What would you classify as art photography or fine art photography?

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>>2948032

I'd say at this point in the contemporary context; fine art photography has a degree of experimentation and pushing boundaries to produce something beyond reality.

Alvin Booth is a great example of this.

>>2948054
>Alvin Booth
Not OP but thanks for that tip.

There are three kinds of photography: art, documentary, commercial.

They all share many common characteristics, and often a photograph or a photographer's work will ride the fence between two or even all three. The only thing that ultimately differentiates between the three is intent. Commercial photography is created with the obvious intent to sell or offer a service. Documentary photography wants to capture a subject and a scene as it was, with as little editorializing as possible. Art is everything else: essentially, it's a freedom of expression and intent.

What elevates art photography to fine art is the sophistication of that intent and expression.

>>2948032
It's mostly about selling a photo -preferably one that nobody usually would shoot- using verbose boisterous nonsense and huge prints in a fancy art gallery and the like.

Once it or you as the photographer are cool with some affluent buyers or critics, it advances from being seen as "art" to "high art" or something.


"Fine" art is mostly about having not completely excessive image damage and selling it as a feature. You can't have properly exposed, sharp, no nonsense pictures for it. It needs to be like, underexposed B&W multi-exposure nonsense like in the OP or such.

>>2948089

(you)

Another indicator for fine art would be something you'd print on a 44inch 13 ink cartridges inkjet that covers 99% of Adobe98RGB, on an 100yr-proof 500g/sqm archival paper/rag framed in hand carved wood covered with gold sheets and UV-filtering glass.

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>>2948032
>what is art?

Ok. The contemporary art scene is basically just a bunch of opportunistic individualists playing games of networking and self-promoting in order to supply an unregulated, speculative marketplace for rich people, where the elites can exercise their power by playing their own vacuous games of defining art, good taste and quality. This cycle is reinforced by government institutions in the form of academia, where the middle class use art as an interpretation platform to justify their pattern recognising skills acquired by indebting themselves for life.

So, the relationship between the properties of an artwork and the concept of art is arbitrary and 100% determined by the given social power structure. Since post-modernism and conceptualism, artists have consistently destabilised and deconstructed previously established understandings of aesthetic value, paving way for this bourgeois circle jerk they've always tried to undermine.

“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money” ― Oscar Wilde

>what is art?

1. Art is an activity which some people feel compelled to engage in.

2. Art is a product which is bought/sold and talked about, usually by people who don't engage in it

>>2950888

what the fuck why are all oscar wildes quotes so true? he knew the truth about everything.

>>2950692
You define art just from the social pov. This is valid but insufficient. It ignores the immanent and psychological aspects.
But even from the social aspect, you missed to outline the general function and need for art in a culture. Actually you just focused on the economic part, which - btw - gives one a feeling of you being a frustrated outsider.

Tho, I agree to the claims in your statement.
And as my suggestion: Next time do not use your definition where the question is "What is art?" but where it is "What is good/successful art?".

Furthermore OP's question was not what art is, but what differs art from fine art in photography.

>>2948032
So, in regard to this and besides all the 'you have to make shittery fartsy to be fine artsy' opinions in this thread, I personally would distinguish fine art in a way where a photograph communicates some kind of a fine spirit. And with fine spirit I mean a certain kind of perspective the photographer's eye has on reality and the world in general.
I would compare it with fine humour, where a commedian can make the most ordinary jokes, but you can hear/read/see/assume the fine spirit of that person behind the surface and anticipate the deepness of his/her thoughts and feelings beyond.

In short: whichever >fine< art exists, it is about the content, not about the form. About what is in it, not about how it looks like.

>>2951304
Your definition is interesting, but I’m not sure I understand.

>with fine spirit I mean a certain kind of perspective the photographer's eye has on reality and the world in general.

So a fine art photograph is specific type of object, where the quality or 'fine art-ness’ is based on 1) artistic intention and 2) the spectator recognising this intention. What kind of spectator, what kind of artist? Wouldn’t the artists or spectators social position be important in this process? Or is it all relative, if I feel the spirit and you don't is fine art to me, but not to you?

Following your comedy comparison, two photographs equal in appearance could be categorised differently if they had different artistic intentions or were made by different people. The properties of the artwork itself is irrelevant, yeah (I agree)? If 'fine art-ness' cannot be communicated through the art object itself, it must be communicated through extra-textual aspects - which I argue are constituted by the social structure.

Still, my main problem is this:

>certain kind of perspective the photographer's eye has on reality and the world in general.

but also

>it is about the content, not about the form

How is 'perspective on reality' not a question of form?

>>2951304
>do not use your definition where the question is "What is art?" but where it is "What is good/successful art?

