Art

So I've been a little conflicted about photography as art. I subscribe to too many photography blogs and some of them lean towards the "artsy" side of photography. While I appreciate some pictures I see classified as "Fine Art" others I think are just bad pictures. Jackson Pollock famously splattered paint and called it art. I think some of these photographers whimsically snap pictures and call them art. Today I read this from the A Photo Editor blog:

“I always feel as though there’s supposed to be some deeper meaning behind my pictures, a meaning other than ‘Something inside me connected with what I saw in front of me, so I pulled out my camera and took a picture.’ That does not seem to fly as an artist statement. Why, I’m not sure.” Emily Shur (here)

That's kinda how I feel! I think from now on, my artists statement will be something like "I thought it looked pretty."

I guess there'll always be stuff that I like that others don't for reasons I cant explain. I dont even know where I draw the line between what I think is art or not, and I certainly dont want to dismiss photography as purely documentary. I just dont get some of it.

I'll give you a prime example. Chase Jarvis is one of the leading commercial photographers in the country maybe even the world today. Back in September, he did a fun little experiment where he asked his blog readers to help him edit his portfolio by picking out one favorite and one least favorite. The answers were all over the board, but there were some that rated consistantly low and some high. He asked some art buyer friends the same questions and they picked completely different pictures. The ones that the art buyers picked generally ranked pretty low by his readers perspective and are very much the artsy stuff I dont care for. Dont get me wrong, I love his work and think it's awesome he is where he is today, I just dont get the artsy stuff.

I'd love to hear what you think. Do you have photographers that you think are artsy but cool? Do you have any insight on some of the snapshots people call fine art?