Can a photograph be a work of art?

Answer:

 

A photograph is a disposition of sensible matter and may be so

disposed for an aesthetic end but it is not a human disposition of

sensible matter.

 

Therefore it is not a work of art.

 

- James Joyce.

 

Hi, I read that quote and thought it seems out of date. Has

photography changed since those days? Can it now be a work of art?

Was James Joyce a BS specialist?

 

Cheers.

Is water shooting out of a faucet art? How about if you add ligts? and music and many water shoots and vary the height? I think a picture becomes art when alter the image, weither it be via flash, DoF, time or post processing.

Gushing Faucet Could Land Artist in Court

- By SARAH BLASKOVICH, Associated Press Writer

Thursday, July 21, 2005

 

 

(07-21) 02:44 PDT LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --

 

 

Mark McGowan went into the tiny backroom kitchen of a south London gallery three weeks ago and flipped on the cold water. He didn't turn it off, and doesn't plan to for an entire year.

 

 

"The Running Tap," as it's called, is McGowan's effort to protest against wasted water in London by blatantly letting it go down the drain.

 

 

"When you've got the tap on at home, you don't think about it. That's why this is art, because it makes people consider it," the environmentalist said.

 

 

The gushing faucet is an expensive exhibition that could waste about 3.9 million gallons of water. It could also land McGowan in a legal battle with Thames Water, the utility company. The circular sink has already swallowed about 193,000 gallons of water during a season declared the driest in London since 1976.

 

 

The project has outraged Thames Water, which said it could cost about $23,320 if the faucet runs for 365 days. The water company pleaded with McGowan to close the tap, but in vain.

 

 

"I think he certainly made a point," said Thames Water Spokeswoman Hilary Bennett. "We understand where he's coming from and we're sympathetic to that. However, he should turn it off now."

 

 

After two angry Londoners shut the tap off, McGowan turned it back on.

 

 

"If you're going to waste some water, you might as well waste it for a year," McGowan said. "It's always good to complete projects."

 

 

The biggest threat to McGowan's flowing form of art is a pipe ban, expected to be issued in August, which could force him and other Londoners to keep their taps turned off.

 

 

If necessary, Thames Water will prosecute McGowan under the Water Industry Act of 1991 for belligerently wasting the liquid. Thames Water isn't sure, however, exactly how to go about it.

 

 

"The legislation wasn't designed with this situation in mind," said Chris Shipway, Thames Water spokesman. "We're investigating the legal options and looking at what actions we can take against him."

 

 

McGowan previously participated in equally audacious exhibitions including sitting in a bathtub of baked beans with french fries in his nose to support the full English breakfast, and pushing a nut with his nose for seven miles to protest student debt.

 

 

The House Gallery is currently responsible for paying the water bill and has stood behind McGowan's artistic endeavors. Even so, they can't afford to pay for the tiny cascade that wastes about 9,200 gallons a day.

 

 

"The gallery probably couldn't foot the bill for an entire year," said volunteer Sarah McIntyre. "We're sort of taking a risk, because we're pretty poor."

 

 

McGowan said he hopes for a flood of donations to help keep the faucet flowing, but until then, the gallery is nervously awaiting the monthly bill.

 

 

"If it wasn't so serious, my art would be hysterical. But it's not, is it?" McGowan said of the grave consequences of wasting the precious liquid. "I think it's one of my best pieces because it's so simple."

 

 

The silver sink is the same basin that gallery volunteers use to make tea or wash a plate. The dish soap still sits nearby, ready for an after-lunch cleanup.

 

 

But just in case anyone forgets, a hand scrawled note taped just above the sink reads: "If you find the tap off please could you turn it on and leave it running. Thanks."

 

 

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/07/21/international/i000022D12.DTL

"Mr. Joyce, meet Mr. Stieglitz." "Mr. Stieglitz, meet Mr. Joyce." "Now gentlemen, I expect a clean fight with no head butting, biting, or blows below the belt."

 

What art may or may not be is constantly being invented or re-invented (depending upon your viewpoint). I'm sure Alfred Stieglitz would heartily disagree with James Joyce. Who's right? Depends upon your viewpoint, many artists today do not consider photography art; many artists today do consider photography art.

 

What do you think? It's all a personal value judgement.

Haha . . . I thought that running water quip might have been alluding to Mark McGowan.

 

I think that Steve's got it right:

What do you think? It's all a personal value judgement.

 

It's amazing how little I care about whether other people consider photography/running taps/etc. to be art.

According to Joyce, sculpture is not art either, as the arrangement of sensible matter for aesthethic reasons is done with a mallet and chisel, and not directly by human hands.

 

Neither would be painting art. Nor music. Plasticine modelling would be OK.

The "faucet" story from England reminds me of Ivan Massow's comment, "British art is in danger of disappearing up its own arse."

From this I conclude that James Joyce is an idiot. What is art to one person is crap to another and vice versa. Don't let anybody tell YOU what art is, decide for yourself. I look at the body styling of a Ferrari and say "Wow, the people who made that are great artists." Then I look at some famous sculpture or painting in a museum and yawn. To each his own.

