Photography

“Photography corrected errors of vision, showed nuances of tonal recession, and, all told, initiated the painter into “the secrets of nature.” –Delacroix

This statement made me really think about photography as an art even more than I had before. To me, photography has been one of my passions for about 5 years. Hearing that it is so controversial whether people consider it as a true fine art or not made me think. I think that you can photograph anything but if you want it to be art, it is. For example: not everything captured on camera is meant for artistic purposes such as a silly instagram post or a Facebook profile picture. In my opinion, sure photography is just pointing and shooting but you have to practice it none the less, just like the masters in painting and drawing have done. It takes practice to get the photo to turn out the way you wanted it to turn out and have the composition you intended. It’s not just looking into a screen or viewfinder and clicking the shutter, it may take a few moments to figure out how or what you are going to capture.

My painting professor made a statement during my critique my class had on Wednesday evening and she said that when painting from a photo, we are not often making it look like a copy, but making it our own and putting our own twist on the photo that the lens couldn’t do for us. I also agree with this statement because if we wanted paintings to look like our photos, why not just keep it like a photo? But then another reason to actually “copy” the photo for painting was that we can challenge our skills and actually make paintings look like photos which is a great tool to have when mastering painting as an art.

So, I think we should leave photography as an art, and I do believe it is an art, and we should just use our photos for paintings as sort of a guide rather than copying the actual photo. What do you guys think about photography being a true fine art? Should it be included into the seven categories of fine arts or not?