What makes photography art?

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Lydia

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Since its invention, painters etc. have tried to keep photography from the fine art world.

What, in your opinion, makes photography art?
What makes YOUR photography art?
 
Photography is a complicated art form. Sure, anyone can take a picture and call themselves a photographer. It's no different then someone painting a picture and calling themselves a painter.

It takes more then luck to get a good picture. Sure some photos are the right place at the same time, but conceptual and macro, and other posed types of photography take skill to achieve. Even if it is being in the right place and the right time, you can't just snap the photo and call it a masterpiece. It's a matter of getting the right settings in order to produce something beautiful. You can't just turn on a camera and expect to take a masterpiece, just as you can't expect to buy some paint and a canvas and paint like Van Gogh.
 
It's the same thing that makes any art, photography is just the medium as Oils is a medium, or a musical instrument. All art requires an element of skill and technical ability to work in the medium. The duration of the creation of a photograph is much shorter, but I don't think that art is a function of time. Art comes from within the artist, it is the vision and the passion of the artist that creates art.
 
great lighting, composition, emotion, communication et cetera make art - if its not made its very hard for it to be art.......

most photography is basically the recording of moments of life, if life is art then some must be so?

i feel there are made and taken images, most photographers just take photos, some strive to make images, some run around looking with their "eye" to get a picture that will be art,

most fine art shooters (proberly all i think?), do some form of workbooking of their images, it might be on paper, or by recording several images and reshooting it alot till they get it, or in their head, they decide what an image will look like et cetera then they go and make it

fotogs like anne geddes like her work or not is making images not taking them, she designs the next years images on paper then goes to the studio and records the visions - then some say things like oh i could have put 20 babies in pots and done that - but the didnt - neither did 6 billion people..........and her lighting is ok

my photography is not art, most of it is made, but most is just production and recordings, i do strive to make art one day, i do still do alot of taking but try to do kinky compositions,
 
Painters have looked down on photography for the same reason so-called traditional photographers look down on over-use of photoshop. Technology isn't considered art.

A lot of art, especially fine art, is all about the individual, rather than the medium or the message. As such, any new art is seen as a threat to the individual.

The truth is, what lens we use, where we stand, what shutter speed, what aperture, post-processing, and more. That's no different than what canvas, brush type, paint type, colors, etc.

As for Mr. right place right time, I would invite him to any protest, war zone, or political rally and invite him to take all the pulitzer prize winning photos he can manage. I'm betting he makes a grand total of zero useable images.
 
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