When is photography considered fine art

It has to sound good. If you are applying to galleries then your artist statement is what they are going to take notice of, just as much as your work. It is human nature to sculpture and contour the environment into shapes and forms that we find pleasing. We live in these buildings, work in them, and find entertainment and nourishment in them. We spend time in rooms designed to help us learn through many stages of our lives. When the buildings can no longer be maintained they fall into decay quickly.

My work is looking at the rate of decay and how similar it is to the human condition. How easily we can fall into the same sort of decay when we are no longer being cared for. Through photographs of old, and recently abandoned buildings, I want to explore the metaphor of the human condition with the deserted buildings.

I just made this short statement up, but I hope it gives you an idea of what an artist statement is like. If you do a google search you will find many places that can help you write one. You will also be able to find examples of them to see what other artists are doing, and how they are creating their work. The old science room in the closed school. Things are scattered and nothing makes sense.

The work should be about you, and what you are passionate about. If you know what your vision is, what your subject is, and how you want to create your work, then your statement should come easily and you will find yourself on a new path, an exciting one. Conceptual photography is, by definition, a type of fine art.

For this reason, the two are often confused or used interchangeably. However, fine art is a broader category than conceptual photography; not all fine art is conceptual, though all conceptual photos are fine art. Conceptual pictures may also resemble fine art portraits. The difference is that a conceptual portrait represents a specific idea, such as fear or curiosity, while a fine art portrait may have no specific meaning.

For more inspiration, check out these 40 outstanding examples of conceptual photography. Gideon Way — In the Middle of the Storm. Ronen Goldman — curiosity. Isabella Mariana — My fears are surrounding me. Still life photography is another genre with a large gray area between fine art and documentary photography. The difference is, again, the purpose of the photo and the importance of the subject.

Are you taking the still life picture because the subject is special, and you want to show it to others? Or are you experimenting with an idea or technique to create art?

For instance, you can find countless images of food on Instagram, but the majority are spontaneous and documentary in style. They show a special location, dish, or moment in time the photographer wanted to capture and share.

Sergio Boscaino — High Tide. In an attempt to compete with the productions of 'high art', photographic images were demanded to be truthful, beautiful and inspirational, which influenced the making of still lifes, portraits of models in allegorical costume, genre scenes and composite images.

In order to overcome the sharp definition created by photographic images, that was considered as being too literal for art, photographers tended to use slower collodion or inferior optical elements, smear the lens, kick the tripod during exposure, or blur the print during processing. Early struggles regarding the artistic expressions of photography, in part due to confusion among photographers as to what constituted artistic images, drove practitioners down uneasy paths.

From a historical perspective, it is possible to conclude that photographic art was at its best when illuminating aspects of the real world, and least inspiring when emulating sentimental convention of genre painting. The unique power of photography was gained by its disposition to form, the varieties of textural experience, and the contrasts in lighting, rather than an emphasis on narrative content, regardless of whether the images were considered documents or art.

Beyond the struggle for acceptance of photographic images as art, carried on by a small group of aesthetically minded photographers, a development of much greater consequence for the general population was taking place.

Photographers, realizing that the accurate reproduction of works of art could be both commercial and culturally beneficial to the general population, started in the s to publish photographic prints of the masterworks of Western art. There is little doubt that since then, camera images have been the most significant supplier of visual artifacts to the largest number of people, revolutionizing public access to the visual art heritage of the world.

What was rejected as too real in terms of works of art was most valued in terms of reproducing art objects. This was a highly welcomed advantage of photography since it was believed that familiarity with masterful works of art would not only rejoice the spirit, but improve general taste and help people make better decisions when it came to decoration and dress in their daily lives.

There is little doubt nowadays that photography, aside from its enormous variety of uses, is legitimately considered a fine art discipline. Almost any well-known and respected museum has sections dedicated solely to photographic art; and there are a number of museums and galleries dedicated specifically to photography.

Photography finally stood its ground and found its place in the art world. In the last decades, photography's potential has radically expanded. Aside from the traditional two-dimensional, modest-sized photographs in shades of black and white, the medium explores and includes images in a variety of shapes, colors, and formats, with varied intentions, such as providing information, making formal statements, selling ideas of products, or analyzing political and cultural events.

And you thought it took a long time to Instagram your ice cream. The image was taken in using his adaptation of the camera obscura , and is now considered to be the first photograph created. The development of a photograph was an artform, as it required much precision, trial and error, and the desire to recreate reality in a single snapshot. Today - given the accessibility to cameras and the importance placed on documenting real life events - contemporary photography encompasses a wide range of styles, including commercial, photojournalism and fine art photography.

Which begs the question: what differentiates fine art photography from photos of your trip abroad? Not long after Niepce took his first photograph later known as a heliograph , he partnered with Romantic painter and printmaker, Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre we dare you to say that five times in a row.

Daguerre, while being a painter and printmaker, was the first to create a diorama - so you can thank him for all those high school projects of erupting volcanos.

In , Daguerre created a detailed and one-of-a-kind photographic image on a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper. Poor Niepce. The camera finally became available to the masses following the invention of the easy-to-use Kodak camera in However, around this time, certain opposing groups who were in favour of more labour intensive approaches started to form. Among those groups championing craftsmanship in photography was Photo-Secession, headed by engineer-turned-photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, in Photo-Secession held exhibitions in famed photographer, Edward J.