I have long thought the question whether the photograph can be art a somewhat sterile one – shades of angels dancing on the heads of pins – and ultimately not particularly productive. It is something that has been written about at considerable length and a number of books on the subject (such as ‘Art and Photography’, ‘Art Photography Now’, ‘The Photograph as Contemporary Art’, to name just a few) grace the shelves in my study. So it is a little ironic to come across a single sentence now that in many ways I feel both encapsulates and resolves the debate, that was written as long ago as 1913.
Marius de Zayas was, I am afraid to admit, pretty much unknown to me before now, notwithstanding that I was aware of Stieglitz’s work with Gallery 291 and his championing of modern European art in New York at the beginning of the 20th Century. (I had to look him up on Wikipedia!) So being introduced to his essay “Photography and Artistic-Photography” from Stieglitz’s Camera Work in 1913 has been something of a revelation. (I have used the Journal1913 link as the other one cited in the course material comes up “Access Denied”.)
His opening sentence is the most succinct formulation on the subject I have ever come across:
“Photography is not Art, but photographs can be made to be Art.”
Photography is a process which, as de Zayas argued, seeks to find an objective view of Form. It is scientific and investigative, without preconceptions. Artistic-photography on the other hand is subjective, the artist-photographer bringing his or her preconceived ideas and notions to bear on Form: “… the [artist-photographer] uses the objectivity of Form to express a preconceived idea in order to convey an emotion.”
It is not quite as straightforward, or as simplistic, as one saying “it is art because I say it is”, but certainly in de Zayas’s view, as I read him, the intention of the person releasing the shutter is a significant element.
But – and there always seems to be a but – is his formulation wholly correct today in the light of the unprecedented number of images now being produced? For very many of the quotidian images that proliferate today I think the distinction does have validity. However, what about those images that are taken with some intention on the part of the person taking them beyond that of mere objective representation, but which fail to meet or effectively communicate those intentions? Do they cease to count as ‘art’ or are they just ‘bad art’.
And what about the works that are produced simply as a record? From the very acts of choosing what to shoot, where and when, is not the most apparently straightforwardly documentary work (in the widest possible sense) not also affected by the subjective views and intentions of the photographer and so capable of being art? I know that Don McCullin, for example, refuses to refer to himself as an artist, as anything other than “a photographer”, and that his work does not necessarily aspire to be “art”, but I cannot help but see much of it in that vein, as art, and good art at that.
Again I come back to the example of Bernd and Hilla Becher: does their ostensibly purely objective, typological approach not also amount to art?
What I am left thinking is that de Zayas’s formulation is largely correct but as ever when a dichotomy such as this is set up (and I do not like such superficially clear distinctions much at all!) it can at times turn out to be a false one, and at least to have slippery, mutable boundaries. If nothing else I guess it is for this last reason that I find the art/not-art debate so ultimately unhelpful and dissatisfying.
So what I am? Artist, photographer, neither, both? I think it varies from time depending on what I am doing and for what purpose. Mostly though I would, I think more accurately, just describe myself as a student of photography – or simply an old bloke who takes pictures.
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