They are equally hopeless questions, and in my view dependent and co-constituted by each other. Both "artwork" and «quality» (low vs high culture/fine art vs art) are primarily - but not exclusively - fetishised plus-words determined by the given power relations of a society. Someone managed to establish themselves in a hegemonic position and claim an a priori authority on the concepts. I’ve yet to see how good/successful can be demarcated from the social and economic, as these attempts necessarily have to anchor objectivity (this is good) in subjectivity (I think it’s good). This is not to say that all art is equal or a resignation to relativism, just that the aesthetic or artistic criteria of quality is without a priori authority in itself and secondary to political, ideological and economic concepts of quality.

>>2950888

My friends and I are far, far more interested in the art than the money involved with it apart from saving on materials. Wilde was full of shit about that one.

>>2951454
I agree. My premise has been however, that art is something which happens between a creator and an obserever. Hereby it is irrelevant what the creator intented and if another observer interpretates the work differently. It is the sole process of creation and observation in which and inbetween something new happens, and this is: art.
So, you cannot disjoin art from its creator AND observer. Generally.

So-seen the question of who is involved and how many others would see it the same or in a different way is obsolete.

Ergo: in regard to the definition of fine art, we describe a PROCESS which includes the assumption of a fine apirit (as defined before). If, when and why this process happens with who or what is a different question and cannot be an objective topic without talking about social aspects and economics. Which I wanted to avoid in the first place.

>>2951455
I can't disagree with your statement. Still for my taste your perspective has a too strong focus on the establishment. As much as you unmask the thetic definition of mainatream institutions, you simultanously enpower them by granting them the power of definition which they only have because people believe they would have it. Also people like you who critic it.
As mentioned in >>2951459 , art as a process is happening between creator and observer, and the institutional try to determine or measure its value is a joke anyways. Art does not care about objectivity.

The aspect of successful art is a completely different from my pov. I can't see the relation as you stated it. And it's just as less hopeless as the first question.
But, to follow you there, success is a social construct and therefore this question can not be examined without regarding the social environment. Like you did.

>>2948069
which one would test photos to test a camera be in

>>2951459
I kinda agree with your first paragraph. Open work of art/death of the author/minimalism and all that jazz.

The problem is that it seems to fail to say anything about quality, to distinguish good from bad, or to distinguish art form non-art for that matter. Lot's of things can be described as a process of creation and observation in which an inbetween something new happens. Seems like written language and every communicative object created can be fitted into such a definition? The problem is introducing 'fine spirit' into this process.

seems like you're lifting this from some article/theory, got a link/ref?

>>2951466
You are absolutely right. I've been reading too much critical theory lately and thus my perspective on art have become pretty...bleak.

I'm well aware of the problem you're describing though, in fact you pretty much described the exact same problem discussed by Fredric Jameson in his book on postmodernism:

>What happens is that the more powerful the vision of some increasingly total system or logic -- the Foucault of the prisons book is the obvious example -- the more powerless the reader comes to feel. Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralyzed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.

>>2951474
I'll take your assumption as a compliment.

I can't see your irritation. When art is the inbetween process, then fine art is the case of the existence of a coeval bridge, which is ignited between the paticipants, and which is only possible because the two understand the underlying deepness beyond the form.
You can't expect fine art without two fine souls meeting.

>>2951472

Documentary.

>>2951506
but it's not taken to document the subject

>art requires both a creator and observer

doubtful, unless you consider the creator to be an observer as well. art in the purest sense is a human impulse that comes from within, cavemen were making paintings in uninhabited caves that no one would ever see and crafting objects for themselves with no intent of anyone else "observing" it

>>2951511

It's taken to document the function of the lens and the camera.

>>2951523
bullshit.

learn the difference between a work and art.

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>a work of art

if it is largely regarded as 'art' only by people under the age of 30, it isn't art.

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>>2951458
>apart from saving on materials
>Wilde was full of shit about that one.
>When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money
>saving on materials

>>2951562
what a stupid and narrow-minded statement. .. it must be really "interesting" to have a conversation with you.

>>2951747
found a mad millenial nu-male

>>2951536
seems like a weird way to use the way document to me but i'm not a native speaker

what about fake photos meant to spread lies? can you really 'document' lies?

>>2951862
jep. this supports my assumption. what a hideous person you are. *shudder*

>>2951944

>*shudder*

Is it 2008 again?

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>>2951947

>>2951904
No you're right, it doesn't make sense. What >>2948069 is referring to with documentary photography is the epistemic potential of the medium (as opposed to the aesthetic/art or commercial potential). That is, the cameras ability to represent or transcribe physical reality through a more or less automatic and/or mind independent process. Both within academia and in a more common popular understanding some variation of this automatic process is understood to be the realist/epistemic/documentary privilege of photography. A photograph of a test chart has little documentary value as the represented object is of little interest, just the way in which it is represented. Obviously there is no aesthetic value in the test chart either. It doesn't really fit either category, but since these photos are made to evaluate what camera/lens to buy/rent, I'd say they're mostly commercial, at least in their function.

>>2951944
you don't really belong here lad

>>2952507
orly? that's good news.