Artists View Photography Essay

When photography first came it fought a harsh battle of it being disregarded as an art form. It brought a lot of controversies because of its multiple usages of both scientific and commercial activity. The use of digital cameras and the popularity photography gained became hard to categorize it as an art on its own. Additionally, art was considered as something obtained out of creativity where its content was purely from intellectual and imaginative content, and contrary to this photography was not supposed to be one of them.

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Artists viewed photography as a concept that did not fit into the world of art because it did not fall under the category of sculpture, drawing, dancing, and poetry among other classes of literature. They also considered photography as an activity that involved the use of machines and chemical procedures to reproduce images instead of hands and human effort and spirit. They compared reproduction to fabrics produced from machines, and according to them, it was not art but machine work.

Similarly, they viewed photography as a medium that could only help in art but could not be categorized as art in its form as it could not be considered as a result of creativity and imagination. Besides, another group of art argued that photography could fall under the category etching and it could only be useful as valid artworks and used to promote the general culture but not categorized as art in its originality. There were several controversies before it was finally accepted.

By 1800 the photographic society took an aggressive role of campaigning for photography as a form of art, and this happened in most regions such as Italy, France, and Germany among others. Several publication houses were formed for instance the photographic society of London, and because of the influence that this houses brought in pushing for photography to be considered as an art, artists began to incorporate photography as a legitimate form of art.

By the beginning of 1862, a public declaration by an anonymous artist was made, and it summed up all the discussions that qualified photography to be referred to as an art. Photography began to be appreciated as it was considered capable of drawing an artistic expression. Additionally, the artists started viewing tools used in photography as similar to those used in drawing and painting, for instance, the lens was considered to be an instrument like the brush and pencil.

Gradually photography began to appreciate as a form of art, and it could be displayed in galleries and exhibitions just like the other types of art.at first, there were disputes regarding what category photography to be placed, but it finally needs fell under the fine arts. By 1880's photography was a legitimate form of art that competed with high skill in depicting beauty, truthfulness, and inspiration by making portraits of modes in symbolic costumes among other features.

It is important to note that photography has come along the way into nit being accepted as a form of art. Controversies have been raised but through battling with the antagonist's photography came to be legitimized a full form of art. The view that artists had about photography came to change from high resistance at the beginning of the emergence of photography to acceptance later in 1800.

Works Cited

Tucker, Jennifer. Nature exposed: photography as an eyewitness in Victorian science. JHU Press, 2013.

Langford, Michael. Basic photography. Routledge, 2013.