For example, those photographers who suppose that, by taking pictures, they are getting away from the pretensions of art as exemplified by painting remind us of those Abstract Expressionist painters who Photographers' disclaimers of any interest in making art tell us more about the harried status of the contemporary notion of art than about whether photography is or is not art. It shows the extent to which they simply take for granted the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism; the better the arty the more, subversive it is of the traditional aims of art. They are no longer willing to debate whether photography is or is not a fine art, except to proclaim that their own work is not involved with art. Serious photographers variously claim to be finding, recording, impartially observing, witnessing events, exploring themselves anything but making works of art.
Ironically, now that photography is securely established as a fine art, many photographers find it pretentious or irrelevant to label it as such. Against the charge that photography was a soulless, mechanical copying of reality; photographers asserted that it was instead a privileged way of seeing, a revolt against commonplace vision, and no less worthy an art than painting. Throughout the nineteenth century, the defense of photography was identical with the struggle to establish it as a fine art. The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photograph's fidelity to appearances and dependence on a machine allowed it to be a fine art as distinct torn merely a practical art.
Ironically, now that photography is securely established as a fine art, many photographers find it pretentious or irrelevant to label it as such. Against the charge that photography was a soulless, mechanical copying of reality; photographers asserted that it was instead a privileged way of seeing, a revolt against commonplace vision, and no less worthy an art than painting. Throughout the nineteenth century, the defense of photography was identical with the struggle to establish it as a fine art. The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photograph's fidelity to appearances and dependence on a machine allowed it to be a fine art as distinct torn merely a practical art.
