Can a photograph be a work of art?
The title of Roger Scruton's essay asks a question of photography, "But Is It Art?". My answer to that question is yes, but also no. To counter the question, I ask is all painting art ? The answer is the same, obviously yes, but obviously no . Yes painting is an art form, it is a way of representation and expression but not all paintings produced can claim to be representative and expressive, the same can be said with photography, it is a form of art, but some photographs are art some are not. I have spent many years of my adult life as a professional photographer photographing social events, portraits and model agency work but I would never regard the work I produced as art, for example I would look upon an Eve Arnold shot "Bar girl in a brothel in the red light district, Havana, Cuba, 1954" and except it immediately as art,
Arnold, Eve. Bar girl in a brothel in the red light district, Havana, Cuba, 1954. Eve Arnold/Magnum
Kirkby, Richard, Untitled, 2010. Photographers collection
but a shot taken by me of a perspective model would not be called art by me or anyone else, that is not to say my photograph would never become art, one day it may well do, who knows, its context may change, after all art is judged on context and its place in the spectacle of Western capitalism, the photograph may be used by another artist or perhaps a curator to add language and context to an exhibition, but currently as I write this essay the image is unknown, I forget the subject, it has no language, it has no text, there is little to read, there is no context.
Scruton argues that no photograph is art because it has no expression, it just is true representation "photography is confined by its nature to the task of representation it shows the world, but expresses nothing.[Scruton, p62]. This certainly is true to some forms of photography, like my portfolio photography, it is representational of a day in the life of someone, a documentation of an event, it’s a memoir for those involved, a reference to how the model looks, a mechanical process triggered by my pressing of the exposure button, doing my job as it were, there is no expression, no one can tell I took the picture, any photographer could have. It is certainly not true when it comes to Eve Arnold's shot, why is that? This is where Scruton's argument fails, because he fails to see that a photograph can have expression, the expression of the language, the text of the photographer. Language and text is all over this photograph, you can read it, by its gently soft feminine ambience, instantly a Hollywood vibe, hiding a brutal truth, it has language, it has text, the language and text of the photographer, Arnold, therefore it has expression. Scruton argues that a painting can be representational by not copying but by expression "by expressing thoughts about them" (things) (Scruton p62) things that may not exist, existing only through the expression of the artist and the paint on canvas, he argues photography can't be art because it is real, it captures reality, it is caused by the subject itself existing, he says "photographs are incapable of displaying things that are unreal"(Scruton p62), I am not comfortable with this view, I look at Arnold's photograph, there are elements of it that don't exist, the bar the subject is leaning on is not a bar it’s a signifier, you assume it’s a bar because there is a bottle and glass, in fact, the assumed bar, its a composition tool, it is a sweep of reflected light moving from a blur to a narrow point of focus leaping of to a distorted impression of a room that acts as an blurred armature. The subject is real, she is there, but she herself is not there, she is somewhere else with her thoughts, just as the girl in Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is.
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Manet Eduardo, A Bar At The Folies-Bergere 1882, Copyright: © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London.
Scruton's argument is that painting as an art has to have a relationship that is intentional with the subject " At the heart of Scruton's argument lies the idea that there is an "intentional" relationship between a representation (for example, a painting) and what it represents (its subject)" (Neill p193), in other words Scruton is saying photography doesn't have an intentional relationship, it is remote, detached. So taking that argument and using it to read the language and text of Manet's master piece we see a representation of a girl at a bar, we see her features, we know what she looked like in Manet's mind, but we also see Manet's thoughts about the girl, she is sad , she is melancholy, she is somewhere she doesn't want to be, at the bar, she is vacant. Just as the girl in Arnold's photograph? Arnold has used intention to achieve the result I described in the previous paragraph by the selection of the camera, the aperture, the shutter speed, the film speed to achieve expression, the language, the text is no different in Arnold's photograph from that of Manet's painting, the difference is the physical application of the media, Manet's thoughts as he uses paint, Arnold's thoughts as she uses light, in my opinion Scruton's argument therefore fails, "Scruton's critics have typically replied that Scruton has misrepresented what actual photography is like. Actual photography involves all kinds of intentional input in terms of choice of camera, film, shutter speed, aperture and so on" (Niell p223).
Another argument Scruton's puts across to discredit photography as an art, again comparing it to painting "is that photographs do not invite the kind of aesthetic interest that paintings characteristically do"(Neill p193). Is he saying that a painting of a disturbing, perhaps obscene or even uncomfortable scene can be made aesthetically pleasing, but not a photograph ? Scruton writes " If one finds a photograph beautiful, it is because one finds something beautiful in its subject. A painting may be beautiful, on the other hand, even when it represents an ugly thing." (Neill p193). Can the word ugly be used to describe a disturbing, obscene or uncomfortable scene, like Sally Mann's untitled photograph from What Remains, I think so, yes, if I look at the photograph depicting what can been described as a disturbing scene, a scene representing death, an ugly scene, is it beautiful ? In my opinion, yes it is.
