RoR: Forum

God does exist, and we are he.

Ted

Post 1

Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 2:04pm

Of course, I don't consider photos to be art. Nor am I sure this is truly "the greatest photograph ever taken." It is merely the greatest one I have ever seen!

Post 2

Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 2:21pm

Is a photograph reality, or a recreation of reality? Is it random, or selective?

Ted Keer

Post 3

Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 6:29pm

I think photographs can be art because of the amount of selection that can be applied. And that is before the retouching or photo-shop work. It is just harder to get past the bland, slice of boring life that the usual amateur snapshot renders. I have seen paintings that could fool you into thinking it came from a camera. I have seen photos that resemble a painting. This is all just media. Art is in the theme that the selection evokes regardless of the medium in use. And that happens in the mind.

My brother is a world class musician. Years ago, he took a few years off (out of disgust over the business side of music). He started working with Photo-Shop and within a year he was the art director of a national magazine and winning awards. It was a major shift in media to go from music to graphics, but it was the same creative mind busy selecting away.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 3/31, 6:31pm)

Post 4

Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 6:56pm

I don't agree. Here's how I see it:

A photo is not a recreation of reality in the required sense; it is more a reproduction by mechanical means. And because of this, it does not have the degree or intensity of selectivity required to express a sense of life in the completeness and detail that rises to the level of artworks. In fact, it has a certain unavoidable inclusivity! That's not to say that a photo can't be artistic in many ways, or that it can't show some elements of the producer's sense of life.

Similarly, a painter who traces from photos (as opposed to using them as some sort of guide or control) is, to the extent that he relies on the technique, that much less of a good artist. A true artist wants total control, like a Creator. (Hence, I believe, the term "recreation of reality.")

Post 5

Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 8:31pm

Holy crap! What are the odds?? Or was the picture modified to include all three phenoms? That would suck.

Post 6

Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 9:16pm

I would say that just as paint on a canvas is not the definition of painting as art, so a snapshot is not necessarily art. But the distinction between a reproduction and a re-creation is too vague for me to find essential. If a photographer selects a subject, choses an angle or a pose, a lense and a filter, and an exposure to depict some object of beauty, then he is producing art. If there is skill and selectivity and a sense of life is expressed, beauty is depicted, and emotion is evoked, then there is art.

(Consider also that a film is nothing more than a sequence of photographs (or images) - photographs of a drama, of course - but not disqualified as art simply because it is a reproduction of a performance.)

And can anyone tell me of what a building as architecture is a re-creation?

The beauty of the image remains, however we chose to classify it.

Ted Keer

Post 7

Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 9:53pm

Rodney,

Each of the arts has a different path to our emotions. We aren't effected in the same way by a piece of music that we love as we are by a novel that we love. Same with a movie. I don't think a painting can ever have the same range of values that can be excited, for most people, as a movie. And a novel has the greatest range and power, I'd say, but for some people difficulties with some aspect of reading fiction get in the way. Different paths to connecting with our sense of life, but also different levels of power and range. Before the computer with its ability to do literally anything with an image, a photo would have been the least powerful and the hardest to meet the limits of "selective recreation" just through composition and limited darkroom techniques.

There is a great deal of selection that goes on with photography. I spent a summer taking courses at University of Wyoming. But even if you wouldn't credit that selectivity as enough, then there is what happens in the dark-room and then after that are the computerized effects that can overcome every instance of inclusivity.

So I still think that a photo can be a work of art. But, in fairness, once an image is in a computer what one is doing is no longer really photography.

-------------
Edit: I was working on this when Ted wrote his last post - I think he said it more elequently than I have.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 3/31, 9:56pm)

Post 8

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 12:34am

The photo was taken with slow speed shutter, so if the photographer was continually taking these shots during the fireworks display, the odds are very high that the lightning would be captured with the fireworks.

