Lecture 2: Can Photography Be Art?

When photography was first invented everyone was amazed by it, but as years went on people began to question how it should be used. Many believed that photography should be used to photograph a true representation of life. Others believed different.

Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, Charles Baudelaire, and Francis Firth are three people that believe that photography is too truthful and it is taking away from other art forms.

Cornelius Jabez Hughes came up with three classes for photography: Mechanical (exact representation), Art (rearrangement), and High Art (haas a higher purpose to instruct, purify, and ennoble).

There are many books where the writer has believed that photography isn't art, but alongside this there has been many where photography is art.
Photographers and painters began to look at each others style and become influenced through their work. Painters used photography to help them with their colours, composition, and framing. Photographers looked at painters style of work and made their own version using photography. Degas, Delacroix, Courbet, Cezanne, and Manet were just a few painters that used photography to help there work develop.

Today, photography is categorised into art and you can find it in art galleries, where people enjoy the variation of styles.