Is there such a thing as fine art photography anymore?

[Erik Larsen]

Well I certainly appreciate that people do art for their own satisfaction but it seems very limiting and self-referential -- is that all that there is to being an artist? I mean, people fix cars because they enjoy it too, or golf, or collect seashells. There's gotta be more meaning to being an artist than "I do it because I personally enjoy it". Generations ago, the Expressionists brought us a new way of seeing things when they rebelled against the worn academic art of the time. We don't even have anything to rebel against because its all lost any meaning and significance. The best you can hope for is to piss off some fundies by putting christ in a jar of pee or something but that's just a cheap way to bait them and create some sensationalism. And apart from the fundamentalists, no one really gives a hoot about that either.

Just my opinion,
Some artist make art for a living and that drives them. Some artists have little desire for success financially and pursue art because they "have to" it fulfills them. Some manage both but I think it's few and far between. If your driven by financial success, I believe you must obey the market and that can be stagnant to the artist IMO. I must put down the liquor and stop trying to type on this blasted iPhone forgive my rambling.
Erik

[SergeiR]

Is photography as a fine art form, dead? Are we so saturated with images, cheap and easy-to-create images, that they have lost any significance? When any 9-year old with a cellphone camera and Photoshop can be a photographer, does it mean anything anymore? This isn't a wet-vs-digital rant. The question is whether photography as a whole, wet or digital, reduced to banality.

it isnt.

[Jay DeFehr]

Cyrus,

Theres nothing new in decrying the ease and ubiquity of photography, and lots of people who think of themselves as artists have little or no education in the arts. I think of art as a conversation between culture and history, and anyone who walks into the conversation without a solid background in it, isn't likely to have much of interest to contribute, whatever their skills.
For me, the most significant change in photography is not in the way photos are made, or in what numbers, or of what subject matter, but the way they're shared, stored, collected, displayed, etc. Photographs are no longer Sontag's slim objects , but code. Photographers who aren't confronting this paradigm shift may soon find themselves having a separate conversation, about the past.

[rdenney]

Nearly 40 years ago, Sontag wrote about the ubiquity of easy photography making it impossible to make a fresh artistic statement in the way that, say, Weston did with his peppers. This is not a new question.

It seems to me that the drive for those trying to make art is to still be fresh, and the need to innovate becomes a slavemaster.

For me, the question is this: Is it still required to be fresh? If so, I'm stuck. I can find little that is innovative about my work, even those brief moments where my craft actually succeeds.

The definition of art photography is easy: It's photography made for the purpose of being art. Whether it succeeds or not is another matter.

I suspect that art that people love to look at is still successful as art, even if it's stale or banal to those with more education. At least I sure hope so, because what the educated in photographic art seem to like still baffles me.

Rick "who preferences as an art consumer lean to well-crafted and beautiful things, just for the sake of quality and beauty" Denney

[Eric Rose]

There is no such thing as "fine art photography". There is only fine art. One of the many mediums that are used to produce this "fine art" is photography.

[jcoldslabs]

There's gotta be more meaning to being an artist than "I do it because I personally enjoy it".

Really? Why? That's why I do it (photography, that is), but I do not consider myself an artist. That term seems to be externally defined and is culturally relative to boot. Is Britney Spears an artist? To her fans, probably. To her detractors, probably not.

But don't listen to me. I'm a nihilist at heart and figure that when I'm dead all of my work will be tossed in the trash and my brief time on this planet will be wiped from the collective memory shortly thereafter. Therefore, I photograph in the here and now because I enjoy it, full stop.

Jonathan

[ajmiller]

I often wonder if by labelling photography as 'art' we do it an injustice and limit it's own inherent, creative potential as a unique medium.
At a recent local galleries' 'open' exhibition - featuring painting and photography submitted by local artists and photographers - the examples of what the curators considered fine art photography was laughable - mostly mediocre images, badly sepia-toned in Photoshop - photographs trying to be paintings.
I saw an interview with Jeff Wall (over at apug) and he put it quite nicely:-
"And probably what it means is anyone with a telephone can make a great photograph - the problem with that is - can you make a second one?"
Good photography has an underpinning of history, culture, critical analysis and ideas - Jay DeFehr has it right above.

[Maris Rusis]

When I make photographs to show others I do try conscientiously to deliver fine art values as I see them.

I want to provide a rich visual experience for people. All of my photographs are made one at a time, start to finish, and in full by my own hand. I offer then to folks who love rarity, singularity, fully realized handcraft, precious materials, archival durability, my version of coherent scholarship, and what I reckon is interesting content. I earnestly hope, foolishly or otherwise, that my photographs will remain worth looking at by people who do not know me.

As for making nice photographs for personal amusement I think a genuinely artistic motivation goes further. Pablo Picasso is supposed, famously and coarsely, to have put it this way "If you are truly an artist you know you have to make art just the same way as you know you have to piss".

[Heroique]

Are we so saturated with images, cheap and easy-to-create images, that they have lost any significance?

Lost significance?

It’s a way to gain significance if you’re clever.

Whoops, profound.

[sanchi heuser]

The problem can be understood if we make a difference between creativity and art.
I found in a Wikipedia article this definition of creativity:

"Creativity refers to the invention or origination of any new thing (a product, solution, artwork, literary work, joke, etc.) that has value. "New" may refer to the individual creator or the society or domain within which novelty occurs. "Valuable", similarly, may be defined in a variety of ways."
quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity

We may define art as any creativity that has the power to evoke feelings, thoughts and insights
or just give joy to the audience
and good art, as any creativity that has the impact to expand and change the way we define and understand art,
at its peaks in a completely new way, in a way that never existed before.