"Now this is maybe just an unthinking review, but what it does illustrate is how there remains a sizeable part of the art world that simply does not get photography. They get artists who use photography to illustrate their ideas, installations, performances and concepts, who deploy the medium as one of a range of artistic strategies to complete their work. But photography for and of itself -photographs taken from the world as it is– are misunderstood as a collection of random observations and lucky moments, or muddled up with photojournalism, or tarred with a semi-derogatory ‘documentary’ tag. "
Paul Graham, The unreasonable Apple
He lost me at this point... if there is a big chunk of the "art world" who doesn't get photography... so what? - the art world is a big place and I see all around me evidence that photography is recognised as an art, from the shops full of lovingly crafted books, to exhibitions, major festivals like Arles.
There is no one universal definition of art - to me, in its broadest sense, it is about communicating an emotion - the problem is that we all experience emotions in different ways and always in a constantly changing state.
Art critics are the spawn of the devil - setting themselves up as arbiters of what is and isn't art, telling me what I should feel. Art is what you think is art not what somebody else thinks it is.
Absolutely if you are interested in creating something that aspires to be 'art' then you should study and analyse other works to see if you can understand why that art works for you - there are rules/conventions/shorthands that seem to lead to art that has a broader acceptance at a fundamental emotion level.
then again... what do I know? - I think there is more art in 3 minutes of Anarchy in the UK than in all the opera thats ever existed.
K
