E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

For the folks who are reading any of my posts in this thread, I have to apologize for repeating myself like the proverbial broken record. Come to think if it, most younger folks have never experienced the redundant and repetitive sound of a broken analog recording. Perhaps a scratched CD?

I mentioned that I dislike placing "labels" on photographers as to their level of artistry or craftsmanship. Nor do I relish endless attempts at defining art or artistry because folks get into too much etymology and semantics and those are language arts, not visual arts. Hopefully, a photographer's work will speak or fend for itself.

My point of view is that art and craft go hand in hand and there is a great deal of overlap. In many instances, art requires craft and craft can be performed in an artful manner.

Common sense approach: Photography aside for a moment and let's consider painting and drawing. Suppose and the artist has a great deal of imagination, a natural tendency for originality, a fine sense of color, dimension, and composition as well as a solid work ethic and a talent of self-expression. This person has all the aesthetic sense and psychological attributes that so many folks, who are opining here, alluded to as artistic traits. I would agree! Give all these talents, does this person not need more than a modicum of craftsmanship. He or she would need the physical dexterity, eye/hand coordination and know-how in the physical and mechanics of their art. There are the mixing and blending of paints, pigments, and colors, the sizing and stretching of canvases, the selection of various brushes and palette knives, the application of varnishes the technique of underpainting to name just a few requisite crafts and manual skill sets. There are tools and the practitioner has to have command of all the implements.

Many crafts such as pottery, needle[oint, woodcarving, macrame, weaving, and more all border on or merge with art. Craftsmanship is not just joining materials, drilling holes, and operating machinery.

In my own mind, I find both titles, if you will, "artist and craftsperson" to be a recognition of excellent performance. I feel that one who paints is indeed a painter but is not necessarily an artist. Everyone who makes things is not a craftsperson. I feel they earn those titles with their performance. Those are my semantics for the day.

My experience taught me that real ART emerges when photographers get at it and keep at it. It happens when they direct their enthusiasm into practice- shooting pictures. practicing, exploring, refining., improving and innovating. Philosophizing, studying and theorizing are good foundations but the actual work is where it's at. I'm still working at it and it IS an ongoing work in progress!

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

I had a slightly similar long conversation recently with the 3rd gen trust fund female relative.
Basically art, like fashion, is by definition useless. It is a thing in and of itself. It does nothing productive. It really changes nothing except a viewpoint. And even then it's all subjective.
Fashion will influence your Art, and Craftmanship. Art will influence your Craftmanship, and Fashion. And of course Craftmanship will influence Art, and Fashion. Art, and Fashion, are ephemeral . True Craftmanship endures.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Excellent post. As I was reading it, it made me think about glass blowing, with which my wife and I are both fascinated. We especially love those opportunities to watch a skilled glass blower start with a featureless blob of molten glass on the end of a long metal pipe, work it with strange looking tools through a variety of shapes that don't really look like much beyond that original blob, add a few chips of what looks like nothing more than broken glass, and finally (much of the time) end up with something completely different from that original blob.

Sometimes the result is perhaps nothing more than a tacky ash tray. Sometimes it is something useful but otherwise unremarkable, like a cup or bowl. But sometimes it is something truly remarkable, like a glass ball that looks very much like a representation of the earth, or one of those ruffly plates that Dale Chihuly calls Persians, or maybe some other object with beautiful colors and form that looks just perfect on the wall over the fireplace.

A few years ago, we were privileged to take part in a workshop that let us participate in the creation of blown glass objects. We got to choose what we "made," and to select the colors that would be in it. We got to do some of the steps, like blowing the initial ball of glass, working it to make it round, and using a wooden shaper to refine the shape.

We got aha hands on introduction to the craft of glass blowing. What we really couldn't get in the limited time available, and what we probably could not have gotten anyway, was an introduction to the vision, or even to the logic of the non-intuitive steps required to make our objects appear from that original blob of glass.

Our result could have been just a mess, just something tacky, something useful but ordinary, or something beautifully artistic. Proper craft is the first step in moving along this progression. Can't do without it. In fact, bad injury would be likely. But craft alone won't likely result in anything beautifully artistic, except possibly and rarely by accident.

scsdesphotography Loc: Southeastern Michigan

Thanks Bob, this was fun.

