Photography as Art

In my opinion, photography is most definitely an art. It seems that a common argument made against photography being an art is that science (specifically the camera) does all of the work instead. Many believe that it does not take much skill to find a subject and simply click a button. Although I disagree with this statement, that isn’t the point. What makes photography an art is that human choice is involved. These choices made by the photographer ensure that even though two people take photographs of the same object, the two photographs will be different. An example that I’m sure we all remember from the MoMA is Hannah Wilke’s S.O.S.. This is the series of photographs that portray a nude woman with pieces of gum stuck onto her body. There are ten photographs that are basically capturing the same thing, and yet they all turned out differently. The woman was asked to pose differently, the photograph focused on a specific part of her body, it was taken from a different angle, etc. So my point is that the photographer must make a choice which will produce something a camera itself would not be able to.