What is Photography : The Age Old Question - Is Photography Art?

Author Bio :
Samuel is working as Photography Jobs consultant and photography career adviser specially about What is Photography as he had got experiences as a photographer and had researched about Photography gallery for his website.

The majority of people believe, quite wrongly, that photography is a fairly recent addition to the world we call art. Few people actually realise that optical devices were used by artists in the creation of their work from as early as the 15th century.

During the Rennaissance period, for instance, the strong desire to depict nature in all its beauty as close to reality as possible prompted many artists to make use of tools such as the camera obscura in combination with their brushes and pigments. The camera obscura provided them with the ability to project images from afar onto their flat working surfaces.

The daguerreotype and calotype, both initial kinds of photography invented around 1839, further revolutionised perceptions of reality. At the time, photography was accepted as an art, simply because it supplied a growing patronage of middle class individuals with entertainment and immediate images.

As far as Masters are concerned, the truest, or greatest achievement of art consists of the ability to depict nature in its true appearance. A photograph achieves this in a way no other artistic medium can. But is a photographer really an artist?

One theory says that an artist puts his or her personal spirit and imagination into their art. Is it possible for a photographer making use of a camera, which ultimately creates the image, to put their spirit into the final photograph?

A French journalist, Ernest Lacan, once called photography a mistress one loves and hides away; a mistress one speaks about with joy while others are not allowed to mention her.

So far, there are three opinions commonly voiced by art critics, photographers and painters when discussing whether photography qualifies as art, or is at least beneficial to art.

One view clearly states that it can not be an art, mainly because it makes use of a mechanical device, as well as physical and chemical phenomena as opposed to being done by inspiration and by hand.

The second view states that it may be of use to art, but could never be regarded as equal to the creativeness of drawing or painting, while the third and final theory regards photography as close to etching and lithography and therefore beneficial to both art and culture.

Photography has been a controversial yet important part of art for 150 years. Still the question whether photography is art or a form of pure documentation seen with the eye rather than th mind remains.