Is there such a thing as art photography?

One of the comparisons that @sirch made with art and music keeps nagging away at me.

We are taught, to varying degrees, about both art and music at school. In terms of both the practical mechanics of the process and the theory behind it, most of my fellow schoolchildren were taught more about art than music, and I was one of a lucky few to get some training beyond basic recorder stuff.

In the adult world both art and music are everywhere, yet while almost every human being can recognise music in a truly bewildering array of forms and styles, an incredibly tiny proportion have any ability to suggest what is and isn't art. Why is the one form of expression so universal and the other so incredibly, narrowly specialised?
 
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sphexx said:
Our PM, Johnson, is very different from Trump in many ways and certainly understands how politics works even if he is personally incompetent. Trump is certainly a member of the US elite or perhaps we should say aristocracy. Born to great wealth, mostly lost it but managed to keep going by confidence trickery until he had a lucky break and became a TV ‘personality’ and started raking it in.
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This is a very interesting conversation and I am like a kid wanting a desert, but I think I should stop now. It had been hard 4 years and the consequences will probably outlast me and I have a lot to say but I must stop on this subject and revert back to photography :mad:
 
ancient_mariner said:
Why is the one form of expression so universal and the other so incredibly, narrowly specialised?
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My guess is because communication by sound is more innate. We all know how to emotionally interpret laughter, screams of joy, screams of terror, being shouted at etc etc.

This can often require fairly subtle skills, and trigger a wider range of emotions than our visual skills are capable of. So understanding music is an easy extension. The visual arts maybe require more learning.

Just thinking out loud, without any properly formed argument, but this is what came to mind.
 
Pavel M said:
This is a very interesting conversation and I am like a kid wanting a desert, but I think I should stop now. It had been hard 4 years and the consequences will probably outlast me and I have a lot to say but I must stop on this subject and revert back to photography :mad:
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If this sort of thing interests you, and you want to lose the will to live, you could join "some of us" in the hot topics forum (complete with Trump thread).


or it's companion discussion forum

www.talkphotography.co.uk

The Lounge

Pull up a chair, kick off your shoes and chew the fat. Absolutely nothing contentious ie no politics or religion!
www.talkphotography.co.uk www.talkphotography.co.uk
 
It doesn’t say much for american elite if you include trump. Aristocracy!!
just a rich brat.
 
Pavel M said:
?????????/:confused: You and I must be getting information from very different sources.
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I suspect that we get our information in general from the same sources but that you are not applying the same level of cynicism that I do.
 
gerry s said:
It doesn’t say much for american elite if you include trump. Aristocracy!!
just a rich brat.
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Don't do it! Don't take the blue pill!

Seriously though, you won't find a hive of more villanous scum outside of Mos Isley. It's not pretty.
 
ancient_mariner said:
In the adult world both art and music are everywhere, yet while almost every human being can recognise music in a truly bewildering array of forms and styles, an incredibly tiny proportion have any ability to suggest what is and isn't art. Why is the one form of expression so universal and the other so incredibly, narrowly specialised?
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I wonder what you mean by 'recognise' above. Music of course can vary from deep to shallow, but overall perhaps we humans are hard-wired to respond more directly to the physical vibrations and harmonics etc of sound, whilst the appreciation of visual art is less immediate?
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
I suspect that we get our information in general from the same sources but that you are not applying the same level of cynicism that I do.
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I grew up in Czechoslovakia. You think I can’t tell when I am being lied to? The first time I realized something is wrong when people were being accused of Trotskyism but Trotsky never existed
 
droj said:
I wonder what you mean by 'recognise' above. Music of course can vary from deep to shallow, but overall perhaps we humans are hard-wired to respond more directly to the physical vibrations and harmonics etc of sound, whilst the appreciation of visual art is less immediate?
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Working on an evolutionary basis, one would expect the visual processes to be much more highly refined than the auditory - hearing won't feed you, and while it might help you stay safe, that would only be a supporting role for the eyes. While it's easier to make sounds than it is to create artifacts and pictures, people have been doing that for a VERY long time.
 
