What makes you an Artist rather than a Photographer

[Imaginara]

Isnt it more in the opinion of your viewers? =)

I can call myself an artist, but if no one else considers me one then what i create isn't really art in the public and social sense, just in my very alone little world :P

And if i call myself a hack and an amateur, but everyone else considers my work the highest form of artistic expression, then doesnt that make me an artist?

so to conclude, as i see it, wether or not you should call yourself an artist or not is more in how other percieve you, than what you call yourself.

[Nino Grangetto]

I consider artist in photography, when using the conventional elements to take a photography, llamesé camera, manages to break the analogy of the represented object, or a landscape, a face, or a pepper (Weston)
Interesting subject and pardon by the English

www.ninograngetto.com.ar

[z_photo]

so if 100 monkeys enroll in a photography workshop and all are taken to an area to photograph landscapes, but only two return with photographs that are described as beautiful by a vast majority of viewers, have the two made art while the other 98 simply did a poor job technically? the premise is that the eye for composition, the intrinsic decisions made in making the exposures, or the monkeys' final interpretations of the images for viewing by others all contain no artistic merit. maybe so. strikes me as an odd "perceptsion" (sic)

one can subscribe to as narrow a definition of art as one chooses. to expect the masses will agree might be interpretted as self important. on the other hand perhaps the monkeys think it much ado about nothing.

[Bob Salomon]

Marketing, PR and sales ability.

[Robert Hughes]

I'm impressed with the general low esteem given artists among people who profess to love the photographic arts. Is there some latent self-hatred leaking through?

[Imaginara]

so if 100 monkeys enroll in a photography workshop and all are taken to an area to photograph landscapes, but only two return with photographs that are described as beautiful by a vast majority of viewers, have the two made art while the other 98 simply did a poor job technically? the premise is that the eye for composition, the intrinsic decisions made in making the exposures, or the monkeys' final interpretations of the images for viewing by others all contain no artistic merit. maybe so. strikes me as an odd "perceptsion" (sic)

one can subscribe to as narrow a definition of art as one chooses. to expect the masses will agree might be interpretted as self important. on the other hand perhaps the monkeys think it much ado about nothing.

If this was a reply to my comment, i did not mention anything about masses only that wether or not you are an artist is for others to decide not you. Anyone can call what they do art and themselves as artists, that means nothing. If everyone else calls you an artist, then maybe there is some truth in that?

[Mark Barendt]

Imaginara,

I think what you are defining is a commercially or socially successful artist.

Where is it written that anyone needs to meet a success test to become artist?

[SAShruby]

I didn't read all of it, maybe it was mentioned before, but i'd like to offer my perception what I consider art. Art is a new creation, never observed by you. For example, mother nature creates apple. It's art because no one is making it. If I take a picture of the apple, I don't consider the picture as art, but if I bite the apple first and then take a picture of the apple with bite in it, it's an art. Quality of the art is another story.

To summarize it in another words, if someone makes something new and you take a picture of it, I believe not an art, is't a copy of it. To become an artist you neet to change it, or make it from schratch, which makes item unique, then it's an art and then you become an artist.

Now, what method you choose, such as taking a photograph of your art or paint it or scuplt it, then you're photographer - artist. Otherwise you're a tourist .

p.s. Please do not blow bridges just to make then unique!!!

[z_photo]

If this was a reply to my comment, i did not mention anything about masses only that wether or not you are an artist is for others to decide not you. Anyone can call what they do art and themselves as artists, that means nothing. If everyone else calls you an artist, then maybe there is some truth in that?

it was not. the clue was in the quotation marks

[Mark Sawyer]

Perhaps it is simply self-definition. If you decide you are working as an artist, you are an artist. What the rest of the world decides is in their eyes. In your own eyes, you are an artist.

What matters more than that? By any other measure of "success", Van Gogh was not an artist.