for creating 'hyper real' photography.

We all know photographs aren't real, but I will still argue that photography recreates a perceived reality in a way that is more convincing than any other current medium.

Going back to Thomas Struth, looking at many of his photographs I can apply laws of gestalt. I strongly suspect that they are taught at the Dusseldorf School of Art he (and many other notable German fine art photographers) studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher.

Lines of good continuation being and obvious example. If you study visual perception theories and apply them in practice they do actually help to create photographs that are less challenging to the viewer and thus more 'real'. I'm not sure if I apply these theories subconsciously or, if it's just a natural instinct within anyone who knows how to compose, frame and edit a good photograph. I don't think about them whilst taking a photograph, but analysing at a later date reveals that the theories stand true.

They help me understand why a photograph has an immediate impact and why the viewer is drawn deeper. They don't explain all the personal emotion and stuff I don't really understand myself.


Colours. Yep - they don't actually exist. However, on the whole we all perceive them as the same and share common emotional responses. I think we have to accept human visual perception as THE reality even if there is actually no such thing. Afterall, film and sensor manufacturers strive to recreate what we perceive.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Afterall, film and sensor manufacturers strive to recreate what we perceive.

Not so. Film and sensor manufacturers strive to produce a product that conforms to what the theory tells them it should do using instrumentality to measure what it is doing. That this results in producing something that mirrors what we see is thanks to the Laws of Physics.

As I have said, we accept a photograph as being an accurate representation of reality because the illusion conforms so well to what we expect.
It comes down to the imaging system of our eye and the imaging system of the camera work through the same laws of optics.

The vanishing circle is not an optical illusion. It is merely demonstrating how the eye works.
The light receptors in our eyes react when they identify a transition - dark to light/light to dark. Once triggered they have to reset. The eye is constantly moving (though we are not normally aware of it) so different cells get triggered whilst others are resetting.
What this means is we see things by detecting edges - an edge being a transition from light to dark or vice versa.
With the grey circle there is no edge. It merely fades out.
When we look at the black dot we fix our eye. At first we see the grey circle. But because it does not have a definite edge as our triggered cells reset there is no transition to trigger them again. The grey circle fades as our mind stops receiving information about it - it decides that the best fit for the situation is that the background to the black dot is just all one tone.
Move your eye and the information changes and your mind decides that it is there again. It presents us with a modified model of reality to match the new information.
Most people feel a little uneasy as it fades out. This is because part of your mind knows that it is there whilst the part that deals with visual information is telling you it isn't. Something that our brains usually hides from our conscious self is suddenly brought to our attention.
We trust our senses so much that it can cause us problems when they prove to be faulty.

 

[TheLostPhotographer]

...

The vanishing circle is not an optical illusion. It is merely demonstrating how the eye works....

Most people feel a little uneasy as it fades out. This is because part of your mind knows that it is there whilst the part that deals with visual information is telling you it isn't. Something that our brains usually hides from our conscious self is suddenly brought to our attention.
We trust our senses so much that it can cause us problems when they prove to be faulty.

So, is it or, isn't it an optical illusion?


I'm off out to eat now, but will come back to explain why your point about film and sensor manufacturers is wrong. Then we'll get back to the essence of photography as art. Possibly?

 

[Hertz van Rental]

So, is it or, isn't it an optical illusion?

No, it isn't an optical illusion. As I have just explained it is a demonstration of a failing in the way the eye works.
Another one:
Cover your left eye. Look at the dot with your right eye. Starting about 18 inches from the screen move slowly forwards until the + disappears.
You have just found the fovea centralis or 'blind spot'. The point in the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye. We are not usually aware of it because our brains filter it out - even though it is quite a large area.




As for proving my statement wrong - you will see that I am right in what I say if you think carefully about it. Especially if you know anything about manufacturing