# Clarification....Fine Art



## Heavyweight67 (Jul 6, 2013)

This may seem like a strange/uneducated question, What is Fine Art photography...

I have searched Google re definition, without a clear clarification of what it is or who decides what is or isn't fine art...

Was browsing through the Focus magazine, allot of what is featured is/or seems to be Large Format/Medium format Film (not digital) allot seems to pre-date digital....

From Landscape to nudes, still life to abstract...

As a forum of Photographers, what do you consider Fine Art photography?


----------



## Nitroman (Jul 6, 2013)

Interesting question ...! 

I think the whole 'fine art photography' genre is open to interpretation, so I can't give a definitive answer to it but i have my own personal thoughts. 

I think fine art photography is the high end of the creative craft. It's primarily non digital or at least has some connection with traditional photo skills - such as film, darkroom or alternative processes. Prints such as silver gelatine or especially platinum prints are also extremely archival and the latter last as long as the paper they are printed on - maybe 1000 years.

To me, digital photography is too easy, too clinical and somehow along the way digital photography loses it's soul. You really can't beat the tactile experience of developing a black and white negative in proper darkroom chemicals and watching the magic happen. It's almost like alchemy. 

With all that said, I know art photographers who use digital cameras as a capture medium and then tweak the images to produce high end fine art too. A well done Giglee print on art paper also has an incredible tactile quality and the prints apparently last longer than traditional darkroom silver halide based materials. 

Perhaps there is no definitive answer ... Some people might argue that Damien Hirst's sheep in formaldehyde isn't really art ... but somebody paid a lot of money for it so maybe it is ! ;D


----------



## zim (Jul 6, 2013)

something with a border round it


----------



## GaryJ (Jul 6, 2013)

This will bring the same views as when CDs started to usurp the analogue 33 1/3 world. When you look at those multi million $ images ,esp the one of the girl in the dress as well the Rhine one ,it seems the answer is ....whoever will pay for it can call it what they want.


----------



## dinsy (Jul 6, 2013)

I'd say that Fine Art photography exhibits a certain aesthetic refinement. Of course, that's very general and subjective, but could it be a starting point for a definition?


----------



## hamada (Jul 6, 2013)

make it B&W....print it on expensive paper. sell it for lots of $.

if it´s a boring image... print it HUGE.
and if you have a name in the fine art scene you can even sell snapshots printed on baryta as fine art.

oh i forgot... when you make a youtube video about fine art prints,wear white cotton gloves!!


----------



## CharlieB (Jul 6, 2013)

As they say, "yes its art, but will it sell?"

I think with as with all art, fine art photography should be compelling. It should be emotionally evocative for its own sake.... apart from social or political or popular statement.

Most "fine art" is not in that league, whether photography, or paint on canvas, or clay, or steel... Much is just a social facade and patronage.


----------



## unfocused (Jul 6, 2013)

There is Fine Art Photography and then there are photographs that are fine art. Two very different things.

Fine Art Photography" generally refers to a subset of commercial photographs produced primarily to serve decorative purposes. Aesthetically, they are often attractive, but seldom compelling and unlikely to stand the test of time. At their worst, they may be overwrought HDR images blown up to massive sizes or they may be black and white images made in the "style" of photographers like Ansel Adams, but bring nothing to the table that Adams didn't say back in the 1930s.

It is much more difficult to define photographs that are fine art. The somewhat flip answer would be anything that art critics, curators, collectors and gallery owners say is art. And, there is certainly a lot of truth to that, going as far back as Alfred Stieglitz, who set the standards for what was considered photographic art for much of the first half of the 20th Century. When Stieglitz's tastes changed, the art world followed and artists rose or fell from grace according to his preferences. Fortunately, Stieglitz had good taste.

Generally, but not always, most photographs that are considered true art represent some type of innovation and clarity of vision that is unique to the photographer. Many images that we consider fine art today were never intended to be such when originally photographed, but they have endured because they speak to certain truths and display an aesthetic that is timeless. 

