Fine art?

sc0ttie

sc0ttie

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I have been looking looking at a lot of portfolio websites this week and been asking some questions that I am not quite sure of the answer to....

Do you consider yourself to be a fine art photographer?

What is the difference between a fine art photographer and a non fine art photographer?

Who can call themselves fine art photographers? i.e. does someone have to complete a fine art course/degree to be considered fine art?
 
I've always considered a fine art photographer to be a photographer that has a more traditional approach to the structure & composition of their work but perhaps thats a wrong impression.

Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as an artist.
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I would class a fine art photographer as someone who produces work for displaying I.e someone who shots images that are framed and sold as art. This could be a landscape photographer, still life photographer etc rather than a non-fine art photographer who is somebody who documents events I.e wedding, sports, photojournalist etc
 
Difficult to define, I'll suggest something different.. a photographer who's personal standards are greater than those of the client, and who has the freedom to be driven by an internal sense of achievement without the commercial and time pressure of a client.

It's probably not quite right, but it something that's about the photographer rather than the photograph.
 
Found this →

MA Photography at London College of Communication is a leading fine art photography programme renowned for producing some of the most successful contemporary emerging photographers and artists. The course offers a unique opportunity for photographers to develop a major body of research-based practice in the context of a critical understanding of contemporary photographic culture. The course encourages students to work experimentally and produce work that tests the boundaries of the medium, encompassing the still image and culminating in a public exhibition. The course attracts those united by a desire to develop a distinctive personal practice with a high level of conceptual resolution.
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I think fine art is defined by the thought process behind the work, it's about developing ideas & creating a concept as well as a photograph.
 
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I always thought fine art was when a photographer went out to take a landscape shot with selling it in mind so not for personal use or as a hobby so to speak
 
@ChrisGilbert :}
 
So really, all one needs to be able to call themselves a fine art photographer is their own vision, an experimental nature, some camera gear and plenty of time?

If a photographer shoots in digital format, prints in a commercially available printer, can his work still be considered to be fine art? I suppose what I am trying to ask is, is fine art as exclusive as it looks to most people?
 
sc0ttie said:
So really, all one needs to be able to call themselves a fine art photographer is their own vision, an experimental nature, some camera gear and plenty of time?

If a photographer shoots in digital format, prints in a commercially available printer, can his work still be considered to be fine art? I suppose what I am trying to ask is, is fine art as exclusive as it looks to most people?
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It's certainly not dependant on the gear but bear in mind that to many 'buyers' the presentation is part of the package. A good statement piece will be well mounted and framed as well. Good art demands good presentation and buyers will pay for a good shot, well presented and well packaged. I will budget up to £100 to create a statement piece.
 
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personally I think fine art are just poncy words to try and make somthing more expensive or to try and make somthing seem better than it is.


also fine art seems to be an easy way to describe crap landscape images with a naked female doing some silly stretching pose lol
 
I think there's a distinction between photography that is Fine Art and Fine Art Photography (which isn't Fine Art but is photography).
 
Ed Sutton said:
I think there's a distinction between photography that is Fine Art and Fine Art Photography (which isn't Fine Art but is photography).
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Can you elaborate on that a bit more as to what the distinctions are?
 
This is only a personal opinion. To me Fine Art Photograph is pretty pictures put in nice frames for people with no idea of what art is to hang on their walls. Photography that is Fine Art is photographs taken less for what they look like than the philosophy behind them.

The former has pretentions to being art, the latter is just pretentious!
 
I don't think my negatives are big enough :P Unless someone wants to buy really small prints...
 
Isn't this one of those 'in the eye of the beholder' thingys. What one person thinks is wonderful and will give wads of cash for will be viewed as total crap by A.N. Other... After all - look at some of the 'so called' art that wins these (can't remember the name) arty 'prizes'. I'm sure that some of these 'artists' are very , very, very good at taking the ******.....
Just my thoughts...... getting coat now....
 
klute said:
For example at the moment many artists make work that refers to the work of the french Philosopher Jacques Ranciere who is writes about crediting the viewer of an art peice or film peice with more responsibility and awareness than the old structuralists of the 70's did who preached a very didactic approach, thats just one example there are many various current open debates such as relational aethetics and so on.
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Hi Klute, thanks for the informative response. Do you happen to know any links or names of artists who's work I can view online to see these kinds of examples of references?
 
