> From: pdml-boun...@pdml.net [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of > Mark Roberts > Bruce Walker wrote: > > >Zach Arias has been on a roll answering good questions with practical > >advice on his Q&A blog. But he really steps out on a limb with this > one > >I think. > > > >"And oh dear please.. please. For the love of all that is good and > holy > >about photography. please don't be the "fine art" photographer that > >shoots flowers, and dead leaves, and macro shots of bark, and hang > them > >in your local coffee house. You know what I'm talking about. > >Photo 101 assignments passed off as "fine art". Ain't nothing fine art > >about that stuff. > >Fine. Call me a jerk. You know what I'm talking about. Canoes on a > >lake. A bike leaning against a red door with a little green ivy > >sneaking in the corner. An old mailbox on a dusty road. A model mayhem > >beauty queen wearing a Victorian dress and a German gas mask. in a > >cemetery. A coffee cup on an old book. An HDR'ed lighthouse at sunset. > >An HDR'ed macro shot of your cat's eye. Don't get me started on naked > >chicks on train tracks or laying on rocks." > > What pretentious twaddle. "Fine Art" is just art that is created > primarily for aesthetic purposes. In other words, not "Applied Art": > creations that, while they do have aesthetic appeal as a goal, are made > primarily for a practical purpose. Any photograph that is made as art > (as opposed to, I dunno... rolling up and swatting flies) is Fine Art. >
The Fine / Applied art distinction is traditionally shown as a continuum and the points are marked with the medium, not the use to which it's put. So painting and sculpture are traditionally placed at the Fine Art end, Monuments and Architecture fine, but not quite so fine, and stuff like Industrial Design at the Applied Art end. In this schema Photography is at the Applied Art end of the spectrum, but it's not quite so hideously common and nasty as Industrial Design. Even within those points on the continuum there are distinctions, so oil painting is finer than watercolour, for example, and master drawings are finer than preparatory sketches. Now, Moses didn't bring this down from Mount Sinai (or should that be Mount Fine-ai?). The whole exercise is culturally determined and in our culture no-one gives a toss about categories like that except, apparently, Fine Art Photographers, but in the good old days of Academies which could make or break your career, it mattered a great deal to people. > The design of the Marc Newson Pentax K-01 is Applied Art. The cute > kitten photos you take with it are Fine Art. Whether or not either one > is any *good* is a separate and unrelated question. :-) > Under the aforementioned schema your kitten photos are more Applied Art than Fine Art, whatever their quality. In any case, I think most people know exactly what he means by his comments, and I suspect you do too. Whenever I hear the phrase Fine Art Photographer I reach for my Browning, to paraphrase Hermann Goering, because I know I'm going to get a lot of imitation Ansel Adams and Minor (very minor) Whites. And especially when I hear the phrase Fine Art Nudes I know I'm in for a lot of boring, worthy, dull, black & white crap that bends over backwards to be as unexciting as possible, but is probably very well printed on Bohemian crystal glass by some obscure method that fell out of use in 1857 because it poisons the village if you're a bit careless, and involves rare minerals only available from a single mine in the Eastern Urals. B > -- > Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia > www.robertstech.com > > > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
