Do you class photography as art, and if so do you have anybodys work on your wall?

[churchfcrules]

i have recentley started posting some pics on accyweb, and see that the "today in pictures" thread is quite popular, but do you consider photography art? there are a lot that don't, and also if it is "digitally enhanced, does that take away or add to its value "as art"

also what artist do people have on their walls if any, i have a couple of k mellings framed prints and a small watercolour of pendle, that i picked up in sabden antiques a few years ago, but they arent photos, so do you? and i dont mean the canvases that you can get from department stores with flowers on or cityscapes, something with the artist name on for it to count.

[kestrelx]

I've got a couple of my own photos on the wall. It is art if it's done with artistic intent using lighting and so on.

I have a LS Lowry on the wall but I don't know what it's called, that came to me by accident - I was given it. It has his name on, it's not an original it's a print on board.

[churchfcrules]

Originally Posted by kestrelx

I've got a couple of my own photos on the wall. It is art if it's done with artistic intent using lighting and so on.

I have a LS Lowry on the wall but I don't know what it's called, that came to me by accident - I was given it. It has the name on.

so if you are walking along with your camera, and capture a moment of time, with no forethought into the image, is it art?

[kestrelx]

Originally Posted by churchfcrules

so if you are walking along with your camera, and capture a moment of time, with no forethought into the image, is it art?

I don't think a photo would be that good anyway if you didn't put some thought into it! But then what if you waved it around at some colored lights so you got squiggles on the photo - is that art?

[garinda]

Photography could be used to produce something akin to art, whatever that is.

In this case art seems to be defined as something you'd hang on your walls.

Does that mean wallpaper can be considered art?

Mine's block printed, then coloured by hand, and each roll is initaled.

Is it art?

I'd take a photograph of it.

Though having an artistic bent I have a fear some might steal my photograph, and display it in their homes.

[maxthecollie]

I class photography as an art. I am an amatuer only just starting to do more photos as you can see on my posts. I have 2 prints on my lounge wall of our last dog Gyp from the the originals by local artists gyp1.JPG gyp.JPG
No 1 is from an original done in oils by a Blackburn Artist Peter Worswick
No2 is from an original done in acrylic by a good friend of mine Peter Sherburne.(The artist who presented the Queen with one of his paintings on her recent visit to Accrington)
Peter has since painted a lamb with Gyp with a lamb see gyp3
Gyp was my last dog who we lost to cancer.

[MargaretR]

I have 8 original oil paintings, but only 4 are hung because 3 of them are large and I don't have the wall space (unless I want the place to look like a gallery).

They are all landscapes, done by a friend of my father - Ernie Shaw - in the 70s.

He wasn't/isn't famous, but he did once have an exhibition at the Haworth.

I don't know their value now, but in 1980 they were valued as part of my ex husbands attempt to extract money from me (along with the valuation of all household items).
The big ones were £75 each and the small ones £25 each.

The man who was sent to value them had heard of Ernie Shaw and was impressed.

I keep them for sentimental reasons because I have had them since the 70s.

[Studio25]

Originally Posted by churchfcrules

so if you are walking along with your camera, and capture a moment of time, with no forethought into the image, is it art?

I think that even with a lot of forethought, photography is not necessarily art. I consider a small proportion of my work to be artistic, but not actual art.

In my opinion, for a photo to be art, it needs to be planned in advance with some sort of pre or post processing in mind - whether using filters, dark room techniques or photoshop. But even then, that doesn't necessarily make it art. On my wall, I've got a firework display done in Whitby. It passes all my criteria for "art" - it was planned in advance, took time to get right, was always going to be photoshopped. If it is art, it's not good art.

[mobertol]

Originally Posted by churchfcrules

so if you are walking along with your camera, and capture a moment of time, with no forethought into the image, is it art?

Originally Posted by garinda

Photography could be used to produce something akin to art, whatever that is.

In this case art seems to be defined as something you'd hang on your walls.

For me photography is definitely an art-form in its own right.

I get a bi-monthly magazine -pretentiously called Intelligent Life (I like to kid myself!) it's part of The Economist group, which features fantastic photography of all kinds -portraits, wild-life, architecture...you name it. May be worth looking up on Google -I expect you can see a lot of it. I like looking at images -the more you look the more you see.

Last year I was teaching a group of older teenagers in preparation for an external council of Europe English exam (PET -Preliminary English Test) - on of the oral exam tasks was to describe a photograph for two minutes. Most could only manage a few seconds as they didn't know how to even look at a photo and see beyond the flat image never mind describe it in English!

