Following the "What isn't art" thread. I wonder what is "art photography" or "Fine Art Photography"?

Intent, perspective, desire. These are not enough for me to describe art. To describe something as art means I have placed a value judgement on it. No one is truely objective or impersonal.

All writing is not literature. Even all writing intended as literature is not necessarily literature. The intent to create art by itself is not enough in and of itself.

Literature is often defined as "creative writing of recognized artistic value".

This implies value judgement on an individual and societal level.

The word writing is much like the word photography. It simply implies a specific form of technical effort. We lack a word like literature for photography of "recognised artistic value".
Perhaps "fine art photography"? I don't know. It is a term often misused.

Some 35 mm color stock photographers I know, who now own an Epson printer with Ultrachrome inks, are advertising on their website Fine Art Prints. They never did this before the Epson printers became available. It is as if archival inks is what is essential in creating art photography rather than some quality of the image. The images they produce are still mundane but will last 150 boring years.

You can't talk about art without making value judgements. It is humanly impossible. These values may be personal, misguided, silly, profound, worldly whatever. But we should be honest and try to describe what they are even if they are individual. It isn't easy.

Let me give you an example. I know for myself when I do an image that for me is art and when I don't. Part of that judgement is color, color for me is never art. That means that my commercial work is never art because it is all color. So that leaves b&w. All of it is done for personal reasons but I believe that only about one in twenty images that I make is art ie an image that I am going to take the time to print and hang on a wall. The stuff that falls short are just photographs.

Now people who see my work in magazines and museums etc. don't make these same distintions
that I do for my work. To them it is all my work and all my art. For instance there is a book and exhibit coming up that merge the color commercial work and b&w personal images. I allowed these projects to go forward partly because I was intrigued by their vision of my work. I am now rethinking the "not art" judgement that I made for my commercial work.

How do you define "art photography" or do you bother?