Photographer Or Artist?

Photographer Or Artist?

  • Photographer

    Votes: 59 77.6%

  • Artist

    Votes: 17 22.4%
  • Total voters
    76
Rustico said:
I've been thinking about this too much, as I've run into a small dilemma.

If someone asks me what I am, I'll still tell them I'm a photographer, not an artist. Does that make me a photographer and not an artist if that's how I refer to myself? Or is it only an expression of being artistic, as a person who sculpts would refer to themselves as a sculptor, not an artist? Maybe being an artist is an essence, whereas photographer/sculptor/painter is an expression of the artist.
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You are a photographer just as the person who sculpts is a sculptor and adding another field just as someone who plays guitar is a guitarist.

They all make creative decisions if they didn't they would be robots, making creative decision is art.

I think people are struggling as they see the act of photography (holding up camera, pressing button) as easier that sculpting or painting and feel a bit of a fraud, or pretentious, calling themselves and artist. But if you took up sculpting you would be a sculptor and an artist, regardless of how poor your first attempts were it would be you putting your own individual creativity into the work
 
ernesto said:
You are a photographer just as the person who sculpts is a sculptor and adding another field just as someone who plays guitar is a guitarist.

They all make creative decisions if they didn't they would be robots, making creative decision is art.

I think people are struggling as they see the act of photography (holding up camera, pressing button) as easier that sculpting or painting and feel a bit of a fraud, or pretentious, calling themselves and artist. But if you took up sculpting you would be a sculptor and an artist, regardless of how poor your first attempts were it would be you putting your own individual creativity into the work
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I'm not sure this is true, capability in a craft isn't in itself artistry. I don't consider a painter, sculptor, potter or musician as an artist just because they have a skill.

So if I'm a guitarist in a covers band who strives to mimic only someone else's music, I'm a guitarist, not an artist.

If I get out a box of watercolours and copy a photograph adding nothing of my own I'm a painter not an artist.

However an artist can have less skill than the above, when it comes to craftsmanship, but still produce art.

As a photographer I consider myself a craftsman, I think that most photographers fall into the same camp, simply doing our best to manipulate our tools to create a picture. Creating art is something more profound, and whilst photography can be art, surely it isn't automatically art.
 
Phil V said:
I'm not sure this is true, capability in a craft isn't in itself artistry. I don't consider a painter, sculptor, potter or musician as an artist just because they have a skill.
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But what do they do with that skill? The produce things creatively.

I can play a cover of a song on guitar but it is my take on the song using my feel and sound. Another person doing the same cover would do it their way.
To me that is the art that is involved.
 
Most crafts can be used to create utilitarian things or artistic things.

You can use paint and a brush to paint someone's portrait or you can use the same tools and materials to put a new coat of gloss on your window frames.

A sculptor can use his skill and tools to sculpt a statue or to make a new lintel to put above his recently painted window frames.

And a photographer can use his photographic skills and equipment to take a nice landscape image to hang on your wall or he can take an photograph to illustrate a catalogue of medical equipment.

Not everything created with the tools and materials used by artists is automatically art.


Steve.
 
ernesto said:
But what do they do with that skill? The produce things creatively.

I can play a cover of a song on guitar but it is my take on the song using my feel and sound. Another person doing the same cover would do it their way.
To me that is the art that is involved.
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But what if its not your take on it? What if its just aiming to be a direct copy?:D Many people just use skills to produce a product, art is more than that.

It's all opinion, but I've seen some great photographs, paintings and heard great musicians that I wouldn't describe as art.

I've also seen a lot of art that owes its existence to very little skill or craft.

Just because photography or painting can be art, doesn't mean that all photography or painting is art.
 
The asterix's are not mine. The word I typed was (separated here with spaces) A r t y b 888888 s

Mod Edit
We have a swear filter for reason
please dont beat it
 
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Does the forum consider Tracey Emin to be an artist? She says she is and that makes it so. She certainly gets paid by galleries and collectors.
How about John Stezaker? He wins photography competitions and doesn't take any photos, just finds old discarded photos and cuts them up. He also sells in art galleries.
Is the forum considering what is art by the camera club mantra - I'd hang that on my wall?
Who decides what is art?
 
Phil V said:
But what if its not your take on it? What if its just aiming to be a direct copy?:D
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To me if they're purely trying to create a carbon copy then it's nothing more than a technical exercise, which can still be great but attempting to copy someone else musically doesn't do anything for me at all. I want to hear something individual come from that person and not them copying someone else. Is it art? I'd say no. It's copying someone else's style and expression rather than creating it yourself which in my mind misses the fundamental things that make art art. That's only a personal perspective on it though, it's not necessarily the right one.

