Photography as an Art Form

Last week I talked at Highfield Hall about Photography as an Art Form.  I may be able to write more but there are a number of simple propositions that are the core of what I want to say.

1.  Photorealism is as much an aesthetic in photography as it is in painting.

2. Although photography is a useful tool if one's objective is documentation, there is no reason that a photograph has to be a document.

3.  If you are in an art gallery, you should be expecting a work of creative imagination, not a document.

4.  The f64 group made a big mistake for photography by defining themselves by technique rather than by aesthetic objective.  Since then photography has been trapped by expectations of fstops and megapixels.

5.  An acquired image is a plastic form, not a fixed form.

6.  My relation with the forest is more important than the fine detail of its trees, leaves, and twigs.

7.  Art is a shared fantasy.

8.  The usage "artists and photographers" needs to be retired; so does the classification in bookstores, "art" in one section "photography" in another.