Originally Posted by MRRiley
DeuDeu,
Some of the most elitist people I know are art students. In their world everything must have several meanings and the more levels of meaning the more significant the art. These are the people that take out of focus shots of the backs of people heads and put them into a gallery pretending there is a cosmic meaning to the arrangement. Please realize I speak from experience here. I was an art major and earned a BA in photography back in the 1980s. It took me decades to free myself from the elitist and narrow minded "art school" mentality.
Great debate so far!
Mike
I agree with you on the art school elitist point of view. I have had the opportunity to hang around a lot of artists and art students and I came to the conclusion that the difference between artists and non artists is not talent but ego.
Artists are just people with enough ego to think that what they produce is better than the rest and worth showing and selling. Then, if they are convincing enough, they get to practice a lot which helps them develop their skills, but in the end, talent has nothing to do with this. So, I feel like being elitist is the only way to justify their status as an artist (the same is true about politics by the way)
But, to go back to the snapshots and how they are lowering the standards, I don't think that the problem comes from the fact that people take a lot of pictures. I think that the problem comes from the treatment that those pictures receive.
Right now, you see poor quality pictures everywhere, all the time. They were first on the internet, on TV, in Magazines and newspapers. And now, they have become widely accepted and some are even showed in galleries. Anyways, because of this overwhelming display of not inspired pictures, we, as a society, have come to accept this as "photography".
This doesn't mean that fine photography is going to die. Of course, there is still some very talented people out there and their photography does stick out of the rest of the blah... to us. This is true only because of our passion for this art form. But for the rest of the crowd, I think that it is quite different.
But don't get me wrong, I don't want to judge anyone nor their way to use this medium. Their is no good and bad ways to enjoy your camera, as long as you are enjoying yourself you are doing well. The same is true for the pictures.
This is why this thread is about what
I love about photography.
I might have to start another thread to ask what it is that people love about taking photos.
Thank you for your opinion, I think that you are much wiser than I am!