What makes you an Artist rather than a Photographer

[archer]

Being an artist is not self determined but determined by others. Working with artistic intent but without knowldege of craft is usually the path to self delusion, especially if you believe you have succeeded to lofty goal of creating art. You are an artist when others think you are and not what you call yourself. I believe that Alfred Stieglitz said it best, "Your work isn't art until some rich guy buys it." Why is being a photographer, no matter how great, not fulfilling enough? Be creative, do your work to the best of your ability, be passionate about achieving your conceptual vision and then leave the description of your achievement to others to label. The joy is in the creative process and the art is in the eye of the beholder.
Denise Libby

[Rodney Polden]

Being an artist is not self determined but determined by others.

Wouldn't this definition mean, after the Deluge when I find I'm the only person left alive, that no matter how well my photographs about the experience turn out, I can never be an artist, because there's no-one else there to decide that I'm an artist. That seems rather a limiting notion of what art is or might be in the life of the individual.

Art isn't something extra, some kind of sugar-topping, to me art IS life, art is nature, art is movement, art is every thing that means and clarifies and confounds and uplifts and evokes and explains and shatters. I'm not sure that art necessarily even involves an object (a product, a crafted result, a sale, an item...)

To me (as to others before me), photography is a partial repayment for the gift of sight. Art can be there just in the seeing, before intent, before production, before craft. Now what the relationship is exactly between "art" and "artist", well, that's anyone's guess.

[Mark Barendt]

I believe art is truly democratic, everyone has some innate talent for art. Whether that talent is photography or gardening or weaving or music or the spoken word or architecture or protest or something else.

My thought is that inspiration is what separates creating art from doing an assignment.

I don' t see your assumption concerning my statement as valid. Maybe you can expound on that premise.

[Mark Barendt]

Some people just lack the skills and some probably lack the drive to manifest original thought into a reality or don't value the ability to do it.

Most simply lack the opportunity or are simply doing something else.

Grandma Moses didn't start until her seventies, many people don't live that long. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses

How many people simply never get the chance?

[Mark Barendt]

The only thing more pretentious than the question is the answer...

Art can be pretentious.

[archer]

Dear Rodney;
In a very general way, everything you say is valid however it is too general to answer the question which started this thread and if what you postulate regarding, after the deluge, who then would give a damn. I believe we must differentiate between the generic term art and the specific use of the word in describing its application to that which the OP referred at the beginning of this thread.
Denise Libby

[Rodney Polden]

......... if what you postulate regarding, after the deluge, who then would give a damn?

Well, I guess at that point it would be 100% of the entire world population's opinion, so maybe that's the point that it would really be relevant, rather than now, with just the few dozen of us here who debate these issues

I guess I give a damn about what photography is for, and what art is. It's not because someone else agrees or notices or gives me a certain label, that it BECOMES meaningful.

Maybe I'm just old enough and "liberal" enough to have figured out that it's when it seems "right" to me, rather than "right" to some other people, that it's worth me paying attention to.

Over the course of a couple of hundred years, the popular consensus espoused by the authority figures of society about what is real, what matters, what is actual, more or less does a 180 degree shift. It seems that people very rarely question the authority figures as an institution - they merely regard everybody in olden times as unenlightened and stupid. Ever noticed how, even though quantum is no longer just a theory (like maybe for the past 50 years!), there has been no trickle down into the public consciousness of that single astonishing and world changing perspective. It rocks too many well-funded boats.

What does it take for us to get to realise that there are just as many illogicalities, just as many lies perpetuated by vested interests, in this age as in any previous one. Likely many more, in fact, because we invented advertising (where a big chunk of my working life was spent, mea culpa). We can only approach truth and reality as one individual, along a narrow and winding path that does not allow a crowd together.

So the question of whether you are an artist or a photographer comes directly back to the issue of whether you are living art in your life, or whether you "just" know cameras. I don't see one as right and the other as wrong, anymore than believing you can only fly the Atlantic if you're a pilot. It's just that, for me, the art in life and the life in art is FUN, it's deeper, it's the joy. It's the real bit amongst the wallpaper pattern.

Recognition by others of artistic production is a welcome confirmation (for some of us), but the absence of it may simply mean that one's work is truly original or truly significant (and maybe for those reasons, less saleable). The cognoscenti of art were not lining up to pat Vincent van Gogh on the back when he showed "Starry Night", they probably walked right past him.

In fact, most courageous art is virtually unfindable in the era in which it is created - and goes completely unnoticed EVER, unless one collector, one patron, one gallery owner, one reviewer, one enthusiast, one relative maybe (Vincent's brother, in his case) is so committed to the relevance of what they see in your work that they don't stop pushing the public to look at it. The public eye always requires strenuous effort to turn it slowly onwards, away from a vase of flowers or a clown, and towards a Joel-Peter Witkin, a Goya, a firing squad executing patriots, a b/w photograph of a single tree in a tract housing development.

Remember too that phoTogRAphy always has art in its heart, even when it has to be examined to find it there. Just as well, really, because these days I hear "artist" used as a put down or an indicator of somebody's unreliability, more often than as a term of highest praise. Other countries have poets for presidents - here they're used-car salesmen, spin doctors, lawyers and economists.

[Greg Blank]

Most people do have talents and those talents can be deemed Art.

I think we are agreeing on a lot of issues

Its when some people elect to become Artists in areas that clearly they are fish out of water, that I question thier intent. This includes people that are already famous in another area "Like singers", they use that fame to show the world how great they are in this other area-perhaps they felt cheated at not haven been noted at previously. Given the instance they didn't have fame in the area they are famous for no one would pay them any mind.

Editorial Assignment work is hopefully given out because one has a talent that the editor appreciates, having a clear cut method of technique should not mean one can not create or produce art. The Media should always be secondary to a manifestation of concept. But like I said one can be a photographer without being an Artist.

I believe art is truly democratic, everyone has some innate talent for art. Whether that talent is photography or gardening or weaving or music or the spoken word or architecture or protest or something else.

My thought is that inspiration is what separates creating art from doing an assignment.

[Greg Blank]

In the words of Metallica; Advantages are taken, not handed out.

Most simply lack the opportunity or are simply doing something else.

Grandma Moses didn't start until her seventies, many people don't live that long. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses

How many people simply never get the chance?

[sergiojaenlara]

Who wants to be an artist being able to be a photographer?