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Mann, Sally, Untitled, 2001, from What Remains. Sally Mann/Gagosian Gallery
In Mann's photograph the body is rotting, you can see decay, yet the beauty is not the subject, it is the expression of the photograph, the way the light baths the hair in a almost spiritual glow and picks up the almost luxury texture of the skins leathery grain, the photograph represents death but is also expressive in what the artist sees as death, Mann said of the experience "Death makes us sad, but it can also make us feel more alive," she says. "I couldn't wait to get there. (a body farm) The smell didn't bother me. And you should see the colours – they're really beautiful. As Wallace Stevens says, death is the mother of beauty." (Morrison, 2010, online). Just this photograph and what Mann says of it makes Scruton's argument a debatable one.
Photography as an art form has been questioned repeatedly "photography is by far the youngest and its claims to be a form of art have been hotly debated since its earliest days" (Neill, p193) To me personally, to even question that photography is or isn't art is a view that is antiquated, a belief derived from a pompous snobbery, a belief of persons that does not recognise cultural changes as readily as they should.
Culture changes and with it the boundaries of what art is and is not, sometimes the boundaries are challenged, and rightly so, a challenge successfully batted away can be seen as securing the status of art, for example the work of controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe has been described as obscene and pornographic, its status as art has been questioned and even challenge in law. In a trial known as "The Mapplethorpe Obsenity Trial", in the autumn of 1990 the exhibition titled "The Perfect Moment" arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, the gateway to middle America's conservative bible belt, the exhibition was a retrospective of Mapplethorpe's photography and included photographs of nude children, adult nudes depicting sexual acts and "graphic depictions of sadomasochism" (Palmer, Online) with its arrival came a challenge as to what art is, can photographic images such as Jim and Tom, Sausalito, 1977 be accepted as art, should the status of art be challenged when it is debatably pornographic or obscene ?
In my original essay Mapplethorpe's image appeared here. Because of its content I have censored it.
Mapplethorpe, Robert, Jim and Tom Sausalito, 1977. Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
The argument to show such images was one put forward by the director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Dennis Barrie, he argued the exhibition was of cultural significance, Mapplethorp's work represents and expresses a time of cultural change, change that took place in the 1970's to 80's, the time of the AID's epidemic, a time of cultural revolution, Mapplethorpe had also just died from AIDS, "The show was not for everyone, but Barrie and the CAC board felt its artistic importance could hardly be questioned. The show was especially timely considering Mapplethorpe had died of complications from AIDS just a few months earlier, raising interest in the artist and his portfolio." (Palmer, online). The exhibition opened as planned but soon after on the same day of opening 4 indictments where issued, 2 against the museum and 2 against Dennis Barrie, "for pandering obscenity and illegal use of a minor in nudity oriented materials"(Palmer, Online). The case was successfully defended by lawyer H.Louis Serkin who argued that not all art is pretty, that it could be uncomfortable viewing and not really relevant to most people, but it could become so. His defence strategy was the works context “I wanted to show that this was a really critical time in American history,’” says Sirkin. “You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to come to the museum" (Palmer, Online). The fact that there was a not guilty verdict was a recognition of the fact that the work of Mapplethorpe, photography, was art, it was art because of its cultural significance, its context, because of its time. Expert witnesses also testified on oath that Mapplethorpe's photographs "counted as art because of their exquisite formal properties" (Freeland, p17). Formal properties of a good photograph are the lighting and the composition even if the subject is difficult to view, a photograph that is representational and intentional "Mapplethorpe's work fulfilled the 'beauty' expectations required of true art" (freeland p17). Arthur C Danto in his essay about Robert Mapplethorpe, Playing With The Edge takes a very interesting view in the aesthetics of photography on describing the intentional and representing of photography, the artistic value of photography, by using the argument in the saying the eyes are the windows of the soul. The photographer therefore when photographing is revealing his soul, his inner being, so, just by choosing a subject the photographer is being expressive "We learn about the photographer through his choice of subject, the way the subject is addressed, and from what is revealed about his attitude towards the subject and towards the mission of photography" (Danto p46).
In my conclusion photography is art, but the vast majority of photographs taken are not art, for photography to be art it has to be a reflection of the photographers being, their expression and intention, Scruton argues photographs have no expression or intention I have put forward an argument that they do, a photograph also has to be contextually and culturally significant, as in Mapplethorpe's work, his work was of its time with intention and expression, as proven in a court of law.
Bibliography
Books
Bouffiaud, Nicolas, (2002), Relational Aesthetics. Les Presses Du Reel.
Danto, Arthur C. (1996), Playing With The Edge. University Of California Press.
Feagin, Susan & Maynard, Patrick (1997) Aesthetics, Oxford Paperbacks. Oxford University Press.
Freeland, Cynthia (2001), But Is It Art. Oxford University Press.
Neill, Alex & Ridley Aaron, (2002), Arguing About Art, T. J. International LTD. Routledge, London.
Magazine Articles
Scruton, R. (1989) ‘But Is It Art?’ Modern Painters, Vol.2, No.1, Spring, pp62-65
Online
Morrison, Blake, (2010) https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/may/29/sally-mann-naked-dead. Accessed 12/3/2018
Palmer, Alex, (2015) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-art-fought-law-and-art-won-180956810/. Accessed 12/3/2018
Ernst, Cynthia. L. (undated) http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mapplethorpelinks.html. Accessed 12/3/2018
