Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Recent threads have debated whether photography is art, and in a current thread the subject came up about the ethical model for manipulation at all points in the process of making a photograph. That included the suggestion that changing a scene before taking a shot has just as many implications as it does at other stages. Camera configuration wasn't mentioned, but should be. As can be expected the question of the difference between adjustments such as brightness and contrast as opposed to cloning an object in or out of the photograph was raised.

This is a topic that I have strong opinions about, based on significant exploration of the topic as a philosophical object. My thoughts start with the idea that trying to capture "reality" is jousting with windmills. Never mind reality in a photograph, is there visualized reality in an un-photographed scene? Or do two individuals look at the same scene and each see their own, very separate, reality. If that is true, then photographing "reality" is impossible!

But even if we allow close approximations of reality to be considered, is any photograph the same as the scene? Definitely not! Garry Winogrand was emphatic that photographs should not be confused with reality:

I see photography as no different than painting. It's just communications with visual symbols (much the same as how deaf people think). Different tools, each with different limitations. With that concept in mind every philosophy relating to painted art also applies to photographic art.

Here are a couple of concepts to grapple with in that light...

When Picasso was asked "What is art?", his reply was "What isn't?"

But go one more step with Picasso:
I think that means there is no "abstract art" that should be described as more abstract than any other. None is reality, art is abstract. Every photograph is just as abstract as is every painting on a philosophical level.

Frank2013 Loc: San Antonio, TX. & Milwaukee, WI.

I agree for the most part, but don't think everything has to be looked at in the extremes. There is always some middle ground. I think two people can stand next to each other and see basically the same thing. So I guess I think it is possible to photograph reality in a sense.

Yes photographs are approximations of a scene, or reality, not duplicates. I believe when you start to deviate away from those approximations that are intended to be close to reality is when you may start to consider it art.

Philosophy is ...... well Philosophy.

Wonderful topic Apaflo, will be interesting to see what follows.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Uuglypher brought up choice of camera lens as an example. I would never have thought of that! Fascinating point.



Super-interesting points, Apaflo. Since I'm not a painter and have no background or education in any art other than photography, I separate them: I have no issues with whatever a painter shows us, but in photographs I want to know if reality was changed in significant ways. This is going to be a personal definition for each of us, of course:

1. If the jaw-dropping drama of a photograph showing a grizzly bear about to grab a jumping salmon from a stream is a composite, I want to know!

2. If you removed a tree limb that looks like it's growing from the head of a bird, I applaud your attention to detail and for making the subject look the best it can :)

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

Fascinating topic, and I hope it will see further development. I learned at an early age the tricks of photographic communication. My father, who did small-town news photography, could do all kinds of magic with only the camera and traditional darkroom basics as tools. In a slow week, he could make a fender bender look like a cataclysmic crash, or a tiny roadside fire look like a massive conflagration just by shooting choices. The same image shot differently would have been trifling stuff, but he could make it "seem" important.

We all do this kind of thing all the time, using specific lenses and settings, camera angles, etc to convey what we want to about a scene. We hide the parking lot and signs behind the bush we crouch beside, we find just the right angle to get the sunbeams where we can capture them, we add an ND filter so we can make water smooth as glass. All of it is manipulation, as is everything done with a painter's brush. We just use different tools.

We make manipulation out to be an ugly word sometimes when it does not have to be. Its French word-origin meant "skillful handling".

simonbowen Loc: hampton court uk

Yes, it's quite a topic. But maybe one to which there's no clinical answer.
Does art have to be visual? Probably not. Music is an art - but you wouldn't say so if you heard me playing the piano.
Similarly, ballet must be an art, but not when I put on my tutu and try an entrechat. Or my kids paintings when they were young. Not art, but try to persuade my wife of that.
Isn't it all down to the beholder and the effect art has on him/her for whatever reason?

Incidentally, manipulation is also defined as
to control or play upon by artful, unfair or insidious means especially to ones on advantage ......

NJFrank Loc: New Jersey

I am not one to get to philosophical, but here goes. Every artist no matter which discipline they are in, manipulate what the "see". Be it a painter (traditional or modern), a sculpture or the performing artist. They all use the tools of their trade to come up with a final product. Photography to me is no different. Every one of us has a frame of reference on how we view the world. That contributes on how we come up with when we produce an image. Yes there are certain photographic " rules" to follow, but even those sometimes are made to be broken to come up with a better image. So you now have my two cents worth.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Sorry, NJfrank,
But there's nowhere enough in my account to cover what the basic truth of your statement is actually worth...but I'll trust you to let me take it to heart
anyway !

Dave

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Of course, this is not going to be resolved with a simple statement, a litmus test. I have expressed this view in other threads.

It's not photography in general that is or is not art. Neither is one or more categories of photography art and the rest not. It is the effort, intent and vision of the photographer that makes the difference.

