I have had this conversation with a few people…can a photo be seen as art? Well, I guess that depends on your definition of art. If art is something that take a certain amount of talent to produce, is creative in nature, is visually appealing, stirs an emotion or memory, then perhaps some photos can be considered art. I think most people think that photos may not be art because the photographer simply walks out into the wild, snaps off a few pics and returns an hour or so later and sells those images as art. Well, the true photographic artists, will tell you thats not how it happens. Consider one of the landscape photographers, Koos van der Lende (www.delende.com) that I had the privilege of meeting and chatting to last year. His images are very specifically created. Firstly, when he treks off into the Namib, he may be away for a month or more at a time. That is time in which he cannot realisticaly generate income. When he spots something that he may want to capture, he will spend up to 3 days on that site tracking the movement of the sun to determine the exact angle and time he needs to press the shutter release. Often times he will be carrying anything up to 50kg’s of equipment with him and has been known to walk for a day or two to a specific location. Why walk? Well the terrain he shoots has often never been polluted by mankinds vehicles, so he resorts to going in on foot, so that he has as little impact on the environment as possible. The results are mindblowing, the images are stirring…is it art, I definitely think so, but you be the judge….
there is no possible way that picture is not art