Is Photography art?

Art and Photography

I've been asked an interesting question recently: Is photography art?

My first response was "of course!", but after thinking about it, that's not quite right either. Photography is just a tool, it's what you do with it that counts. A pencil or a brush is not art, but you can create art with it. Many people seem to mistake the tool for the intent. If I use a pencil to write my grocery list, it's not art, but in the hands of an artist, it can create art. If I use my paintbrush to paint a room, it's not art, but in the hands of an artist, it can create art. Jackson Pollock created art with mush the same tools used to paint a room in my house.

It's the wrong question. Lots of photography is not art, just as lots of painting and drawing is also not art.

Photojournalists use photography, but are not necessarily artists, as most of their work is intended to inform and document events. They also follow strict ethical rules about that can and cannot be done in the making of a photograph and the post production work. People can and do lose their jobs for breaking them (and rightfully so). They are journalists who use a camera, which is a very different and important role. [Full disclosure, I am a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists and am engaged as a photojournalist for some assignments. I am very much aware of the ethical and professional requirements. I am not making art when I am working as a photojournalist.]

The staff in the camera shop in Walmart are not artists, they are technicians, as they are simply manufacturing a product - with a prefocused camera and preset lighting, using a tool that was installed by someone else. There are millions of photographers who are simply documenting personal events, such as birthdays, parties, and the like. None of these people are artists, nor do they intend to be so.

Some photographers, including photojournalists, are artists, working to produce works for purely artistic reasons. They are trying to express and aesthetic in photographic form, in the same way another artist might use a paintbrush or a pencil. I consider myself in this category, but my journalistic work is separate from my artistic work. I am using the same tools in totally different ways, with totally different intents.

The definition of an artist is not in the tool, but rather the intent.

Strangely enough, I have seen the greatest resistance to defining a photographer as an artist from within the artistic community - particularly other visual artists who work in other mediums such as paint or pencil. I've recently begun a series of workshops called "Art Photography for the Non-photographer", where I teach visual artists to use photography for displaying their work on websites and portfolios, as well as creating reference works. I discovered this is a real challenge for non-photographic visual artists.

Since I was a journalist before taking up photographer, I like to ask questions, so I asked them if they considered photography art. Strangely, most did not, but their reasons were interesting and informative.

The first reason, was the camera did all the work. This is, of course, what advertising has been telling us for more than 50 years and it's not really true. Advertising would like to convince you that photography is easy (if you just buy this model of camera), but point and click is a marketing term rather than what actually works for the user. There was an interesting silence when I pointed out that if photography was so easy, why were they attending my workshop. They had all run into problems trying to take acceptable photographs of their work. I also explained that professional photography equipment is actually harder to use and require even MORE training and experience. It's not as easy as it looks.

However, modern digital photography has enable many non-photographers to document important personal events. It has also led many of them into the field of photography and helped develop a greater understanding of visual art and the complexity of making a photograph.

Next, they argued that photography was not a unique process, that copies could be easily made of a photograph. I explained that in the days of film (who less and less remember), the negative was unique, a Polaroid was unique. In professional digital equipment, the RAW file is unique and must be processed to create prints, even for the screen. As well, many visual artists (including photographers) create limited edition prints of their work. Many people buy prints of the classic to put on their wall. Is this not art? If art is decreased by the number of copies in existence, did the Mona Lisa cease to be art at some point? Did Michelangelo's David cease to be art at some point? No, the number of copies does not define something as art, nor decrease the creative effort required.

Of course, there are photographers who consider only film photography art not digital, but they are making the same error, it's not the tool, it's the intent and the result that define a piece as art. Not all photography is art, just as not all drawing is art, not all painting art. Nonetheless, art can be created with photography, as it can with a brush, a pencil, and anything else.

The statement that photography is art is meaningless, just as you cannot say pencil is art or paint is art. However, you can use all three to create art and photographic art (with film or digitial) is just as much art as work created with pencil, paint, or any other tool.