If a photographer puts a lot of effort, research and imagination into the image, before and after clicking the shutter, the result will be art - good or bad is up to the the viewer.

If a photographer takes a casual snapshot, it's just documentation of the moment.

It is possible that a curator might consider the photographer's reputation and prior work and treat a snapshot as a work of art, but that may say more about the curator than about the photograph.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Where has this post is added anything to the discussion?


Even if presented as rhetorical questions, none of those are in anyway enlightening. Who would suggest that art has to be visual, that music, ballet, poetry, prose, photography or painting are not art?

And to extend that, even the painting of an average 3 year old is art. Perhaps not great art, but art. "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child," Picasso.

On the subject of what is good art, research the story of Vincent Van Gogh. His generous brother supported him for his entire adult life as a painter, because they both thought his talent was extreme. Nobody saw it, and in his entire life only one of his paintings ever sold for money. Van Gogh's art was not good enough to sell, but he moved the world of art forward several steps!


That is what defines the quality of art, but does not reflect what is or is not art. In fact there is a "clinical answer" to what is art. We can find it in most good dictionaries,

Art is "the products of human creativity". Quality does not define what is art.


But that is not an appropriate definition when discussing artistic manipulation during the creation of art.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

But you still aren't approaching a valid way to understand it.

The dictionary definition of "art" is a fact: "the products of human creativity". That is art. Anything that is that... is art.

Various personal definitions, yours included, just add confusion.


But that is not what makes it art, only what possibly makes it good.


And undeniably by definition it is also art.

It just is not logical to relate what is art to what gives art quality. The world is filled with good art, but it is also filled with bad art that still is art.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Virtually all painting was considered in that light, up to about 1900. The whole point was to learn ways to more closely approximate the reality a viewer would have seen in the original object. And then came the technology revolution: trains, electricity, the horseless carriage, telegraph... and photography!

Of course that changed the way artists thought. One perception was that if we can take one of these new fangled cameras and merely by the push of a button create an image with very precise detail, where is there any future in painting? That day wasn't there yet, but some painters saw the writing on the wall.

The answer was to stop painting what you can see, and instead start painting what you feel. Impressionist painting might be considered the start, or more like the precursor. Cubism, Fauvism, and Surealism were progressive expansions, with Cubism being the most dramatic and effective channel for change. Rather than produce an image that is a very close approximation to what the scene looked like, in hopes that viewing the image instead of the scene would produce the same feelings, painters instead tried to go directly to painting the feelings, using more "universal" and less "realistic" visual symbols, to do a better job of communicating the same emotions to viewers.

And here we are, 100 years later, and the same idea is now pertinent to photography because technology has put a cellphone camera in the pocket of just everyone, and all of them can take pictures of what we see.

To stand out, to make advanced art, maybe we should take pictures of what we feel. Eh?

Frank2013 Loc: San Antonio, TX. & Milwaukee, WI.

Thank you very much for enlightening me Floyd, it is appreciated.


That would be one way to do it. I am new to the whole art thing with photographs and am just now starting to think about making art with some of my photographs, hence my approach so far has been to take a lot of shots of what I see as a photograph and then feel the art part afterwards in post. I'm sure the more I do this the more I might start feeling the art before the capture, right now not so much. Make sense?

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

Yes, that is the path that develops. First, you find interesting stuff and learn how to get your camera to record it properly. Then you fiddle and experiment, and see what you can make of it. The seeing, capturing and fiddling eventually gets synthesized somehow so that you are thinking about all three at once while you are on the scene, and you begin to shoot with at least one expected end-product in mind. That won't stop the fiddling, though, you'll just learn a new way to fiddle which will cause you to see things a new way and learn new techniques to get your equipment to give you the images to do that with too.

It never ends.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Your cited definition is not confusing?


Isn't research, imagination and effort the essence of creativity?

As I said earlier, I am not presenting a definition or litmus test. I am expressing my opinion. If you are looking for a single, simple definition of art that we will all agree on you are not going to find it.


Recognizing photographers for producing art was not the end of creativity for painters. Photography merely took over the task of documentation.

Photography did not completely replace painting for documentation either. Think of portraits that can capture the essence of a personality. Few photographers can do it as well as Karsh and his portraits are truly painterly.

If painted images are "the product of human creativity" then they remain art. By the definition you cited, all painted images are art. Some photograph are art and some are not.

As for abstraction and manipulation - does that not involve imagination and effort - creativity?

Is a statement valid only if you can find it on the internet or in a dictionary? Do you have a personal opinion?

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Many, which is very evident in the articles I write here. But the difference is that I work hard at basing my opinions on facts.

It isn't just finding it on the Internet. You manage to find almost anything you want on the Internet. The trick is knowing what is valid, and finding credible and authoritative references for it. Citing the ramblings of a total fool doesn't make anything valid.