Is Photography Art?
Think of art and you may first think of paintings. Then maybe other art forms come to mind: sculptures, drawings, architecture, and finally you may think of photography. Or possibly not at all.
Define Art
What makes art? Is it something that makes you feel an emotion from experiencing it? In that way, great literature is art. And the same goes for songs, movies and much more. Yes, some will like to restrict the acceptable forms of art, especially in galleries. But I’m not one to argue. Besides, art is subjective. Art to one person is splashes of random paint to another.
The History of Photography
Photography is a newer creative form. It has only been around since the 19th century and was used in the 1840s and 1850s to show city scenes, plants and various other motionless objects and places. Most still didn’t consider photography an art form at that time but mainly a scientific way of looking at the world. It was great to take photos of plants and document, much like a biologist would do.
Paintings, on the other hand, have been around since people first drew on walls with whatever tools they had available. The oldest wall art on a cave dates back to around 45,000 years. Photography is still new compared to the history of art on surfaces.
Found on an Indonesian island, this pig art is probably the oldest piece of art.
Growing in Popularity
For most of the 20th century photography was not popular. It was being more widely accepted into galleries in the 1970s and 1980s, yet it remained rare to find. Most galleries still seem to prefer paintings and similar art. This doesn’t mean there aren’t successful photographers. There are many. Some photos have sold at auctions for more than $1 million each.
Popular photographers like Cindy Sherman and Richard Price each have multiple photos that have sold for millions of dollars each. So we know there are some photographers that do very well, and even some that sell photos worth thousands of dollars each. Taking these facts in mind, there seems to be a high demand for some photos.
What makes a photo artistic?
The value of a work of art is subjective and hard to pinpoint. For example, among the most expensive photos is an Internet meme of a dog. It sold for $4,000,000 as an NFT. Yes, it’s not even a physical photo.
This is the $4,000,000 NFT but without the writing on it.
“Doge” is created by Atsuko Sato, owner of the dog in the image. The image was bought with Ethereum cryptocurrency.
Are All Photos Art?
Most would probably agree that the meme isn’t as artistic as something that took hours creating and editing, yet they might agree that art can be funny and wildly different from the majority of art. So value doesn’t always equal quality. An extremely old artwork on a cave wall might look really bad when compared to Michelangelo’s art, of course, but we can also look at certain art through a historical lens. Art increases in value over time, usually. We may look at the oldest animal photos and find them interesting, even though the images aren’t high quality.
There may be people that would ask gallery owners and museums what is acceptable art. Even that would end with many answers. The person who bought the above dog photo might really enjoy Internet memes—and have tons of money to spare. They still would have to enjoy the photo. An emotional reaction to the image is what set the buyer to conclude it was worth buying. They didn’t have to buy it. They could have instead bought a rare painting worth millions of dollars. They chose this piece of ‘art.’ Is it acceptable? I’m sure the person who bought this dog meme doesn’t care about that.
I buy art I like, usually from an artist like myself. Last few times it was from Etsy buyers, original artwork, except for one limited edition by Mark Maggiori (his cheapest print). I enjoyed the story behind Maggiori’s print. Other times I buy art because I simply like the framed landscape watercolor that I found on Etsy.
Photography is Art
Photography is accepted these days. But it’s still in its infancy compared the the long history of art on surfaces. Photos are found in museums, galleries, homes, offices, government buildings, corporate buildings, and many other places. You will find buyers for anything. Out of 8 billion people in the world, there will be people who will buy strange or unusual art, like the dog meme we mentioned.
What is strange? What is unusual? All artists are pretty strange (like myself). But one person’s strange is another person’s normal. That goes for photography as well. Generally, it’s accepted as art, but this only came about in recent decades, at least for the general opinion in the art world. It’s still a new art form.
Would one person prefer a painting over a photo? Definitely. People buy what they like. They accept art that they believe has a beauty and/or special significance to it. People latch onto a piece of art. They feel part of it.
With photography so widespread it will be interesting to see what the art form looks like in the future.