ancient_mariner said:
We are taught, to varying degrees, about both art and music at school. In terms of both the practical mechanics of the process and the theory behind it, most of my fellow schoolchildren were taught more about art than music, and I was one of a lucky few to get some training beyond basic recorder stuff.
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I did Art at A level and was taught next to b****r all about the theory, history or practice.

ancient_mariner said:
...yet while almost every human being can recognise music in a truly bewildering array of forms and styles, an incredibly tiny proportion have any ability to suggest what is and isn't art.
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I don't think that stands up as a comparison. How many times in history have people heard a new musical style and said, "That racket isn't music"?
 
ancient_mariner said:
Working on an evolutionary basis, one would expect the visual processes to be much more highly refined than the auditory - hearing won't feed you, and while it might help you stay safe, that would only be a supporting role for the eyes.
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I wasn't referring to general vision or indeeed general sound, which is what you're doing there, but the human organisation of them in certain ways, in the nature of art.
 
Pavel M said:
...but Trotsky never existed
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Are you sure you meant to write that? Poor old Leon certainly did exist and but for choosing the wrong fight at the wrong time, might have been Comrade General Secretary instead of Stalin. In fact. that was probably why "Uncle Joe" was so determined to rid himself of Trotsky.
 
Ed Sutton said:
I don't think that stands up as a comparison. How many times in history have people heard a new musical style and said, "That racket isn't music"?
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Probably about as frequently as someone declared a new style of art to be rubbish because they didn't like it. ;)
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Are you sure you meant to write that? Poor old Leon certainly did exist and but for choosing the wrong fight at the wrong time, might have been Comrade General Secretary instead of Stalin. In fact. that was probably why "Uncle Joe" was so determined to rid himself of Trotsky.
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Wrong thread.
 
droj said:
I wasn't referring to general vision or indeeed general sound, which is what you're doing there, but the human organisation of them in certain ways, in the nature of art.
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So we've organised art to shut out the general population?
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Are you sure you meant to write that? Poor old Leon certainly did exist and but for choosing the wrong fight at the wrong time, might have been Comrade General Secretary instead of Stalin. In fact. that was probably why "Uncle Joe" was so determined to rid himself of Trotsky.
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I am fairly sure Pavel is referring to the fact many early Communists were airbrushed out of existence in Communist regimes. Photos were doctored to remove them and so on. Stalin was big on this. I expect many Czechs knew Trotsky existed even if Russians didn’t.
 
sphexx said:
I am fairly sure Pavel is referring to the fact many early Communists were airbrushed out of existence in Communist regimes.
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That's what I hoped he meant but I thought it best to ask.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Working on an evolutionary basis, one would expect the visual processes to be much more highly refined than the auditory - hearing won't feed you, and while it might help you stay safe, that would only be a supporting role for the eyes. While it's easier to make sounds than it is to create artifacts and pictures, people have been doing that for a VERY long time.
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But eyes are more directional, don't work that well in the fog or in a wood, take time to adjust when moving from sunlight to shadow etc so as a tool to detect both prey and predators they might be more important.

This also applies to communicating with others you can effectively shout warnings, when waving your arms in the hope of being seen is likely to be less effective.
 
ancient_mariner said:
So we've organised art to shut out the general population?
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Essentially, art isn't organised - it just happens, by the agency of individuals who are driven to produce it.

The trouble with art is, that its field is vast, full of stuff of hybrid nature, and shades off at the borders into what's commercial or just whimsy.
 
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As a medium, music is more visceral and essentially momentary (traditionally it exists as it is being made, and is vital but fugitive). Visual art is more reflective - you can examine it from different distances, and revisit it another day.
 
myotis said:
But eyes are more directional, don't work that well in the fog or in a wood, take time to adjust when moving from sunlight to shadow etc so as a tool to detect both prey and predators they might be more important.

