Every so often I ponder the question, “What is photographic art?” I realize it’s as contentious as “What is folk music?” but it’s a question that keeps returning. I often wish the term “art” had never been attached to photography. It warps our thinking about photography as a craft medium.
Unlike art art, which is created by an artist, photography is a recording medium. As such, it’s good for recording things like objects, moments in time, and people. It’s a democratic medium — something that has been Kodak’s pitch since the heyday of film, and is still being pitched by makers of digital cameras. There are few families that don’t have snapshots taken by family members, or portraits of family members taken by professionals in a photographic studio.
But these are not the images that become associated with photographic art. The difficulty with definitions is that photography often seems more than a simple recording medium. Even at their most realistic, in the photographs of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Eliot Porter, the things photographed are more than mere recordings. Theirs are images that touch us at a deep level of awe or appreciation.
In the hands of skilled photographers, simple slices of human life become “the definitive moment” as has been applied to much of the work of Cartier-Bresson.
The photographs of these masters might be best described as “the art of photography” rather than “photographic art.” They are superb seers, who are able to translate their seeing into well crafted, recorded images. Both Adams and Weston are famous for their darkroom work, post processing their images to bring out the full impact of their visioning.
Then came digital photography and Photoshop. The ability to manipulate images became much easier than it had been in a wet darkroom. It was suddenly much simpler to do complex processing. People who were good at Photoshop techniques created plug-ins and specialty programs that helped in achieving the best look an image could have.
It didn’t stop there. Every photo editor has special effects features that do everything from creating a watercolour look on an image, to adding a digital frame. The plug-ins made difficult things easy, which has made them more democratic.
I’m all for democratic. I’ve loved photography from an early age, and the more people who participate and experiment in the medium, the happier I am.
So, why am I not blissed out? Because I also see laziness. I know a photographer who tweaks up the colour saturation of every image to painful levels, and often uses a plug-in called Topaz Adjust to work in a kind of faux-HDR on most images. I do this at times myself. There are certain images that work well with extreme treatment.
But I’m seeing an increasing number of photographers who apply these techniques to every image, thinking, I suppose, that this creates photographic art. One of them, when asked about it, claims it’s his or her “style.” Style? Technique maybe, but it’s not a style. Style comes from seeing, not from manipulation.
On Flickr, and elsewhere, I often see heavily manipulated images that are stunning. Some of them truly fall into that thin boundary area between art and photography, especially composite image creations that express a vision.
I also see heavily manipulated images that simply don’t succeed. I often think these are produced by photographers who have not spent the time and energy on learning the basics of photography itself, or who try to turn a mediocre image into an exciting one by amplifying the colour.
For me, it doesn’t work. Like any skilled craft, photography requires an apprenticeship. But hard work and apprenticeship to a craft aren’t especially popular these days. It’s easier to use a plug-in.
The new wave of would-be photographic artists I call The Tweakers remind me of people who think they “have a good book” in them, but don’t want to do the hard work of writing it. Or the wannabe poet who never cracks a book on writing poetry, or even a book of poems.
That’s not the way it works.
So I return to wishing that “art” had never been attached to “photographic.” The term too easily serves as a self justification for laziness in seeing and post processing.
Experimentation is good. It’s healthy. But it’s no substitute for photographic vision.














