Photography Isn’t Art

Upon the question “is photography art?” I have to say that no, it isn’t. It is a discipline that can be mastered by passionate people in order to produce art, but it is not art by itself. Paraphrasing Mr. Harold Feinstein’s fine words on the very same topic, we can have a beautifully crafted paintbrush and make some hideous stuff with it. Also someone painting a house can do an excellent job with a rough brush due to the applied technique.

Another example that I like to give to my students is that anyone can use a pen, but a very few will write compelling novels or poems with them. And my favorite example, anyone can learn to use a camera just as anyone can learn how to drive, the meaningful thing is what we do with our camera.

Photography has been suffering this dichotomy of being or not art isn’t something new. Since its early beginnings, photography has been down-seen by the traditional arts, even Walter Benjamin tagged it as “aura-less”.

A Very, Very Personal Opinion on Art

I want to pull out two terms from ancient Greek philosophy, one is poiesis (ποίησις) and the other one is techne (τέχνη). This isn’t a master class in philosophy so don’t worry, the first one (poiesis) refers to the act of creating something from the inside, being the “inside” our feelings and emotions. The second one (techne), refers to the technique used to materialize those emotions pulled deeply from ourselves. For me, that is art. But, it is still society’s role to define or tag something as art. I tend to be very…