Gregory Crewdson Brief Encounters Analysis

When photography began to gain not only popularity, but accessibility, it became a topic of discussion on its place in art. Whether if it should be considered a fine art or whether its place lied in documentation. However, even with documentation, a broad assumption was that there could be an immediate trust. Gardner’s Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter proved that was not always the case, that although documenting the truth of the brutality of the Civil War. The addition of the shotgun that added the idea of fighting until the last minute was actually fabricated creating a disillusion. That photography is meant to depict a standstill truth subject, but viewers of photography can forget that it is still an artwork. That a photo is an image set and

The photograph is a very powerful medium. The French painter Paul Delaroche exclaimed upon seeing an early photograph “from now on, painting is dead!” (Sayre, 2000). Many critics did not take photography seriously as a legitimate art form until the 20th century. With the

In our Unit 2 reading, it explains the art of photography and how it has really complimented paintings an artwork from painters such as Paul Delaroche. As many artists thought that “arts of painting” and “arts of photography” would leave little room for the creative representations painters and photographers provide. However, it turned out that Delaroche and many other were wrong and paintings and photos still thrive.

Photography has come into existence due to the evolution of the renaissance craft, which often involved the artistic creation, and documentation of occasions, figures, and memories. Photography as a practice that consists of so many different styles and techniques that vary in regard to the school of photography being used. For example the Pictorialist thinks of photography as a type of fine art and therefore try to make it artistic by using pictures or visual images, which furthermore establishes their point that photography is an art or a form of fine art, on the other hand the Modernist has adapted to the modern techniques which has more focus on the sharp center of the image and using the camera as an instrument rather than seeing it as a canvass which is usually how pictorialists see it, and they also believe in creating very high quality images which

Until now, photography has a profound influence on paintings ever since optical devices were introduced in the art society. However, the concept of photography influencing painting has been very controversial. While some artist appreciates the development of photography and embraces the impact towards their own works,

Photographer Elliot Erwitt once stated, “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” This quote has deeply guided me in my analysis of what I call a cycle of art creation. When one pays close attention to the artwork of a particular artist, one is able to distinguish certain details that prove it is the artist's work. To me, it is significant to be able to establish an artist as their own rather than just another person following the trend. Each artist, whether they notice it or not, has a series of repercussions in their art; there are details that continue to reappear in

Winogrand took photos of everything he saw; he always carried a camera or two, loaded and prepared to go. He sought after to make his photographs more interesting than no matter what he photographed. Contrasting many well-known photographers, he never knew what his photographs would be like he photographed in order to see what the things that interested him looked like as photographs. His photographs resemble snapshots; street scenes, parties, the zoo. A critical artistic difference between Winogrand's work and snapshots has been described this way, the snapshooter thought he knew what the subject was in advance, and for Winogrand, photography was the process of discovering it. If we recall tourist photographic practice, the difference becomes clear: tourists know in advance what photographs of the Kodak Hula Show will look like. In comparison, Winogrand fashioned photographs of subjects that no one had thought of photographing. Again and again his subjects were unconscious of his camera or indifferent to it. Winogrand was a foremost figure in post-war photography, yet his pictures often appear as if they are captured by chance. To him and other photographers in the 1950s, the previous pictures seemed planned, designed, visualized, understood in advance; they were little more than pictures, in actual fact less, because they claimed to be somewhat else the examination of real life. In this sense, the work of Garry Winogrand makes a motivating comparison to Ziller's

Graham Clarke, in his book “The Photograph as Fine Art”, states that “photography can be considered as fine art”; which is a statement that I entirely agree with. People all over the world take photos everyday, so why is someone considered an artist while the other is just a person taking photographs? A lot of characteristics differentiate an artist from a hobbyist or a memory collector, such as the ability to properly execute his artistic visions and capture them in an photograph. Another characteristic is how he chooses to structure his photograph and how he positions the objects inside the frame. Artists observe their surroundings in a different way and capture moments in creative and beautiful photographs. “There is a major difference between a snapshot and a photograph. A snapshot captures a moment in time; a photograph captures the emotions, feelings, and beauty from that moment in time”1.