The deceptively simple answer may be that art photography is the pursuit of photography as a means of personal expression. 

While it's popular to demean contemporary photographers who are considered to be artists, there are many that I find quite deserving of that term. I am particularly fond of Ryan McGinley, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky and Martin Parr. The subject of photography and art is an endless topic of debate and discussion and there are hundreds of excellent books that delve into the topic. One can easily spend a lifetime seeking the answer to your question.


----------



## distant.star (Jul 6, 2013)

.
Commendations on asking the question. Most people are afraid of asking a question like this as they don't want to take the chance of looking like a rube. But this is a complex question that I've never been able to answer.

My flip answer is that if you have an MFA degree, any picture you create is "fine art." If you don't have the MFA, nothing you create is "fine art." Frankly, my experience so far suggests that's as good an answer as any. My sincere answer is that I have no damn idea.

If you're interested in linkage between genuine visual Art and photography, this video by Adam Marelli is a great fundamental beginning. I looked for something like this for years:


Bridging the Gap: Classical Art Designed for Photographers


----------



## Chuck Alaimo (Jul 6, 2013)

I'd say the answer to this is highly subjective, nebluous, in the eye of the beholder. Is it fine art because of the name of the person who shot it? Or is it fine art only because of the price tag attached. This is true for all fine art, not just photography. 

I do believe that you cross a point though, where name and status become more important than what the artist actually produces. The Rhine II was brought up here. If you or me were to have taken that shot it may not even have made the cut for our websites. It's a really boring image. But it was shot by Andreas Gursky, and anything shot by him is sought after by those wit way too much disposable income - $4.3 million. And guess what, rhine II was taken throughdigital processing -- "Extraneous details such as dog-walkers and a factory building were removed by the artist via digital editing.[3] Justifying this manipulation of the image, Gursky said "Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine cannot be obtained in situ, a fictitious construction was required to provide an accurate image of a modern river." 

So in short -- just defining what is art is nebulous, subjective, eye of the beholder. Defining Fine art is just as subjective, nebulous, and eye of the beholder, at least until your uber famous, then a doddle on a napkin is fine art worth multiple millions....


----------



## woollybear (Jul 6, 2013)

Maybe the answer I got from wood turning helps...

If you turn a bowl and sell it, its worth X

If you turn a vessel and sell it, its worth 2X

If you turn a vessel and name if (e.g. serendipity) its fine art and its worth 4X

If you turn a vessel and name it, and are famous for turning bowls, its worth 8X

But in the end, its still just a wooden bowl


----------



## dougkerr (Jul 6, 2013)

Traditionally, "fine art(s)" was a term that served to distinguish such arts as sculpture, painting, and musical composition and performance from "practical" arts such as carpentry, furniture making, watchmaking, cuisine, and the practice of law. It often distinguished a division of a university devoted to somewhat that range of disciplines.

The term is perhaps best left to that usage.

If we were to agree what "fine art photography" was, what could we do with that wisdom? Perhaps know in what division of the State Fair we should try and enter our work? How to describe a print that was stolen to the insurance company?