As to walking along and just mindlessly taking shots -that doesn't happen -you mentally frame what you see to make it pleasing to your eye -even if you do it subconsciously. So as Garinda rightly says - we are categorising it into something to hang on our walls the moment we take it even if we don't realise it.

Why are so many of us keen to put our own photographs on the photo threads here? We are all in our own way trying to share our emotions through what we've seen - perhaps it isn't great art but it is our own take on it.

On my walls I have some of my own photos but they are old ones from the days of my reflex camera -when I used to get things printed -since going digital 10 years ago they are just on the computer and I never print them.

In my kitchen I have a pin-board full of cards, postcards etc of places and things that mean a lot to me -most are cards I sent home from the Lakes, there's a lovely Lowry reprint card and also a beautiful photo by Tommy Martin of Water Nook House in Howtown -one of my most treasured places. Look him up on Fine Art Landscape Photography by Tommy Martin - Tommy Martin Photography and you won't be disappointed -esecially for his shots of the lakes. He has a great gallery too.

[mobertol]

Originally Posted by Studio25

I think that even with a lot of forethought, photography is not necessarily art. I consider a small proportion of my work to be artistic, but not actual art.

In my opinion, for a photo to be art, it needs to be planned in advance with some sort of pre or post processing in mind - whether using filters, dark room techniques or photoshop. But even then, that doesn't necessarily make it art. On my wall, I've got a firework display done in Whitby. It passes all my criteria for "art" - it was planned in advance, took time to get right, was always going to be photoshopped. If it is art, it's not good art.

I am of the opposite opinion -the best photos are often the most unplanned, capturing a fleeting expression on a face for example -art has to have some sponteneity to transmit emotions. Set up and planned is often staged and unfeeling. My best photographs of my god-daughter, and I have taken a lot over the years as she is a lovely model, are the ones I take when she doesn't know and her expression is natural and not posed.

[Less]

Some Photographs are works of art, others can be classed alongside the Turner Prize unmade bed as pure bunk, but most are just happy snaps that don't mean much except perhaps to the taker and a few friends and family.

[mobertol]

Originally Posted by MargaretR

I have 8 original oil paintings, but only 4 are hung because 3 of them are large and I don't have the wall space (unless I want the place to look like a gallery).

They are all landscapes, done by a friend of my father - Ernie Shaw - in the 70s.

He wasn't/isn't famous, but he did once have an exhibition at the Haworth.

I don't know their value now, but in 1980 they were valued as part of my ex husbands attempt to extract money from me (along with the valuation of all household items).
The big ones were £75 each and the small ones £25 each.

The man who was sent to value them had heard of Ernie Shaw and was impressed.

I keep them for sentimental reasons because I have had them since the 70s.

Their value to you is obviously higher than any evaluation -you can't put a price on sentiment

[churchfcrules]

Originally Posted by mobertol

I am of the opposite opinion -the best photos are often the most unplanned, capturing a fleeting expression on a face for example -art has to have some sponteneity to transmit emotions. Set up and planned is often staged and unfeeling. My best photographs of my god-daughter, and I have taken a lot over the years as she is a lovely model, are the ones I take when she doesn't know and her expression is natural and not posed.

have to agree with this, i can't stand , "posed" people photos, they capture the time, but not the moment, if you know what i mean.

we all do them ,but the candid ones always make the better picture, but "technically", not the best photo.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by mobertol

I am of the opposite opinion -the best photos are often the most unplanned, capturing a fleeting expression on a face for example -art has to have some sponteneity to transmit emotions. Set up and planned is often staged and unfeeling. My best photographs of my god-daughter, and I have taken a lot over the years as she is a lovely model, are the ones I take when she doesn't know and her expression is natural and not posed.

Well I'm more in agreement with Studio25.

There's good, and bad photography, and some of it can be artistic.

It all comes down to how we define 'art'.

Art is subjective.

I do think some of the surrealist photographers in the thirties onwards, used the medium to produce work that could have the label 'art' attached to their output. Using it in ways other than to record in two dimensions what existed in reality.

Flash, bang, wallop.

I am a camera.

But am I a living work of art?

[annesingleton]

I think that photography can be classed as art if the photographer uses the medium to express his or her creativity.
On my walls throughout the house I have quite a lot of Gustav Klimt prints - I've admired his work for many years and went to an exhibition of some of his work in Liverpool a few years ago - in real life his art is stunning.