Do you think photography is an art?

20 August 2008

Do you think photography is an art?

Posted by JanMurphy on 20 February 2008 at 2:41pm in Photography & Photographic Artists

"There are three views of photography commonly discussed in all realms of art by critics, painters, and photographers pertaining to whether photography is beneficial to art or whether it is art at all. The first view is that photography is not an art because it is produced with a mechanical device and by chemical and physical phenomenon not by hand and inspiration. The second view is that photographs would be useful to art but should not be equal in creativeness to painting and drawing. The final theory is that because photography is so similar to lithography and etching then it would be beneficial to the arts as well as culture."

"Photography has played a controversial but an important role in the arts for the last 150 years. The question still remains whether photography is an art or a new form of documentation seen by the eye instead of the mind."

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Permalink Reply by Steven Keirstead on 25 April 2008 at 3:23pm: Not at all, I even have a photocollage nude on my website. I'm just pointing out that some people might interpret some nude photos as pornography, even though the creator might consider them high art. The obvious example is Robert Mapplethorpe's work which was hugely controversial in the US. In Boston when it was shown at the ICA in 1990 there were protests for and against the exhibition, and some of the older city councilors tried to prevent the exhibition from opening. Interference by the US Senate scuttled the same show when it was supposed to go to the Corcoran gallery in Washington, D.C. and resulted in huge changes to the National Endowment for the Arts. I do consider his work art, and any gallery in the US or Europe would probably have no legal problems now showing his work.

Anyway, my point was if the creator intends a nude as art, even a highly erotic or sexually charged one, the photographer should have an easy time avoiding prosecution for making or exhibiting the work. Pragmatically, if it's called "art" in the US, a photo will enjoy the protection of the First Amendment, while pornography will have many more restrictions placed on it (subjects must be over 18 years old, minors must be protected from seeing it, et cetera).

That's the theory anyway. Unfortunately, some photographers nevertheless experience harassment from over-zealous law enforcement. In a case in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1995, Toni Marie Angeli took pictures of her son nude for a photo class and took her film to Zona, a professional photo lab, for development. When she went to pick up the negatives, she was shocked to be confronted by police who had been called in by a lab technician. The confrontation escalated and the police arrested her for disorderly conduct (for saying F*ck you and knocking over a lamp), and pornography charges were never instigated. She was convicted on the disorderly conduct charge.; ▶ Reply to This