The definitional meaning in any form of art is dependent on the receiver, and their own perceptions. In Chapter Thirteen, Photography’s discursive space, contributed by Rosalind Krauss, analyzes perception of photography and the attempt to transform revelation from one perceptional context to another. For example, an illustration of a mountain may represent beauty to one observer, while another observer may identify the photograph as a geographical documentation.

Not only does this subject exist, but it appears essentially how it did in the photograph. There is an intentional act involved (that of pressing the button to take the picture) but Scruton dismisses the process as only beginning of a causal process. This means the appearance of the photo is not interesting because of the photographers intention, but as a record of how an object or setting looked. This seems to be a plausible view point. How does the inability of photography to represent intentionally exclude it from being art?

Photographers involved in this technique look at photography as more of a true artistic impression than as anything else. The argument compares an artist using brush, paint and canvas to create a work of art, while the photographers use a camera, film to do the same.They see the camera as a tool, like a paint brush that is used in the creation of art.

Brooks Jensen began to wonder whether the photography can be referred to artwork. Obviously, more cameras plus more pictures unequal to more art in the contemporary society because numbers of photos dose not mean quality of art. Even though with the development of camera products and the improvement of camera filters, these factors cannot instead of emerging the real value of photography. The real value of photography is not use the good camera products to shot or take one photo optionally, it is always based on the individual experience and insight of our own value how to cognize the world. And to pursuit the quality of photography, we should be slowing down our hand to shot, firstly to think about what we want to make audience understand,

While we may experience an array of subjective emotions when looking a photo, we generally accept the idea that it depicts the truth in a way that narrative and other images (e.g. paintings) cannot. It is for this reason that photographs are frequently “prized as a transparent account of reality” (Sontag 2003: 81). We can contextualize this association between photography and the truth socio-historically: “photographic techniques came of age in parallel with post-enlightenment science” (Jones 2013: 32). Consequently, photography became bonded with the ideals of post-enlightenment, such as veracity and a lack of bias. This bond was strengthened as photojournalism emerged in the 1920s and 1930s and images became the hallmark form of bearing witness, foolproof evidence that an event occurred (Åker 2012). Today, we frequently demand images as proof (consider, for example, the public outcry that followed when the Obama Administration refused to release images of Osama Bin Laden’s corpse). We also know that images have developed a profound influence on our everyday social interactions; most social networking sites enable users to share images with friends and family, allowing them to narrate their experiences with pictures rather than (or in addition to) words. These images, of course, are intimately related

Between the use of film or digital photography, film is the more effective method when looking for originality and creativity. With the adoption of digital photography, the younger generations, as well as the older and more current photographers are becoming lazy. These groups must recognize that the art of the photograph is being jeopardized by the digital camera and the camera phone. For the current photographers as well as amateur photographers, this essay will serve as testimony to film as well as other chemical methods, and how they shouldn’t be ignored, but preferred. The digital era has had a massive impact on the art world and all of its mediums, but for photography this impact has resulted in the removal of the human from the photograph making process. This intimate process is what makes it an art form. All of films imperfections and unique qualities, as well as its monetary value and scarcity are just a few factors that have made it so precious. To replace this entire process with a microchip is offensive and undermines the importance of the process that is needed to make a photograph. Anyone can take a picture but you must make a photograph, and this skill is being simplified to a digital camera. The impact of the digital era on photography has hindered the process of making a photograph; painting the art form obsolete in today’s society.

There has been a long standing argument as to whether photography can be paralleled with traditional art forms such as painting, lithography, and sketching. The frame of reference of this research is the concept of photography as an art form. Through scholarly and practical research, I will compare different ideologies of how photography has been accepted and thought of since its invention, as well as visual examples of work that portray both photographic and artistic qualities. With the main question within this topic being can photography be considered art?, the objectives I seek to clarify are the grounds for which one defines art and for which one defines photography.