YES, photography is art.

I confess to not know that much about James Joyce. However, if in fact he believes that art can only be made directly by human hands, then does that not support the idea that his own work is not art. He must have had to lay down words with some form of tool, pen,paper,typewriter- whatever he used. Unless he scratched them in the dirt with his own fingers I guess they are not art either. Art is a conscious choice. More later... Mike.

I guess the question is what is art? My 18 month old with a crayon is not art, my 5 year old and the same crayon is art. I think that 'art' requires time and effort to create, and some 'creatitivity'. What is art to one 'should' be art to someone else, BUT it may not be apresiated by both. There are a lot of paintings that I do not like, but I still recoginize it as art. The same goes with photography, taking a bunch of pictures with a point and shoot camera, without looking through the view finder is not art, (please do not over analysize 'looking through the view finder'), but taking these same pictures and post procesing them in photoshop, or cutting them up in a colouge or scrapbook is art. This is my opinion at this moment, and I reserve the right to change it when somebody with more insite posts a better responce.

Art's whatever Art says it is. If Art says art isn't art, then it's not art so far as Art's concerned.

If it was not obvious, I was only following Joyce's argument to its logical conclusion.

 

Don't know if he was a BS specialist, but this statement is BS.

 

Which doesn't mean that photography is art. Or not.

Art: human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.

 

Of course it is art, well partially, not all photography is art. So it the film, but not

Hollywood, lets think of Fritz Langs Metropolis, or Andalusian Dog.

I think that James Joyce may have been a BS specialist !!

 

Cheers.

If you could create your own micro universe which could be similar or complitely differnt with that what we call "REAL WORLD"?

If you could keep under control everything inside that micro universe

If your micro universe could comunacate with other micro univers than becoming a art.

(sorry about english is not my native language)

Interesting, I think we do that already on a never ending basis. I think our genes drive us to create a micro universe in which we think, and create what some folks call art.

 

I read a few pages of James Joyce's Finnegan's wank and had to put it down.

 

Cheers.

I love Joyce's work (except Finnegan's Wake, which I couldn't understand despite repeated attempts). I think he's wrong here, but what I think he's saying is that a photograph can be taken in an aesthetically pleasing manner but that it can't be considered art because it doesn't spring wholly from the human imagination. That is, it's a manipulation of what exists rather than the creation of something that has never before existed.

 

He has a point, but it's awful narrow hair-splitting one in that he ignores that, at its highest levels, the photographer's vision springs from the same inner place from which spring paintings and novels; without that vision, the image would never be realized.

 

So what the heck: even a genius gets it wrong now and again.

The problem is not whether photography can be art, but in confusing art with finished

product or the technique employed. It is the artist?s psychological attitude toward the

process of creation alone that signifies the artistic validity of the act that produces the "work

of art".

I think Joyce got it wrong too, what a blunder coming from a big brain. I agree with Steve that the imagination can be used for so many things and to judge photography so absoultely seems absurd.

 

Keywords are: blunder, imagination, judge.

 

Cheers.

James Joyce, feeler of souls.

Ben,

 

If you have to ask if its art, then its not.

 

I read somewhere that most of what fills up the museums (and is therefore considered to be "art") is simply "stuff" that has lasted a very long time. Much of the rest of the stuff that is considered "art" is stuff that has either been proselytized by one art "school" or another or has been foisted on the public by art critics who have their own agenda.

 

The better (that is to say, more utilitarian) approach would be to ask whether if the photograph has value as an object to be venerated as a stand alone thing, or has value as commentary on a segment of history or a part of society, or does it have value only to a few surviving folks with memory of the photo's subject. Of course, as time goes by, an individual photo (e.g. of Lt Robert E. Lee or an immigrant on Ellis Island) can move from the last category, to the middle category and finally stand on its own. Any photograph that lasts long enough will become "art".

I agree with you Michael.

The New York Times has an article today on a new book and a show at the

Ellis Island Museum.<br>

<br>

This excerpt of from the museum description:<br>

<br>

"<a

href="http://www.aperture.org/store/travex-detail.aspx?exhibition_id=32">The

exhibit</a>  features an extraordinary collection of images by

Augustus Frederick Sherman, a registry clerk at Ellis Island in the

years 1905-1920. This untrained, yet highly gifted photographer created

hundreds of images documenting the new arrivals to America. Fascinated

by the diverse origins and cultural backgrounds of his subjects,

Sherman created a riveting series of portraits, offering viewers a

compelling human perspective on this dynamic period in our country’s

history".<br>

</div>

<br>

Now you can sample some of the images at the URL above.  They are

striking images today, but how would have they been judged a century

ago?  Fortunately they lasted, so it doesn't matter; today they

are "art".

"If you have to ask if its art, then its not."

 

I agree. I also believe that if you care whether or not it's art, you're not a photographer.