Best regards,

Doug


----------



## yogi (Jul 6, 2013)

It is not so easy to define because the definition, or idea of fine art is always changing, just as cultures and societies and humans are always changing. On the one hand, one's idea of good art is very subjective. An artist can be a financial and popular success, but panned by the critics. and vice-versa, and both.I think Wikipedia gives a pretty good definition of what constitutes fine art, and fine art photography (at least in this period of time). Some countries give fine art a higher status than crafts, and some dont. Also, see wikipedia's opinion of avante-garde, keeping in mind that Wikipedia's definitions and ideas are those of various people, most(or all?) of whom are in the academic community. One idea i like is what is the photographer's intent for the images: marketing, recording of an event for historical records, purely for aesthetical reasons, to be used as an aid in creating canvas paintings, scientific study or records,etc., and sometimes those reasons cross over to produce a combination of results. The Hubble telescope was intended for scientific research, but i personally find the images of galaxies, nebulae,etc very pleasing to look at, and at the same time stimulate my curiosity about the mysteries of the universe and life. Would those images be considered fine visual art? I am tempted to say you know it when you see it, but that wont work as a definition either, since so many people have different ideas and reactions to art. In short, I believe there can be very generalized and constantly changing ideas of what fine art is, and the difinition cant be placed in a square box with exact dimensions. The Impressionist painters were slow to be accepted in the academic world, but see how popular their art is now, and how much it sells for. When i was a young child and first saw images of Van Gogh's paintings in a magazine, my immediate reaction was WOW! I could not stop looking at them. What was the purpose of those photographic images of Van Gogh's art? I still sometimes get the same reaction today. At the same time, i like the phrase "variety is the spice of life". I would get bored with seeing the same old images or same old style of creativity all the time. Originality sometimes can be good.


----------



## CharlieB (Jul 7, 2013)

we can just abbreviate fine art as fart, as in artsy-fartsy


----------



## Heavyweight67 (Jul 7, 2013)

distant.star said:


> .
> Commendations on asking the question. Most people are afraid of asking a question like this as they don't want to take the chance of looking like a rube. But this is a complex question that I've never been able to answer.
> 
> My flip answer is that if you have an MFA degree, any picture you create is "fine art." If you don't have the MFA, nothing you create is "fine art." Frankly, my experience so far suggests that's as good an answer as any. My sincere answer is that I have no damn idea.
> ...




I watched this a while back, have to admit some of it made sense, but then I will have to also admit that some of it made no sense ( to my mind at least)...

Seems all of the responses to my question gave me the answer....and that answer is Art is subjective, but also Art is Art or Fine Art when academics say so...

Guess it's one of those " Don't ask questions" or maybe "Don't question what is art"


----------



## crasher8 (Jul 7, 2013)

Easy, Photos you sell that are you not hired to shoot for an occasion.


----------



## AprilForever (Jul 7, 2013)

hamada said:


> make it B&W....print it on expensive paper. sell it for lots of $.
> 
> if it´s a boring image... print it HUGE.
> and if you have a name in the fine art scene you can even sell snapshots printed on baryta as fine art.
> ...



Said so well... Here in the South FLorida, our local Ansel Adams is Clyde Butcher. Most of his pictures are ok, but not really too interesting. He takes them on a 16x20 camera, and even bigger, to, often, and prints them wildly huge. It's all black and white. The Everglades are mostly boring in black and white. But, he sells fine art! The Fort Lauderdale airport has a HUGE Clyde Butcher print of a boring scene. It's way to full of trees and branches and distraction and whatnots to make any clear sense; chaos ruins all chance of compositional arrangement. But, it's huge, black and white, and made by a famous artist, therefore, it must be art!


----------



## distant.star (Jul 7, 2013)

AprilForever said:


> hamada said:
> 
> 
> > make it B&W....print it on expensive paper. sell it for lots of $.
> ...



Interesting. I saw something about Butcher a few months ago. He makes those huge prints himself using gigantic equipment. Looks like he has a darkroom the size of a small gymnasium.


----------



## TexasBadger (Jul 7, 2013)

Even though "fine art" is subjective, all fine art exudes emotion. If you view a photograph and do not feel an emotional response, it is not fine art to you. If you do feel emotion when viewing, it is.


----------



## notapro (Jul 7, 2013)

You ask an interesting question, Heavyweight67. To this point, several persons have touched upon matters relevant to answering your question, and I would like to complement what they have written. As the question you pose may appear deceptively simple, so may appear what I write below (as might what others have written above and may write after my post), but let there be no doubt that we could spend a lifetime discussing this matter.

