Photography, craft or art?

In doing a bit of research there has been a lot written on the topic of whether photography is craft or art. A Google search showed 155,000 hits on the topic. Most of the articles I discovered were supportive of photography being art. I suspect this was the case because most appeared to have been written by photographers.

Photography as a craft

There is certainly craftsmanship involved with photography. You must learn how to operate the tools. Just like a carpenter we have a number of tools at our disposal. While we may not be using hammers, saws, or drills we do use camera bodies, lenses, lighting, light modifiers, and more. Modern photographic tools do help with a number of automatice settings, but using automatic settings likely takes both craft and art out of the picture. As a true craftsman we must learn to control our tools ourselves.

Taking photography to the level of art

Okay, so many of us have learned to control our camera, lenses, lights, and all our other tools. Have we reached the level of our photographs? Not necessarily.

So how does photography reach the level of art? This has been and continues to be a much debated topic. There are those who would argue that photography can never become art like painting, sculpture or any number of the so-called traditional arts. Is that because photography is a fairly recent innovation? Is photography really that recent? The camera obsura was invented in 1021 CE, the first portable camera in 1685 CE, while the first actual photograph didn’t come about until 1826. So if we go back to the origin of photography we certainly must include the camera obsura making photography something that has been around for 1,000 years, at least in concept.

On the other hand, many would argue photography can reach the level of art. Merriam-Webster defines art in a number of ways, such as:

1. Something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses inportant ideas or feelings

2. skill acquired by experience, study, or observation

3. the concious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.

Merriam-Webster

There are other definitions that may or may not support the thought of photography as an art but would those truly supercede