This also applies to communicating with others you can effectively shout warnings, when waving your arms in the hope of being seen is likely to be less effective.
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Our ears aren‘t very good compared to many/most mammals, partly because we’ve given up being able to move them in favour of producing inane grins :).
 
droj said:
Essentially, art isn't organised - it just happens, by the agency of individuals who are driven to produce it.

The trouble with art is, that its field is vast, full of stuff of hybrid nature, and shades off at the borders into what's commercial or just whimsy.
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Art appears to be encircled by guardians who demand to see your credentials before they'll let you pass through the gate. Sometimes as Pavel demonstrated, it is necessary to try a number of different guardians before you can get your credentials accepted and become part of the community.

droj said:
As a medium, music is more visceral and essentially momentary (traditionally it exists as it is being made, and is vital but fugitive). Visual art is more reflective - you can examine it from different distances, and revisit it another day.
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I'm not certain about the visceral difference, and music is not momentary any longer. But one would think that having something around on a semi-permanent basis would make it much more accessible, rather than less. If you were a peasant in a society that had peasants then you could wander at any time into a religious establishment and see intense and powerful, detailed and soaring works of art. You might get to hear music on a religious day or if a group of players came to town or someone sang.

The thing is, we've been immersed in both forms for a long time, yet only one is in the domain of the common man and the other is locked up and held captive.
 
ancient_mariner said:
If you were a peasant in a society that had peasants then you could wander at any time into a religious establishment
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An interesting view of the relaxed life of the average peasant :) :exit:
 
munch said:
I am not denying that knowledge elevates an opinion. My point is that when it comes to art and deciding what is good and what isn't that is all there is, opinions. The Oncologist you used as an example may well make an informed opinion on if he/she will operate or not. But that is backed up by science.

Money, certainly can't be used to define the "artistic" value of a piece of work.
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But you’re creating logical falsehoods to argue with.
I never suggested that money could be used to define anything.
And the ‘science’ isn’t all there is to it with medicine. Otherwise there wouldn’t be ‘experts’, measurable science is just an evidence base, that and expertise is what creates a quality medical opinion.

Back to my point:
I’ve a mate who’s a paramedic- you’d accept his medical opinion as being greater than yours.
My Son in L
is a joiner, and you’d happily accept his opinion on woodwork as being greater than yours.
A mate who’s a brickie - same story
BiL is a lawyer of 30 years, you’d accept his … etc.
people who know me here, will accept my opinion re people photography, Canon cameras, lighting etc etc. With no formal training and only 40 years of experience.

But as soon as I say someone’s an ‘art expert’ a lot of people who really ought to know better … decide their opinion is just as valid.

And people who consider themselves intelligent will tie themselves in knots trying to justify this. It’s literally mental.
 
A problem with much visual art is that many people can't 'read' it. Life's full of stuff to take on board, after all, and they lack the aptitude, or haven't learnt the required type of visual / emotional engagement. Whilst they might begin to apprehend the physical craft involved, they fail to penetrate the work's inner nature - its revelation.

The problem is compounded by the fact that much visual work is purely decorative and has no meaning beyond the superficial anyway - no revelation of seeing is present, other than maybe at the level of entertainment.

Also, the realm of visual art is so broad and diffuse, that work might stray across the borders and be harder to define. But when it's clear-cut, great art is great art and is a vehicle of communication.

Most people can appreciate craft - the techniques of production. Craft isn't art, though, but art can use craft in its making.

Conceptual art tends to the cerebral - it makes a kind of statement. What I call true art however references the subconscious somehow - this is beyond the literal and must be intuited, and I think that this where a lot of people fall down.

Photography, like painting, deals (most of the time) with a boundary (the frame) and within that, the picture space. There is a creative tension between these two things, and success depends very much on how the picture space is articulated - paradoxically, the work is in two dimensions whilst referencing three, and this is a source of creative potential.

