But are any of you actually artists?

Well played my friend, well played.

But seriously, it seems like almost everyone in release takes photos. Do any of you consider yourselves photographers? Artists? Do any of you think what you do is art, or just dicking around with a camera?

just go through the threads in release and get your own opinion, dick.

I know what my opinion is. I want to know if there's anyone who thinks what they're doing is art, and how many people think they're just dicking around. Could be done for any medium, but photography is the most popular. And just for your information, there are some who I think are artists here, and there are some who are just pointing a camera at shit.

mickeys got a point. photography isn't like other art forms. you don't need to learn to play and then sit down with a guitar and write a song. you don't need to take the time to paint a painting or write a story. paritcularily with a digital camera, you can just point and shoot for a basic, decent picture. which leads to alot of decent pictures because anyone can do it, but few true artists.

That's exactly the point I'm getting at and I'm not trying to be a dick about it. I'm really wondering where the line is between artists and people taking pictures.

The only other medium I think that comes close to photography in this sense is poetry, because anyone can jot a couple of shitty stanzas really quick (as opposed to other forms of writing, which take longer) but what makes someone a poet and what makes someone a hack?

you're a dick, mickey

duchamp google it.

The intention of the person taking the picture or the interpretation of the person viewing it.

So which one is it? Because if you allow both basically anything can be art.

yup.

K, thanks for the input.

did you look up duchamp like i said? look at that picture i posted.

Yeah I checked him out, seems to think that art involves both the artist and the observer.

"The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."

exactly, like that picture i posted is just a signed urinal... but the participation in the questioning it arises then makes it something more. so is that art?

Is it really just a signed urinal? He presents it as art--he has artistic intention, despite what he says.

yeah... he kinda blew everyone's minds with this one. kinda awesome.

But can't you explain away anything through that logic? I could take a photo of an open book with a bunch of blank pages showing and simply say that it's some kind of homage to the tabula rasa-type mind and a bunch of other proto-intellectual bullshit. Duchamp could have honestly done the same thing with a random toilet he found interesting.

I don't necessarily believe that Duchamp himself is victim of this, since I've seen his other works and a lot of them are nothing short of brilliant, although a lot of that was before his descent into the murky waters of Dadaism. That doesn't mean I think that a photo of a signed urinal doesn't take a massive amount of interpretation to make art. It shouldn't be that way for it to be true art. At the very least, the artist has to meet you halfway. With a lot of this nouveau art stuff, it's just lazy artists wanting you to make the connections for them.

So yes, I think for you to be considered a photographer, it shouldn't take a massive act of God to consider a particular work "art."