I do think you can cover other people's music and still be an artist though, even though you're hitting the basic notes that were played on the original if you're playing them as you feel they should be played rather than trying to exactly copy the original then I do think that's the work of an artist. Personally speaking, of course... :)
 
Phil Young said:
DON'T GO TO THE LINK.

It's a weird one on my phone so may be infected on the pc.
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The link is fine if you put the aforementioned word back in. It's one of those comedy artists' statement generators which produces nonsense indistinguishable from the real thing.


Steve.
 
PMN said:
I do think you can cover other people's music and still be an artist though, even though you're hitting the basic notes that were played on the original if you're playing them as you feel they should be played rather than trying to exactly copy the original then I do think that's the work of an artist.
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I play a lot of other people's music but I don't often try to copy the original, I just play my version of it.

I would rather refer to myself as a musician rather than an artist though.


Steve.
 
And I do because she clearly is - I don't need her to say she is.
 
Tracy Emin's an artist. But man, is it crap art. It doesn't surprise me that photographers would look at Emin's guff and think it sucks. It's self-indulgent shock value rubbish at its worst. Photographers are worldly-wise and cynical, and aren't won over by the "LOOK AT ME!! I'M SO PROFOUND!!" tendencies of so many contemporary artists. Yeah, profound. Profound like a house spider "IS SOOO HUUUGE!!!"; in the great scheme of things, not so much.

Photographers rarely look to express their art by spending days and weeks on their own in a studio; they're far more likely to explore and describe the human condition by.. yanno.. studying and photographing humans, their interactions with each other and their environment. And stuff. Innit.
 
So the guy who carves a boat in to the end of a matchstick is an artist, but the guy who carves the same thing two weeks later...is not.....rrrrrright

The bloke who paints my living room immaculately is not an artist, but Rolf Harris is.........rrrrrrrright



C'mon, its all Art, but the viewer decides its value

If you are a musician, music is you're Art and it doesn't matter a fart whether you are playing your own music or somebody else's, you still have to make the sound.

We all appreciate different things in life, one man's timber carving is another man's bit of old wood, there is no minimum skill level, there is no minimum time/effort investment, they are both still Art to be appreciated........or not.
 
SimonH said:
Tracy Emin's an artist. But man, is it crap art. It doesn't surprise me that photographers would look at Emin's guff and think it sucks. It's self-indulgent shock value rubbish at its worst. Photographers are worldly-wise and cynical, and aren't won over by the "LOOK AT ME!! I'M SO PROFOUND!!" tendencies of so many contemporary artists. Yeah, profound. Profound like a house spider "IS SOOO HUUUGE!!!"; in the great scheme of things, not so much.

Photographers rarely look to express their art by spending days and weeks on their own in a studio; they're far more likely to explore and describe the human condition by.. yanno.. studying and photographing humans, their interactions with each other and their environment. And stuff. Innit.
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Thanks for speaking for all photographers. We are grateful.

(sigh).


You do realise that you speak for yourself.. not all photographers don't you? I hope you do anyway, or that would be displaying immense arrogance :)

Some spend years on a project.

Why do people assume that artists are TRYING to BE something?


The easiest thing for someone who doesn't understand something to do, is just dismiss it entirely and take the **** out of it, and therefore not have to deal with it at all. A great deal of this going on in here.

I'm just waiting for someone to say "I could do that" and we'll have reached peak ignorance :) (That last wasn't aimed at you Simon, although your quote heads up my reply).
 
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Not in the slightest. We've known Sewell is a total cock for decades.


"and why are these, pray, in Trafalgar Square rather than any of the too many Tates?"...


THAT'S real snobbery people. Sewell woudl be happier if we were all back up chimneys and down mines, and "coloured" people's countries still under British rule.... and as a result a hypocrite too considering his past. He's an arse.
 
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SimonH said:
But yeah, IMO Emin's a self-indulgent "WTF" merchant. If that works for you, I'm happy for you.
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She's irritating enough, yes, but I actually think she's genuinely irritating... I don't think it's an affectation :)
 
Oh, and PS, David: The deficit model is STILL a flunky. Just because I think Emin's stuff sucks STILL doesn't mean that I don't understand it. I can understand it AND think it sucks. And I do.
 
