gdanmitchell
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 Re: East side of Zabriskie Point | |
I wrote, in part:: \"...Night shooting... So, you have a ton of freedom to interpret almost any way you want.\"
And...
Mark Metternich replied:
I\'d say we have the freedom to interpret how we want no matter what the type of photo taken. Photography is art.
There is a grain of truth in that statement, in that there are no rules that require one to create art in any specific way. And, yes, photography can be art. However it is a naive notion of how art or anything else works and that is never quite the end of it. It is in the same lineage as other naive notions that range from \"art should be pretty\" or \"art should make me feel good\" to \"art must upset people\" or \"great art is iconoclastic.\"
Yes, one does have the \"freedom\" to do whatever one wants in a photograph or other work of art. I don\'t recall anyone seriously disputing that \"right.\"
Yet, it is as wrong to simply leave it at \"You are an artist, so you can do anything you want!\" as it is to follow the \"You must learn and follow the rules of composition and color and all the rest\" if you are to make good art.
While you have the right to do whatever you want in art, it does not follow that doing whatever you want will make what you do into art. What you do must ultimately communicate something effectively to others if your art is to be what you likely want it to be. While you cannot listen to or respond to every individual voice that speaks critically (both in the positive and negative sense) about your work, ultimately virtually all artists want their work to speak to others. And, for this reason, virtually every artist - including the greatest - understand that there are consequences to artistic decisions and that these are important to consider.
If this were not the case, why would there even be a board like this one? And why would people even imagine that discussion of the \"quality\" or power or effectiveness of art would be a worthwhile subject?
So, while there is no rule about how far you can push the saturation slider or how steep you can make the curve or how far you can move a color balance slider or whether or not a blurred overlay layer is a good or bad thing, each of these choices has consequences and there is more to the final work than, \"It is art! You did whatever you wanted!\"
Take care,
Dan
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