As a photographer I still find myself questioning what is art and what ain’t. I say ain’t cos thats the way I talk. It should in fact be ‘isn’t’ & it should also be ‘speak’ instead of talk… thats the English lesson over.
That was early for one of my slightly distracting rambles!
So, I sometimes; actually often find the question of art difficult. Who decides what art is?
Why is it that one person can pile up a load of broken disused plastic dolls limbs and it is classed as art selling for thousands of pounds and yet another person presenting the same concept is just some bod that has piled up a load of discarded plastic limbs.
Don’t get me wrong, I see art and think that is art. Its art but I might not want it in my home but I also see things and think ‘how is that art?’.
I struggle with photography being art. I get how some photography is classed as art but can not for the life of me get my head around it all being considered art.
Take this photo:
Image taken on Fuji XT2 ©2016 Jim Jimmy James
I decided to leave the dust on the tuning nuts, not to reposition the tuning head with the reflection and on other aspects of the composition such as the depth of field and so on. However, is it just a photo of my bass guitar with lots of depth of field or is it art?
Artistic, yes! Art? I don’t know. What do you think?
A friend of mine, artist Gal Marin has an exhibition at the 1963 Gallery in London I took a number of photographs for him to use as part of his very complex self portrait project. This closes on the 11th September 2016.
Gal has photography, sculpture, ink drawings, chalk artwork and other items. Its art, its obviously art and it is interesting. It has taken him a long time to put the project together and I’m very flattered to have been part of this project that only Gal knew where it was going and had visualised the final presentation.
But what makes my images and the other photographers images art? Again they are artistic but I really struggle seeing my photos as art.
What has prompted me to write this blog post, well I read a tweet about an article on Nicholas Serota by Charlotte Higgins via the photographers gallery and it makes me think that actually, modern artists, including photographers are very lucky to have people fighting their corner.
What are your thoughts?
Kind regards,
Jim Jimmy James
jim-jimmy-james 
As the old saying goes, Jimmy; “I don’t know much about Art, but I know what I like.”
My own take on things is fairly straightforward. Take a photo, and it’s a photo. Set up a situation, perhaps a still life, even a guitar head, and you are beginning to take the step from photography into Art. If you don’t know his photos, look up Man ray. That was Photography as Art, I suppose. I like a lot of his stuff, anyway.
The other old definition is that ‘Something is Art if the artists claims it is’. All a matter of perception, when it comes down to it.
Cheers mate, Pete.
Sorry, missed the capital. That was Man Ray.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Ray
Cheers for the link too.
I will check out that work. Thanks for the suggestion.