Post 9

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 6:44am

Do not confuse the aesthetics of something with it being an art.. Aesthetics is concerned with the nature of beauty - and is found in the crafts, as well as fine art... Photography, like architecture, is a craft - it's fundamental nature is that of a recorder, as architecture is that of shelter - a utilitarian usefulness - yet each has aesthetics in it, varying depending on the concern placed with enhancing the sense of beauty within. The sense of beauty is the awareness of the fundamental sense of order and harmony within reality, however complex and perhaps chaotic first appearances may be - because in art, being for contemplative purposes, it is of greater importance as a means of directing the contemplative, and seeing it at times heavily displayed in architecture [as, for instance, the works of Frank Lloyd Wright], there arises the confusion of presuming architecture as art, or a particular photograph as art, due to its enhancing as much as possible with the given the sense of beauty and order or harmony. Nonetheless those are, fundamentally, utili\tarian in nature, and as such crafts, not fine art.
(Edited by robert malcom on 4/01, 6:46am)

Post 10

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 6:44am

I suppose I have a suspicious nature � perhaps skepticism bred from the many scams on the Internet and elsewhere. This photo, coming from NASA, would make it more credible, however. Can't find anything on Snopes.

The reflections on the water from the two lightning strikes seem not quite right. I would have expected that the left most reflection would be about as prominent as the other.

Sam

Post 11

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 7:42am

As for the possibility of the photo being a fake, keep in mind that the light from the fireworks lasts for several seconds, long enough so that during a large show one would expect that a lightning flash and a rocket-burst would overlap. Since it is admitted that the image is a composite, we could still ask, if the events were not exactly simultaneous, but were shown in a video clip occurring within seconds of each other, would they not still be stunning?

It's nice to have agreed at least in part with Steve & Robert here.

Ted Keer

Post 12

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 8:55am

If there was too much of a time lapse, I would expect the people to be more blurred. Unless, of course, the photographer only used the device on the top half of the picture.

Post 13

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 8:57am

--but if that were the case, the clouds would look smeared, I think.

Post 14

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 1:27pm

Robert makes the distinction between the aesthetics of a thing and art. He makes the distinction between crafts and art.

The purpose of the production seems to be the heart of the distinction. A building�s primary purpose is a shelter and therefore not a work of art even though it may rightfully be judged beautiful.

And a photograph is a recording � a utilitarian purpose � although it may still be considered beautiful.

But I�m not sure I agree. What was the purpose in the creator�s mind? Was a photo intended to be art? And what is the primary purpose in how it is used? Is it hung on a wall in an art gallery?

I don�t see that purpose can be applied to an entire medium � like photography � since there may be those who are using it for the purpose of creating art. The question is, "Are any of them succeeding?" And before man had cameras they recorded with sketches and with paintings. We still record to a minor degree with sketches. I don�t think we could say all sketches are recordings anymore than we could say all sketches are art. We need to look at them individually and not by medium but by the definition of art.

If the definition of art is the selective recreation of reality then we are back to the question of how much selectivity is available with photography. We would have to look at any image (painted, sketched, or photographed) and analyze it on its own merits.

I have always thought that outside of fiction (be it a movie, short-story, play or novel) there are problems with identifying what is art. Like Michael asked, What is the reality that music a selective recreation of? Certainly music is intended to be art - purposefully so - and it is intensely selective in whatever is the creation or recreation and it functions emotionally as art does and it has no other, utilitarian usefullness. And, how much of a powerful theme can one get out of an unchanging, two-dimensional image (regardless of the medium)? When you get away from fiction I think it is hard to define what art is and isn't.

Post 15

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 2:01pm

Be it known that I don't fully subscribe to AR's definition of art either. For example, as many have observed, she left out music. I think she chose the definition she did because it seemed to cover most art, and especially literature, which was her own field--and that music needed more investigation to see how it related to what she saw as the main facts about art.

(Edited by Rodney Rawlings on 4/01, 2:08pm)

Post 16

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 2:06pm

Rodney, just curious, how do you mean she left out music (since she does discuss it at length in RM.) Thanks.

Post 17

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 2:09pm

Left it out from her definition.

Post 18

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 2:39pm

She didn't mention it by name, but she didn't mention any art form by name. If you mean that she left it out because music doesn't recreate reality, there are arguments (notably one by Roger Bissell) that it DOES...(something along the lines that music recreates a specific aspect of reality, motion.)

Rand didn't exclude it, if you look further in RM where she writes that the major art forms are all sense-dependent, and that we'd have to develop a new sense for the creation of a new art form.
(Edited by Joe Maurone
on 4/01, 3:00pm)

Post 19

Sunday, April 1, 2007 - 3:02pm