Interesting - I suppose I am a digital art photographer. Heck - I have even had
people insult me saying "I LIKE REAL PAINT" and then they scurry off. I've also
had people say "OH - it's all photoshop, not real art.
Of course I laugh all the way to the bank.
I like the term "digital art" because I spend half my day telling people just
what they are looking at. I do draw a VERY sharp line though as I never ADD an
object, no rainbows or extra unicorns.
Notice my business is "Photo Imagery" and not "photography".
I'm not sure your question has an answer since there would be so many rules - Is
Ansel Adams photos photography? He manipulated all of his! At what point does
pixel bending stop being photography!
(as you can tell - I don't have a clue and my brain hurts now).
Rod
www.melottephotoimagery.com
________________________________
From: silenceintonoise <silenceintonoise@yahoo.com>
To: artshow_photo@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, April 11, 2011 6:54:18 PM
Subject: [artshow_photo] When does a photo stop being a photo?
Hello, my name is Eric and this is actually my first post here. I was anxious to
get some feedback on one of my blog posts regarding an observation I made at a
recent show and thought this would be a good place for it...
I took some time out this past weekend to walk around the art festival in
Gainesville that I was exhibiting at. With somewhere around twenty-six
photographers exhibiting there, I was curious to see what kind of work was being
shown. Overall, the predominate theme was of Florida landscape and nature
photography. There was also several photographers with their own niches of
landscapes and scenery from a variety of regions, florals, and a few unique
people study collections. However, the one display that really caught my
attention was from an artist whose work consisted of heavily manipulated
surrealist images that were very prominently being declared as photographs. This
lead me to ask myself the often debated question of "When does a photograph stop
being a photo?"
On a semi-regular basis I get asked, "Did you do a lot of post-manipulation to
your images?" The answer, of course, is it depends on which image you are asking
about. With most of the images that I am currently displaying at art shows, the
editing is usually limited to color correction or conversion, expansion of the
dynamic range, and on a rare occasion the removal of a distracting element.
Overall though, in almost all my images the base photo has only had a level of
manipulation that could have been achieved in a traditional darkroom.
With that being said, I am in no way a photo purist that believes that a
photograph should appear exactly as the original scene appeared. However, i do
feel there is a certain point at which a photo has had so much digital
manipulation that it can no longer be classified as purely a photograph and has
now crossed a line into what should be under the "digital art" category.
I have noticed that some art shows do have a specific category for "digital
art". Though, in some cases such as The Melbourne Art Festival, there is
actually no longer a photography category and only a digital arts category. This
seems extremely wrong, since a photographer that is still using traditional
photography is clearly not a "digital artist".
What really bothered me about this one artist though was that he was pushing
that he was a "photographer" in such a big way. He had a large metallic sign in
his booth with his name underlined with the title "photographer". In my opinion
there had been so much splicing of multiple images and digital painting that
this could no longer really be considered photography. It also kind of makes me
want to see his source images, since when there is this amount of manipulation
being performed it would be easy to cannibalize stock images into your work
without anyone being able to tell.
Really, just like many other debates this is an entirely subjective debate and
without some clearly defined standard there really is no clear cut answer. So,
what do you think, when does a photo stop being a photo?
Eric Clay
fadedbeauty.com
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