Like other articles we have read this semester, I find the discussion in “Photography as Contemporary Art” of photography as much wider a genre than that of the capturing of just a passing moment extremely interesting. The artists discussed in “Photography as Contemporary Art” use photography from merely a way to record art that is occurring in the world, to manipulating that art that is occurring in the world to make it a different type of art once captured on film, to a complete composition in and of itself much like we saw with Gregory Crewdson’s work.
The discussion of whether or not anything can be art based solely on the artist declaring it art is an interesting conversation, and one that is exemplified well by the Fountain, created by Marcel Duchamp and photographed by Alfred Stieglitz. Since the original sculpture doesn’t still exist, the question now could be whether the sculpture itself or the photograph of the sculpture was, or still is, the actual art. Also, if anything can be taken, rotated, photographed, and labeled art simply because the artist says it is, what’s to say that everything isn’t art? And does that genre of art start a conversation that suggests that an art that involves heavy study and learned skill, such as painting or marble sculpture, is then on the same level of artistic value as that art that is just found, photographed, and presented perhaps just to illicit some sort of passionate response from those deemed artistically elite?
We talked about this in class as well, but I thought the use of video and photo merely as a way to document performance art brings up an interesting question of whether or not art exists if no one is there to see it. Maybe anything can be art, even a urinal, but if there is no way to document it, is it still art?
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