----- Original Message ----- From: <kpp@xxxxxxxxxx> To: "List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students" <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 1:02 AM Subject: can there be art photography ... can there be art photography without consumer photography? > > what do you think? >----------------------------------------------- Definitely - there is art photography. Belonging to an art association has opened my eyes and disturbed me on one level, but has energized me on another. The organization I belong to calls itself "Allied Arts," because it is supposed to embrace all the arts - music, acting, poetry, painting, drawing, dancing, etc., etc. Yet, there are a few of the older members (age-wise and membership-wise) who are wailing that photography is not an art, and they are quite upset by my being there. I am there to encourage myself to work on photographs that please me not a consumer (customer, boss, client, the public). To me, these photographs are art. They come from my heart like a song comes from a singer or a painting by a painter or a poem by a poet and consumers or critiques can lose sleep over these photographs if they want to. Since I quit worrying about consumers, I have been invited to show my work in several galleries. Fortunately, gallery owners don't seem to be quite as prejudicial as "artists". Marilyn
