There are two main reasons that Artists (the real ones) usually criticize photographers. The first is that most photographers tend to dwell on gear/process and are "mechanical." The second is that they dwell on subject/content and are "material." JL is a hack photographer because he is mechanical and material. Go back and read the posts in favor of JL. Do you notice a pattern? The defensive comments are related to the mechanical or the material. There isn't any serious talk of the abstract formal elements of art, but that should come as no surprise since JL's work doesn't contain many of them anyway.
Visual illiterates have difficulty defending their own positions by drawing upon a knowledge of the arts. Instead, they must resort to cheap tactics like armchair psychoanalysis to accuse detractors of being jealous etc, or launch into slack-jawed rants as a barbaric attempt to intimidate and bully opposition. They do this is because they are ignorant, process-oriented and content-obsessed hacks. Birds of a feather flock together. In other words, hacks admire fellow hacks. It should come as no surprise if commercial photographers, like JL, are able to build a large audience of admirers from a crowd of people that are just like him.
And then there are hackneyed writers that heavy handedly insult people's intelligence by criticizing the critique using the exact same methodology they are criticizing.
Not one respondent other than you lays claim to this being high Art or the lack of. It is simply a photograph of something that may or may not interest someone, or appear attractive to the eye, or not. A representation of something presented as a ... photograph. Besides, what constitutes formal abstract elements of Art are hardly agreed upon in the high art circles, let alone on some little photo forum.
I seriously doubt Joey L's agenda includes being shown at MOMA, and I'd also seriously doubt anyone would expect it either.
It is what it is, and to critique it as if it was supposed to be something else is less than ingenious and somewhat sad.
While I would agree that the mechanical and process oriented is vividly apparent on this and many other internet photo forums, it is simply the nature of the beast ... a place where those that do not know come to learn, or those that know come to teach the mechanical and process oriented aspects of photography. Nothing more, nothing less.
Even the greatest Painters and sculptors in history had to learn the craft of painting and proper methodology.
There are other ways to explore the more artistic aspects, often solitary, or with a smaller, less public format for discussion and exchange of visual ideas.
-Marc
