Is Nature Photography Considered Art?
I guess I am surprised the question needed to be asked.
If nothing else, the fact that Alfred Steiglitz championed the works of Ansel Adams in the 1930’s put the question to rest forever. By that time the works of Timothy O’Sullivan, W. H. Jackson and Eadweard Muybridge had almost become old news – Muybridge photographed Yosemite in the lat 1860’s and was the father of cinematography. In 1861 Carlton Watkins was the first landscape artist to enter Yosemite, he did so with a mammoth-plate camera (which used 18×22 inch glass plates). His photographs of the valley significantly influenced the United States Congress’ decision to preserve it as a National Park. Many think Ansel Adams was the original environmentalist photographer, he wasn’t, it was Watkins. This all happened in the U.S. - in the meantime people on other continents were busy working away.
Here is an interesting perspective presented in an exhibition catalogue for, “Nineteenth-Century Landscape Photographers in the Americas: Artists, Journeymen or Entrepreneurs?” published by the University of Notre Dame in 2011.
I don’t mean what I write below to be braggadocio or controversial, but I seem to have a different outlook about artist, art, and Fine Art than most online. It arises from having chosen an education in Art at the college level and having studied the history of art photography. Things were laid out with a historical explanation without relation to the immediate world. Unless that is you were studying the most contemporary works. But in that case many of the names have dropped through the cracks since then. Anyone ever heard of Guy Bordin and his color derivatives of Helmut Newton?
To begin with it becomes almost necessary to define what one means by the words “art, Art, and Fine Art.” Unfortunately they are words that in today’s jargon are used interchangeably, usually due to not understanding how they differ by people coming up in the world of photography . The words have been mis-appropriated by marketers and mis-applied by creatives.
The simplest way for me to describe this idea is that “Fine Art” isn’t, just because we declare it so, as so many do – this can be seen with youtubers declaring a “minimalist” photograph as “Fine Art”. Fine art instead is usually not apparent in the near time frame. It is not decided by us - usually not in our lifetime (though popularity often changes that element) if our work is fine art. That is the job of others, usually critics, art museum curators, and art historians have the job. The overreaching idea used by the art world is, does the work offer a unique view of the world and its ideas? Is this something the world has not seen or understood before? Fine art is usually enlightening (fresh ideas), hopefully well designed (our brains reject disorder), beautiful (in most cases) and more.
An (A)rtist is one who is a passionate full time creator, driven to constantly be exploring and expressing new ideas. An (a)rtist is one who may or may not be passionate about their work, they likely have other overarching needs above the work. This doesn’t mean they would reject the Artists world if they could.
Traditonally there have been differing levels of skill in the creative world: Artists, artists, artisans, craftspeople, and makers. Or: apprentice, journeyman, master, Artist.