h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for resurrecting this thread, very interesting. Can't believe no one has mentioned great artists like Dorthea Lange, Henri Cartier Besson, and Ansel Adams. Of course photography is art!! It is just a different medium. I would also say that cinematography is an art.

Yes, thanks for the resurrection. I think this is exactly the sort of question that SHOULD be in Ask.
Since we last spoke I have put up five black and white pics on my flat wall here in Hong Kong. Two I paid for, by a professional photographer of tropical leaves and buddha heads. Three are from Ethiopian churches taken by Dunx on his travels last year. I don't know if anyone else would classify these 5 as art, but they give me pleasure and calm emotions after a fraught day.
I do have a photo on a wall in England of the bark on a banyan tree also taken by a professional. That's art by anyone's definition.

I'd be tempted to say that photography is photography, and *sometimes* it might be usefully called art, while at other times, it almost certainly isn't.

It's not hard to imagine a technically perfect photograph of an interesting or aesthetically pleasing subject that was still fundamentally mechanical or soulless in nature, and which could have been taken by a lucky human (or robot).

Equally, it's possible to imagine something that's not as 'good' as a photograph, yet which has a certain something about it that gives the *feeling* of a human input, even if sometimes the photograph may have been essentially accidental, and one is effectively just unknowingly recognising the skiil of someone picking out the good shot from among the duds.

If someone spent a lot of time creating a scene to photograph (placing lights, positioning people, or arranging natural objects Goldsworthy-style, etc), I think it would make me more likely to consider their work as art as well as a good photograph.

To some extent, reproducability of the human contribution does come into it, and there's an element of guesswork regarding how hard people think things are to do. If (unlikely) it turned out that almost anyone who took a plate camera to Yosemite and took B+W pictures could generate Ansel Adams-style results, people's assesment of the 'art' content of his work may lessen, even though the aesthetic content would be unchanged.

If someone did a purely mechanical monochrome conversion on a good colour picture, the end result could be considered much more 'arty' than the original, but if so, I'd wonder where the 'art' had come from. It may well be the end result was more interesting or visually appealing, but there is effectively no more skill, effort, or emotion put into it.

yes..in most cases [but not all]...art is all about getting a message over representing something or telling a story true or fictional...

when we see that famous photo of the children running towards us with their skin hanging off their bodies [horishima] that one picture says more than a thousand words...it affects us and makes us think and cry and that is surely what art is all about.

>>"art is all about getting a message over representing something or telling a story true or fictional..."

But so are many other things - political campaigning, propaganda, journalism, biography, a large number of conversations between individuals, etc.
If 'Art' is going to be invoked every time someone feels or thinks anything, the word ceases to have much meaning beyond 'data input to the brain', which seems pretty close to worthless as a definition.

A war-zone photo: photography - yes, journalism - probably, political campaigning - possibly, but *art*?

Being hit in the face with a teargas canister would probably affect us, and make us think and cry, but that doesn't make it art.

Actually, I'd suspect that the Hiroshima picture probably *could* be summed up in much less than a thousand words. You did a pretty good job yourself.
I'd guess that someone who hadn't seen any post-Hiroshima images, but who had some idea of what a serious burns victim looks like could do a fair job of guessing and generating the relevant emotions and thoughts from maybe a few dozen well-chosen words.

'Being hit in the face with a teargas canister would probably affect us, and make us think and cry, but that doesn't make it art.'

Well . . .

If you're mucking about at a G8 protest and you get hit in the face with a stray teargas canister, I agree, that's not art.


However . . .

If you dress up like the Western stereotype of a Muslim man and you hire an off-duty cop to dress up in an SS uniform and a George Bush mask and you both go to the plaza of the UN and you have the off-duty cop lob a teargas canister at your face then I'd have to argue that it's art. Performance art. Not necessarily good performance art, but art nonetheless.

The only satisfactory definition of art is 'Art is what someone is pointing at when they say "that's art".'

May I join you?

I think I disagree with the people way back when who say that it's the audience who decides if something's art or not.

I don't think that a graphic artist creating a company logo, or a schoolchild painting a picture of his house, or a worker in a plant manufacturing vases would usually think of what he's doing as art. But nobody would consider it worth having a conversation on whether painting or sculpture should be considered art or not.

So even though the casual photographer taking snapshots on holiday, or the average working photographer taking wedding photos, would probably not come under the category of "art", that doesn't mean that photography isn't an artform. If a photographer goes out to take an art photo, then it's art.

Everybody else then gets to decides whether it's good art or not. And find the unexpected artistry in places where it wasn't intended.

- Bethlyn

>>"If you dress up like the Western stereotype of a Muslim man and you hire an off-duty cop..."

In that case, there is a clear intent to create, not just to document, and the result couldn't be purely accidental, even if it may be rubbish.
Proper photojournalism should generally specifically *exclude* set-up shots.

The problem with calling photography an artform *by definition* is that much photography isn't art by any meaningful use of the word. A photograph *may* be a work of art, but I don't think the art content (good, bad, or indifferent) comes automatically from *being* a photograph.

>>"But nobody would consider it worth having a conversation on whether painting or sculpture should be considered art or not."

Even in the case of some individual paintings, there is room for debate. In the case of a literal throw-paint-at-canvas-while-blindfolded painting, it's arguable there wasn't much (or any) intention to create the specific end result, or indeed that the result isn't a 'painting' in a useful meaning of the word.
It may be a convenience to consider all paintings as art just because most things that count as paintings would also count as art.

>>The problem with calling photography an artform *by definition* is that much photography isn't art by any meaningful use of the word. A photograph *may* be a work of art, but I don't think the art content (good, bad, or indifferent) comes automatically from *being* a photograph.

That implies that the problem isn't whether photography is art or not, but that we don't have a word to differentiate between non-art and art photography. Sculpture and music are clear-cut. If it isn't art, then we don't use those words. Instead we may call it welding or mug-manufacture or making a noise. When we talk of "a painting" we're talking of art (good or bad), and everyone recognises the potential confusion about describing someone as "a painter", but we still understand the difference between an artist and someone who puts whitewash on walls.

But we only have one word for photography, so we do not have a word that *can* be a definition (although it often seems that "black and white photograph" is a good fit).

i didn't say all photography is art..but some of it can definitely be defined as art....i don't think some ART is actually art...when i was on art degree i was very demoralised by some peoples definition of art..some lazy geezer strolls in,... chucks [literally] a load of gloss paint on a canvas and gets a B grade for it...thats not art to me...but i accept to someone else it is their haywain,guernica and mona lisa.

art is an inspirational thing so if a painting or indeed photograph inspires me, makes me feel certain emotions then i define it as art.. you can all argue black is white if you like...i don't have the energy for that indepth philosophy.... i suppose it depends on the individual and resecting other peoples view points...