I asked the same question on `shutterfinger` blog, heres the response Gordon gave :

Here is Alain Briot’s 14-point checklist from Marketing Fine Art Photography:

1:Fine art photography is first about the artist.
2:The photographer must consider himself an artist.
3:The artist must demonstrate control of the creative process and final outcome.
4:A fine art photograph is done with the goal of creating a work of art.
5:A fine art photograph is not just documentary.
6:The image represents an interpretation of the subject.
7:A fine art photograph has an emotional content.
8:The composition is complex and sophisticated.
9:A metaphorical level of meaning is present in the image.
10:The emphasis is on quality instead of quantity.
11:Cost considerations are secondary.
12:The artist wrote an artist statement.
13:Individual pieces are part of a larger body of work.
14:The work is discussed in relationship to other works of art.

Briot provides a full explanation of each one in the book. Quibblers might take issue with one or two, but on the whole Briot’s list presents a clear picture (pardon the expression) of what’s required.

My personal opinion is that “fine art photography” is as much a marketing term as anything else. It’s a label you (the photographer) apply to your work when you want to sell it to people who value the visual appeal of a photographic print as much as the image itself. I have to admit that as marketing terms go, the difference between “art photography” and “fine art photography” escapes me.

Keep in mind that people who buy (fine) art photographs normally intend to frame and display them. If they spend several hundred dollars for a print plus matting and framing, they want their friends, family and associates to believe said photo has artistic merit. This is where credentials such as artist statements, gallery show credits, art school degrees, and bodies of work come in handy. If the work itself strains artistic credibility, credentials help to reinforce the seriousness of the artist (if not the art).

To summarize, my position is that you can call your photographs whatever you like among family and friends, including “fine art.” If, however, you plan to sell them as such, your work will most likely be held to artistic standards such as the ones Briot has listed. You don’t have to agree with them; you can even ignore some of them; but to ignore all of them is to render your work unmarketable as art photography.
 
ChrisGilbert said:
IMO Ashley and James are right. Fine art photography doesn't rely on replay, which is what most external, landscape photography (for example) relies on. It's internalised and mostly structural.

Or a banana :lol:
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lol


Soz to be a spaz but could someone tell me what 'doesn't rely on replay', means?

Good thread. :thumbs:
 
sc0ttie said:
So really, all one needs to be able to call themselves a fine art photographer is their own vision, an experimental nature, some camera gear and plenty of time?

If a photographer shoots in digital format, prints in a commercially available printer, can his work still be considered to be fine art? I suppose what I am trying to ask is, is fine art as exclusive as it looks to most people?
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I suppose you've pretty much expained it there in that first question.

Nah, I don't think that necessarily 'cause fine art work can be created using a range of non-specific equipment & it's not limited to certain materials or mediums. I wouldn't say that fine art is 'exclusive' but not it's not every photographers cup of tea, even if they wish it was hahaha, rather like myself.
 
There are some really thought provoking & interesting posts on this thread :}
 
When i hear the term "fine art photography" a few names come to mind, such as Gregory crewdson, Edward burtynsky, Andreas serrano, Cindy Sherman, Edgar Martins, the list goes on!
But i see these, artists/photographers as fine artists. Each working to achieve what they want and on their terms and not what a client or art director requires.
Their work is very personal and sometimes has deep emotional threads running through the images.
Artists create, practice and demonstrate their art, whatever genre or "school" of art they belong to. To me an artist is someone who creates art with pre meditation, concepts, ideals and purpose, their purpose.
Take Gregory crewdsons twilight series (no not sucky vampires) which in my opinion is truly outstanding. He utilizes full production crews, from costume departments, make up, special effects artists and cinema style stage lighting, anything he needs basically, to create the image in his head. That image may have sat in his memory for years, growing, evolving and coming to fruition within his minds eye, but to create his vision his canvas, paint, brush and easel are the aforementioned production devices. And after the shutter has been tripped (which he sometimes doesn't even do!) the final image is put together from multiple exposures in editing suites! Shock horror HDR? Well no just beautiful and dream like images you can almost live within. But the basis of his art has meaning, like sculptors and painters. They do it because the want to create is passionate, there is a deeper meaning than brush strokes, hammer strikes or shutter clicks. Something is being said and we just have to open our eyes to hear it.
I was reading in the bjp that until 2006 the word photograph didn't exist in the Tate museum inventory, but now, the last three years the Tate, v&a and the national media museum have spent £2.1 million on expanding their photography collections. So where do you pigeon hole fine art photography? Is it elitist and exclusive to the rich and wealthy or can its reach spread to the me and you with a camera? That is debatable but one thing is for sure, there will always be a divide on weather fine art photography even exists as an art form or if it is alive, kicking and reaching saturation point.
 
