I am sorry that I rattled your cage. I happen to believe that you are
right. One of the things I often say about photography, although not here
until now, is that: Any person with a liberal arts degree can take a
snapshot and hang it on their wall and imagine that they are artists.
But for the work to be distinguished from a school project requires doing
something beyond the level of an AVERAGE liberal arts education.
Before I am flamed to cinders I mean the AVERAGE kind of education. Where a
certain number of art courses gets one by.
My favorite examples are the awful images that I am confronted with when
waiting for my physician in a cold waiting room. The picture is of a lake,
or some ducks flying south. Both technically inferior and the idea is
urbane. They aren't photographers.
Advertising has been called art here in America. I don't agree with it.
In my opinion advertising is shallow and the motive for producing it in my
mind degrades it to something less that what an artist aspires would say
that they are photographers.
Now if money, fame, stature, ect. are not the objective then Artist is
possibly true. Something to place over the couch might be a stretch.
The distinction between Photographer and Artist has been a quandary for
much of this century.
I actually prefer artist. But when I do social documentary work I use
photographer. Because it connotes objectivity.
I would not begrudge the doctor his moment of artistic achievement.
But I would not call him an artist.
The general public doesn’t make many distinctions here in Minneapolis
Minnesota(The Provincial Prairie,) and it is a tragedy.
Mark A. Morrill
Ps this also has nothing to do with Van Dyke brown prints at the MOMA
and it is my indiscretion.