Craft vs. meaning?

[Robbie Shymanski]

Sounds like debating Rick Wakeman's King Arthur on Ice vs. some of the first Pavement 7 inches. Most will listen to and dismiss both as painful but for different reasons. But, just as with Pavement, "meaning" can give way to "craft" keeping both intact. It is rare, if not impossible, to see the reverse.

[SAShruby]

All right then,

in that case, neither. Why? Because, photography is about complex feeling inside the person who looks at the picture such as perfection, feel, touch, experience. Well, 99.9% of all pictures doesn't define who made that photo. 99.9% of people don't know what to look in the picture. Is it about picture itself or beyond the picture visuals? Well crafted image with meaningless picture is exactly what Photoshop can give you any time. And option 2? There is no such thing as poorly crafted meqaningful image.

And big P.S. I didn't accomplish even one of those yet which is very sad.

I think I need to change my point of view for abstract theories.

[roteague]

In contemporary photography, what is the most common problem,

1) well crafted, but empty, meaningless, cliched images
or
2) poorly crafted, but interesting, meaningful images?

If someone was to offer you a choice of one of the above, which would you choose? Conceptually these dichotomies are highly personal and one might say that those choices are defined too black and white, but frankly from my POV I see them all the time.

Depending upon the final use, neither.

[Brian Ellis]

My question is this: if a very talented and skillful photographer who at the same time happens to be lacking printing skills (or simply doesn't feel like spending time in the darkroom) commissions a very talented and skilled printer to produce the prints that do his images justice, who should be credited with the resulting work of art? The photographer or the printer?

In other words, one of them is the artist and the other the craftsman and together they produce a work of art. Who gets the credit for the art, the artist or the craftsman? And which one of them is the true artist?

The credit should be handled the way credit for woodcuts used to be handled, the photographer's name goes on the left and the printer's name goes on the right.