SimonH said:
Oh, and PS, David: The deficit model is STILL a flunky. Just because I think Emin's stuff sucks STILL doesn't mean that I don't understand it. I can understand it AND think it sucks. And I do.
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You mean you don't like it.
 
No. I mean it's not good. It's not that I don't like it, I'm indifferent to it. To me, that's poor.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Not in the slightest. We've known Sewell is a total cock for decades.


"and why are these, pray, in Trafalgar Square rather than any of the too many Tates?"...


THAT'S real snobbery people. Sewell woudl be happier if we were all back up chimneys and down mines, and "coloured" people's countries still under British rule.... and as a result a hypocrite too considering his past. He's an arse.
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Would Baudelaire be an arse?
 
I don't actually disagree with you. I don't think Emin is a particularly good artist either, but I do know that her style, unlike her ability to annoy, is affected, and done purposely. Her art does what she intended it to do.

You being indifferent to it doesn't make it poor either. If everyone was indifferent to it, it would be. Clearly that's not the case. There is something there.... it makes sense when you get what drives her anyway.


Anyway.... we're not here to discuss feminist art.... which is something else about her that annoys me: She professes not to be a feminist artist, but blatantly just is.

...anyway.... this doesn't resolve whether photography is art... just as linking to an article by a well known arch-conservative ******** doesn't either.
 
Laudrup said:
Would Baudelaire be an arse?
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As a poet, or critic?

As a critic, I think he was inconsistent when it come to photography... despising it at one turn, then praising it on other occasions. He was well known for championing Nadar.. but shagging Nadar's mistress behind his back may have had something to do with that :)


Laudrup said:
Brian Sewell is a hoot on Emin:

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/...ll-has-been-usurped-by-celebrity-7424914.html
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I can well imagine what that link contains without reading it :)
 
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Pookeyhead said:
Anyway.... we're not here to discuss feminist art.... which is something else about her that annoys me: She professes not to be a feminist artist, but blatantly just is.
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hehe! You've struck on the two very precise reasons she leaves me cold. And she REPEATEDLY makes a liar of herself.

So for me, she's a artist with no distinct flavour, but who leaves a bitter after-taste. Credit where it's due, I guess, 'cos that's an achievement.
 
Pookeyhead said:
As a poet, or critic?

As a critic, I think he was inconsistent when it come to photography... despising it at one turn, then praising it on other occasions. He was well known for championing Nadar.. but shagging Nadar's mistress behind his back may have had something to do with that :)




I can well imagine what that link contains without reading it :)
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I am convinced that the ill-applied developments of photography, like all other purely material developments of progress, have contrib*uted much to the impoverishment of the French artistic genius, which is already so scarce. In vain may our modern Fatuity roar, belch forth all the rumbling wind of its rotund stomach, spew out all the undigested sophisms with which recent philosophy has stuffed it from top to bottom; it is nonetheless obvious that this industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy, and that the confusion of their several func*tions prevents any of them from being properly fulfilled.

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place. If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally. It is time, then, for it to return to its true duty, which is to be the servant of the sciences and arts— but the very humble servant, like printing or shorthand, which have neither created nor supplemented literature.

Salon of 1859
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Seems pretty dismissive. Have you got anything better than them both being arses?
 
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As for Sewell, who is my main concern, because he's still alive, he's too ensconced in his own conservatism to consider anything that even has a whiff of self-indulgence, but fails to realise that self-indulgence is what drove many great artists, but time has dulled that raw feeling of disdain we reserve for the self-indulgent. In short he is selective in his praise based on a deeply rooted personality flaw: Like all rabid conservatives, he's living in the past and always has been. He likes his art in the grand tradition of things. He's a chicken with his head cut off.. he doesn't realise he's dead yet.

As for Baudelaire, he dismisses photography as a nonsense and was outspoken on the subject of photography not being art. He however, can be forgiven such a folly as he was writing on the subject when it was in its infancy, when the only artistic endeavours in photography were heavily pictorial and clearly derivative of traditional art. Sewell however, should know better.

Despite this, he was a great champion of Nadar, hailing him as some kind of hero. True, Nadar was revolutionary at the time, and his praise was justified, but to dismiss photography as art in one breath, and praise Nadar's work in another makes him a hypocrite.

Most art critics are just self serving publicists any way.... they are often controversial just to remain in the public eye... you know... a bit like some artists are :)


So any way... they're both still arses :)

All art has worth to someone. No art will have worth to everyone. That, I think everyone will agree, is a fact. Assuming that is so, being an art critic is probably THE most redundant occupation in the whole world.
 
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