Can photography be art? Yes, of course it can! When is it art? There's no rigid boundary.

Anyone remember Hockney's 'joiners'?
 
droj said:
Anyone remember Hockney's 'joiners'?
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I wrote a reply to #181 by @troutfisher citing Hockney’s joiners but it’s vanished -- I probably did a Preview and didn’t complete! I have Hockney’s book somewhere I think.

His recent East Yorkshire stuff using vehicle mounted arrays of iPad cameras is in some ways a fusion of photography and painting I think, going beyond just using the camera as a notebook for paintings.
 
droj said:
A problem with much visual art is that many people can't 'read' it.
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That might be because a very large majority of the human population have other concerns and a large subset of the remainder have "better" things to do with their time.

To me, "Art" is there to entertain. There is also a crossover with "informing" and that's much of what modern photography does - at many different levels.

However, "art" can also misinform, especially the propaganda of the various Christian sects. I find it interesting to compare the propaganda images put out by the Soviets and the Chinese Communists with the material produced for the churches in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. The same bombastic poses, the same bright colours and the same tendency to making the message big.

In many cases, it seems to me that the cruder the propaganda, the more highly regarded the image, especially when discussing religious painting from the Rennaisance.
 
Just to return to the original post - "how can you tell?" - I would suggest that it is difficult to describe any single photograph as "art" but that a series of images on a theme (for example an exhibition) will reveal the photographers motivations and intentions much more clearly and would therefore approach the definition of art - whatever that is - more closely.

Many years ago I had an exhibition of photographs which toured to a number of publicly funded "art" galleries. Try as I did though, I could not get it shown in a single photography gallery. This begged the question, not "was it art?" but "was it photography?"
 
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droj said:
<snip>

Anyone remember Hockney's 'joiners'?
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Yes. Melvyn Bragg's Southbank Show did a good programme on them, mid-80s I guess. Always a Hockney fan, I really liked the way he took a basic 2D montage and added the extra dimensions of time and depth, and even included the photographer and their viewpoint in the image.

I was editor of Practical Photography magazine at the time and we did a big feature on it, with everyone on the team having a go. A joiner can get very big pretty quickly and I remember the entire office floor being covered in 6x4 prints and spilling out into the corridor.

Then I got a call from Hockney himself! Actually, it was his brother who called, acting as his agent at the time, to ask if I'd like to speak to David Hockey? I hesitated, because usually you only get calls like that when someone wants to have a go, but I couldn't think how we might have upset him so I quickly prepared my excuses just in case (it was the printer's fault, we didn't have the budget etc) and went ahead. He was totally charming, and only wanted to thank us for "being the only magazine to take it seriously." Then we had a quick chat about how he liked the magazine, and I said how I liked his pictures and how he used photography etc etc.

Now well into his 80s, and still smoking, he's not slowed down. I think his latest work in lock-down is as good as any.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
However, "art" can also misinform, especially the propaganda of the various Christian sects. I find it interesting to compare the propaganda images put out by the Soviets and the Chinese Communists with the material produced for the churches in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. The same bombastic poses, the same bright colours and the same tendency to making the message big.

In many cases, it seems to me that the cruder the propaganda, the more highly regarded the image, especially when discussing religious painting from the Rennaisance.
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A little off topic, but worth considering that at one stage religion was at least as much about politics as any kind of belief, and the present separation of faith and politics in Europe is historically unusual.
 
ancient_mariner said:
A little off topic, but worth considering that at one stage religion was at least as much about politics as any kind of belief, and the present separation of faith and politics in Europe is historically unusual.
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In Europe?
but we’re (mostly) British, and our head of state is also the head of the church, and the upper House of Parliament has a number of seats given to the church.

Though (weirdly) that only gives religion a small amount of influence here.

Whereas in the good ole US of A, where separation of church and state is written into the constitution, the power of religion in their politics is massive.
 
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