2024 12 20

Channelling Duchamp. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Photography isn’t art. It’s too easy to make a photo. There’s no skill involved, therefore no artistic value.

I disagree with this, of course, however completely understand and agree with the logic behind it. Seeing photography as art will never be something everyone can do, I don’t think. Anyone can make a good photo (good is relative in any art form, of course). Anyone can also make a good painting (good to someone, at least!), even if they’ve never painted once in their life, but the “barrier to entry” is far more difficult. To make a photo, you just take the phone of our your pocket and push a button. To make a painting, you’ll at least need to find a store that sells the necessary supplies, or place an order on Amazon and wait a few days.

In my younger years as a photographer, I would often scoff at fine art photography, mostly because I didn’t understand the thought process or put in the time necessary to understand what the photographers were trying to do or say. I’d see them using a giant large format film camera to make some images I often found boring and label the whole process unnecessary and self important. Sure, I still dislike plenty of photography that is overwhelmingly embraced by the more formal art world, however, I do now have a far larger appreciation for, and valuing of, photographic art that is challenging to make. Using 4x5 film instead of a 100mp digital medium format camera, for example, should earn you some respect, even though at the end of the day it’s the work (and the person doing the work, but that’s another topic for another day) that most matters.

Yesterday, this video popped into my feed which I found fascinating in many ways. While the clickbait headline is off topic for this blog post, his sentiment at the end is spot on. The guy makes a technologically-impressive camera that produces terrible images, however, the process is what makes the images incredible, and therefore, in his opinion, art.

“I know this thing makes worse pictures than a camera that costs $2… but when I use this thing, I fee like I’m making actual art, which I do not feel when I’m using a digital camera.”

As always, art is in the eye of the beholder, but it is also made in the decisions of the person making the art.

That toilet image would be much better art if I made it on 4x5 film instead of a film-emulating smartphone camera.

-Clayton