I don't think fine art (or just art) photography exists. It's in the mind, a ghost. Anything looked at and displayed in a certain context can be seen as art. For official purposes (by that I mean things to do with the business side - finding, etc) photography is classed as an art form, but I think it is something in itself. I could take a 'snap' at a wedding with a P&S camera, frame it & put it in a gallery. If I did that people would refer to it as art, regardless of how 'good' or not it is. I do, however, agree that art (or non-commercial) photography should be, and usually is, completely self motivated. No client, no goal to please anyone but the person(s) making the work.

I really disagree with most of the points in the below post & couldn't help myself!

djinn said:
Here is Alain Briot’s 14-point checklist from Marketing Fine Art Photography:

1:Fine art photography is first about the artist.

2:The photographer must consider himself an artist. Atget didn't, he was 'documenting buildings', but is now considered a very important art photographer

3:The artist must demonstrate control of the creative process and final outcome.Myself and many other people have made things where control of the creative process has been lead mostly by chemical reactions and random abstract happenings.

4:A fine art photograph is done with the goal of creating a work of art. See point 1.

5:A fine art photograph is not just documentary. See point 1 again, and consider the 'master photographer' Cartier Bresson.

6:The image represents an interpretation of the subject. all photographs do that.

7:A fine art photograph has an emotional content. A lot do, yes, but there are many that don't have specifically emotional content ( William Eggleston, for example)

8:The composition is complex and sophisticated. So to make art, it has to be complicated does it?

9:A metaphorical level of meaning is present in the image. See point 8

10:The emphasis is on quality instead of quantity.

11:Cost considerations are secondary. When are cost considerations ever secondary? You can't do things if you don't have the money.

12:The artist wrote an artist statement. Photographs with no words to accompany them aren't art then?

13:Individual pieces are part of a larger body of work.

14:The work is discussed in relationship to other works of art. If I made a body of work with all of the above points, but nobody compared it to anything else, does that mean it isn't art?
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It's in the mind, a ghost. Anything looked at and displayed in a certain context can be seen as art.
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An interesting point. For me, 'Fine Art' has always been defined by a well-thought concept behind the piece of work.
 
Look at the title of that Briot book and you'll see why many of his points are total crap.

It seems to me more like a list of stuff that someone working in a gallery might want from a photographer, but should not be taken as being definitory of 'art'.

Joe, you might be able to take a snap at a wedding and frame it, but I'd doubt that if you didn't have a good story about why you'd taken it, what it was a comment on, what your influences were etc that it'd get anywhere near a (decent) gallery wall.
 
brianwar said:
Look at the title of that Briot book and you'll see why many of his points are total crap.

It seems to me more like a list of stuff that someone working in a gallery might want from a photographer, but should not be taken as being definitory of 'art'.

Joe, you might be able to take a snap at a wedding and frame it, but I'd doubt that if you didn't have a good story about why you'd taken it, what it was a comment on, what your influences were etc that it'd get anywhere near a (decent) gallery wall.
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Probably not, but I could still call it art. That's just how amazingly undefined it all is!
 
Joenail said:
Probably not, but I could still call it art. That's just how amazingly undefined it all is!
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Maybe then the defining feature of art photography anything should be that you can't call it art yourself, otherwise we'd all have a pile of 'masterpieces' under our beds! :lol:
 
The term 'art' doesn't imply how well something does its job, it implies what the job is.

A table that doesn't hold anything is still a table :)
 
A child can paint a tree picture, its parents put it up on the fridge. The child created a work of art as an artist, the parents displayed it as their child's art.
An adult paints a tree picture, an art buyer puts it in a gallery. The adult created a work of art as an artist the art buyer displays it as the adults art.
The buyer considers the adults tree picture as a fine work of art but looks upon the child's painting as just a child's painting.
Some art is nothing more than a scrawled mess some is beautiful and shows true craft.
I think its all down to the art world that receives and ultimately makes or breaks certain styles, mediums and ultimately artists themselves.
 
Photographs are photographs. People decided if they are art, fine art, or snaps.
 
Ed Sutton said:
Photographs are photographs. People decided if they are art, fine art, or snaps.
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This is a fair point, it's only how we perceive the work individually that defines it as 'art'.
 
:lol:
Forbiddenbiker said:
lol


Soz to be a spaz but could someone tell me what 'doesn't rely on replay', means?

Good thread. :thumbs:
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its the same poncy nonsense that surrounds fine art or glicee. made up sentances to try and make it sound better than it actually is
 
POAH said:
:lol:

its the same poncy nonsense that surrounds fine art or glicee. made up sentances to try and make it sound better than it actually is
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:lol: :shrug: :thumbs:

I guess we can see fine art in two ways, one its a kind of brief title for introduction and/or explanation of an artists serious intentions within a body of work, and two its a label attached to fake this intention... usually for profit.
 
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