A “question behind your question” is “What is art?” Photography is one form, genre, or medium of art, and forms, genres, media, etc. *per se* are not substantive to the question of whether something is art, as the status of a work as art is not determined by the work being (for example) a painting, a sculpture, a dance, something written, or a photograph. Put another way, something can be a dance without it being art, something can written without it being art, and something can be a photograph without it being art.

Above this post, Canon Rumors members unfocused, yogi, and distant.star address elements of the “artworld” (with this term, I make reference to Arthur Danto). In response to your question, unfocused writes, ". . . anything that art critics, curators, collectors and gallery owners say is art". Distant.star makes reference to M.F.A.-created work v. non-M.F.A.-created work. Yogi appears to recognize the role of a photographer’s (i.e., artist’s) intention to create a photograph as art and not “just” as a photograph, and he also recognizes with what he writes the notion of art as a social construction. CharlieB incorporates thoughtful humor into the thread with his proposition that we ". . . abbreviate fine art as fart, as in artsy-fartsy".

Cogent in this thread is that context and status are crucial to the status of a work as art. If one self-presents as an artist, creates intentionally a work as an artwork to have it displayed or appreciated in an appropriate context (e.g., a gallery, museum, exhibition, concert hall, theater, or other like setting), then one’s creation is art within relevant and appropriate contexts. It is right to remember, additionally, that this “definition” of art does not speak to the matter of whether an artwork is “good/bad”, “useful/useless”, “emotive/non-emotive”, “valuable/valueless”, “practical/impractical”, and so forth. What this conception of art does speak to is the matter of the artworld as an “institution” and how the interplay of socio-historical context, status, and aesthetic theory (to name only three factors) are inextricably connected with what is art, who is an artist, and how/why works might be perceived as art (reference here is to George Dickie).

Content *per se*, then–like genre or medium–is neither necessary nor sufficient to the classification of a work (e.g., a photograph) as art (reference here to aesthetician Susanne Langer). Furthermore, while art may not be “concrete” in the sense that physics or chemistry can be, it does not follow that it is “only” or “purely” subjective. Art norms do exist, after all, and like many norms, they vary socio-historically . For art, then, one cannot conclude rightly or assume “pure subjectivity” due to an absense of universally applicable standards or norms.

Much (or all) of what everyone has contributed to this thread so far touches upon this artsy-fartsy post of mine, and I hope that we all have been (and will be) helpful in responding to your question.


----------



## Sporgon (Jul 7, 2013)

Virtually all photography should be considered 'fine art' as it serves no purpose beyond being looked at for pleasure. 

However one could argue that some photography such as identification photos- passport pictures for instance, are not fine art as their purpose is not for viewing pleasure, but a specific practical one.


----------



## Hillsilly (Jul 7, 2013)

When you look through older magazine's espousing medium and large format film photography, just bear in mind that they were (and arguably still continues to be) the preferred medium for any photographer that wanted to print large and retain a lot of detail in their photograph (eg for gallery prints). Once you enlarge a 35mm film frame over 11x14 you tend to see more grain - something that many photographers wanted to avoid.

These days there is less justification for shooting film vs digital. Still...a good medium format camera and any large format camera will have an enlargement advantage over an everyday DSLR. But it is hard work to make a large chemically processed print. So when I see really big prints, to me, that alone is impressive.

Anyway - who decides what is fine art? Well...me. And you. And the girl next door. That bloke down the street. We all do.

More interestingly, of all of the artists out there producing fine art photographs, who decides who becomes famous, well paid, known etc? I don't know, but here is my 2c.

Fine art involves a little more than being in the right place at the right time and just happening to take a great photograph. To me fine art photography is undertaken by an artist with an idea, concept or objective that they are pursuing. The end goal could be as diverse as "I like how orange and blue interact" to "Only I can truly capture nature's beauty" to "I need to bring to the public's attention the impact of the great pacific garbage patch on ocean wildlife". They are passionate about something. And the long term measure of an artist is how well they can convey their message to the often unknowing or uncaring public.