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

I would say that you can't express your vision as an artist unless you have marred your craft. Without craftsmanship the results are usually just luck.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

I gotta disagree with you "trust fund" friend, that is, about art being useless.

Granted, art only for amusement, decoration, or as a hobby is a luxury,not a necessity of life. Art, however as a communication medium, especially photography, is a necessity as a learning tool, to record and study history, and the support the entire concept of audio-VISUAL education. Scholars, historians, researches, scientists, anthropologists, educators and ordinary folks have been making and looking at pictures for time immemorial- from the time of the cave drawings to the present day. We are a visual species. We use images to influence each outer.

Even the more frivolous aspects of art serve an important purpose. I believe that even the most conservative, austere, serious, frugal or dispassionate, folks need a break from their strictly business lifestyles in order to relax, refresh their minds and energy. They need entertainment, hobbies, some leisure activities and perhaps some means of personal expression and that's where ART becomes necessary. We need color, we decorate our environments to create a pleasant atmosphere for living and working. Our visually perceived surrounding have a psychological impact on all of our mental and physical functions. Furnishing these stimuli is the job of the artists.

Let's not forget the performing arts- music, drama, the spoken word, literary arts. Unless one can entertain the thought of living in isolation or in terrible circumstances, can anyone around here envision living without any kind of art?

People have been known to create art even under unimaginably horrific circumstances- war, plague, enslavement and worse.

The is a little-known book of drawings that were done by a child inmate of a Nazi concentration camp. The Book of Alfred Kantor depicts daily life in a death camp during World War II. The incredible aspect of the art is that it was done as a young talented artist would visually chronicle a normal life because, at the time, that was the only life he knew. Perhaps the guards paid him no mind, just a kid- as he was sketching images of enslaved people working and marching to the gas chambers and crematoriums. Hardly a useless record. Mr. Kantor survived and lived in the United States. His book was published in 1971. There are 127 paintings and sketches- the only visual impression of everyday life in the camps. They were used as evidence in the Nuremberg War Trials. The artist died in 2002, he was 79 years old.

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

Anyone that considers art useless, consider this; When you look at the history of any culture, what you really looking at is the art that has survived. We wouldn't know what Egyptian life was like w/o the art that adorned their temples and tombs. We wouldn't even know what George Washington looked like w/o the portrait paintings. Pick up a history book and the illustrations could double as art history. Art has always been a mirror of the culture that produces it.

srt101fan

newtoyou Loc: Eastport

In some instances, the artist conceives, the Craftsmen follows a plan. A grasp of aesthetics is not needed to follow a plan, but may be needed to create the plan. Some photogs are only talented, the best are also artists.
Until I started, I never really saw art in photography. I still do not know what art IS, I just know what I like. And I like a lot on this site. How many artists out there? Raise your hand.
Bill

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

You do not understand the simplest of concepts. Here. A Baldwin piano is nice and capable. So is a student's violin. But do they have the same potential as a Steinway or a Stradivarius? No. Would you say that the Steinway or a Stradivarius have talent? Of course not. They are just instruments. Until intelligence combined with training enter the picture they are just potential. The same is true for human bodies. They are just potential until intelligence and training are added.

It sounds like somewhere in the years between the age of 15 and his time at university when his career started to take off, Mr. Williams put in the required training and practice. Thank you for additional proof of my position.

anotherview Loc: California

Natural talent does make a big difference in accomplishment whatever the field.

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

Only contemporary art like fashion & "isms" are (next to) useless. Traditional art on the other hand which are knowledge and skills presented in aesthetic form are timeless.
Only the art wannabees are subjective. Real art like craftsmanship has a tangible standard. The issue is that at present, people no longer want to conform because few ever want to put up the time to know and generally it has turned into a money making and self-elevation scheme.

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

OK one more entry, Fine Art , aka "high art" has always reflected the culture and society that produced it. It should always be viewed in that context. Artists have always questioned the status quo of their culture so in a way they are the precursor to a societies changing atttitudes and mores'. Fine art will stand as great art over time, we still marvel at the work of Rembrant, Michelangelo, Albrect Durer, and even Van Gogh, Picasso and Dali.
It's like great music, we still listen to the great symphonies as well as the music of the Beatles, over fifty years later