And if fame is what you seek as a fine artist, look up any list of famous photographers. They almost all tend to be focused on a particular genre for extended periods of time. They are also tending to take photographs of interest to the general public at that time. Would Ansel Adams have been as famous if he wasn't taking extraordinary photos of national parks at a time when many people could afford cars and holidays? Would Robert Capa be such a household name if he wasn't one of the D-Day photographers? And Dorothy Lange's images touched a country reeling under the weight of the depression.

It has always been difficult to become a famous photographer. I suspect it is going to get tougher. Digital has really raised the bar for technical competency. Most "amateur" people on this forum are probably better technical photographers than many "pros" twenty years ago. But luckily for artists, technical competency doesn't replace passion, focus and drive (oh... and good marketing, contacts, connections, luck, access, large trust fund so that you don't need a real job...).


----------



## Sporgon (Jul 7, 2013)

The confusion here is the inclusion of the word 'fine'. Nowadays people tend to interpret this as an adjective meaning 'very good', whereas the (compound) noun 'fine art' is used to define art that is not 'applied art'. 

Therefore most photography is 'fine art' whether it be considered good or bad.

(Ooops ; seeing as we're discussing English I though I should amend my grammar ! )


----------



## zim (Jul 7, 2013)

non-flippant reply: Actually I think to difference between a picture and fine art isn’t actually anything to do with the photograph but entirely to do with the quality of presentation.


----------



## tron (Jul 7, 2013)

GaryJ said:


> This will bring the same views as when CDs started to usurp the analogue 33 1/3 world. When you look at those multi million $ images ,esp the one of the girl in the dress as well the Rhine one ,it seems the answer is ....whoever will pay for it can call it what they want.


 ;D ;D ;D


----------



## distant.star (Jul 7, 2013)

.
I don't know if it's improved my comprehension of the fine art concept, but this made for a great Sunday morning read. It's not every day I find cogent and erudite writing, especially on a topic like this. Notapro and Hillsilly, I really enjoy what you've said here.

Recently I've been exploring this more than ever before. A few months ago I walked into a "fine art" photo gallery in a fashionable (people living in the area can afford to buy what they're selling) neighborhood of Philadelphia. Three pictures got my attention.

Famous Alabama artist William Christenberry had a spot. Three of his pictures hung side-by-side as a single work. It was three pictures of a rural roadway corner taken years apart. Interesting to see the change in the landscape over time, but I don't get any great art message from it. If you ask me what human significance it had, I couldn't begin to even imagine. I did however, appreciate it as a depiction of time passing.

The next picture I don't recall the artist. It was a picture of a person holding a fish. I kept looking at it and thinking I'd love to have someone explain to me how this is art. But then, I think there must be people who look at Van Gogh's stuff and wonder the same thing. I'm content at this point to think this question is a beginning to acquisition of knowledge.

The third picture riveted me. I think the title is "Oranges," and it's by Jessica Todd Harper. Apparently, it's the anchor of her book, _Interior Exposure,_ and it can be seen here:

http://www.jessicatoddharper.com/#s=0&mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&p=0&a=0&at=0

There's an almost frightening intimacy to that and other pictures in the book. If I tried for a hundred years I don't think I could ever create even one of those pictures. Also, they are technically perfect or near perfect as photography. She obviously knows what "image quality" means, but then she uses that as a foundation to go way beyond.

While I flippantly say fine art photography is anything created by someone with an MFA degree, I also know there are many people who know far more about this than I do. If they think a person holding a fish qualifies, it's up to me to ask why. And the question, of course, is the beginning.

I don't know if it's something I intuited myself years ago or whether I learned it somewhere, but for years I've comforted myself with the adage: The question IS the answer.

For myself in the world of photography, I don't know that I've yet come to know what the question actually is. So, I'll keep looking and asking until I find that question.


----------

