127 Comments
This is curious to me— not bc I care very much about the tools people use to make art, but bc not all that is considered art is beautiful!
Also though, if we don’t care about the tools and only the outcomr, then we should have mo issue w artwork made using AI (I personally do not)
The newer iPhones have incredible cameras. The craft of photography is still the same. Good lighting, exposure and subject matter.
So absolutely you can create stunning photography and art from an iPhone.
Of course if you create it, I take tons of photos alot for reference and some turn out so awesome I make prints of
That’s what I do! I wouldn’t use an iPhone for print reproductions of my paintings but I’ve taken some excellent creative shots when capturing reference for paintings 🙌🏻
You'd be surprised by what the newer phones are capable of . . . including capturing RAW format files. And if you don't use the digital zoom, the clarity and sharpness rivals many DSLR. It's all in the file handling/post processing.
Taylor, fine art is a product of an artistic mind going places to simplify and visualize for us the true essence of a feeling when the heart is too tired from all the problems of the world. Ultimately, the tools an artist uses matter far less than the final creation. I hope this answers your question.
Exactly so, Adrian. The quality of a photograph is not the matter. And moreover, the fact that a photograph is a nice picture does not make it art.
I would go even further to be honest and say that it’s not even the final product that only makes something fine heart but also the intentionality and process that defines something as art.
It's not the camera, it's the photographer who takes the photo!
Can a stunning painting be considered fine art if it’s painted with a lesser quantity brush?
Or even more so than a brush, what about quality of Pete or other materials that may or may not be considered more or less archival?
I have known galleries to refuse showing artwork that is made with low quality pains, low quality, canvases, etc. unless there is a specific purpose to that choice that aligns with some artistic commentary or viewpoint that the particular artist has. For instance, I knew an artist who would paint with water and document it and then show those documentations in the Gallery that represented him. he would also invite people to watch him paint with water live. Or we can talk about artwork like the spiral jetty and other works of art that were never meant to be permanent. There’s another Artist I know from way back named David Ellis who was one of the founders of a group of painters called the barnstormers. He would set up a camera above where he was painting on the floor and then make stop motion videos of him painting, and then the camera would capture that paint drying, and then he would paint over that painting and paint over the painting and paint over the painting again and continue like that, and that was part of his process. You can check out some of his videos online on YouTube one of them is called “watching paint dry”.
He also made a video with a Graffiti artist named BLU where they made a stop motion animation of paintings on a wall. I think it was called.Muto. But don’t quote me on that. I’ll find it later and report back, but it’s also on YouTube if you search both their names together.
Maybe this wouldn’t be considered “fine art “in the traditional sense but there are so many overlaps with regards to genres in the arts these days and I’m not sure we can consider much to be purely in one category or another right now
Please excuse any voice to text spelling and grammar mistakes in the above
if photography is fine art, it's ok if it's taken on an iphone or (in my case) an Instamatic (!)
I recently took a train trip. I have an old Android phone. That is what I had, so I used it. Holding my phone against the glass, I would snap a number of photos in a row, when something interesting came along. Removing the blur and the reflection pretty much requires the help of AI. I did use ChatGPT, but I could have just as easily used the latest version ON1, which restores the photos. I am using ON1 today for just that.
That is the dirty little secret in the photography industry and the music industry, and probably a lot of others. The top of the line software products, in producing these artistic genius creations, is using AI. But, the masses don't know that.
I know someone that has been in the industry for a long, long time. That person does a mixture out of the camera, and generated. It is just the way things are.
Those photos I snap are not the bulk of my work. I go way back in time to dust off epic old photos, because these are to often lost to the world. Just today, I am flipping through a volume of Camera Craft from the turn of the century. Stunning photography in these old magazines. We could learn a thing or two.
I think it can. The understanding of light and shadow and the overall composition can produce some very effective photos. I phone or expensive camera, it depends on who is using them. I believe artistic, creative photographers can produce art with a phone
I believe it can. Fine art can also be created on an android 🙂
Yes, iPhones can make art, just like cheap paints can make art. People can use ai to make art. Let’s stop talking about what can be considered art and just make art. We’re artists, not the art police.
If only things were that simple. The art language is a very complicated language to learn, and no one throughout history has totally mastered it, probably because art is evolving all the time. No matter what language you speak, the art language has the power to communicate with everyone. An iPhone is a simple DIY tool that has its place, but I doubt it will last the test of time, unlike paint on a canvas.
And how are brushes and paint and canvas not DIY tools? Or palette knives, or tissue papers, or plastic wrap or leaves and sticks and branches from nature, all of which have been used by some painters in the creation of their canvases.
And how does paint on a canvas stand the test of time even the fine? even the finest of oil paints and the best qualitycanvases are subject to degradation over the years..
The technique does not determine what kind of work will be produced. This is of course important. But the author's vision is more important. The ability to find something in the ordinary and simple that makes a creator a creator. And it doesn't matter that he has a camera or a brush in his hands.
Oh definately, especially if you have an app like photoshop. You can make some incredible abstract photos from the simplist of images!
Absolutely! A camera is a valid tool. It has gone through many changes throughout art history.
If art is in the eye of the beholder and is ones expression. I think that this cell phone lense as an extension of ones eye may be considered art.
Whether one is intelligently aware about what they are expressing through it or not seems inconsequential. When considering Fine Art it seems that the difference between the eye looking through a lense and the eye looking into space as it does when one executes an image with there hands may not be so different because in both instances they are looking at the same imaginary things. Memory may be nothing more then an abstraction of what we have seen already falling into the world of emotions a world we know very little about. The evocation of a question may be do we execute art from what we see or do we execute it from how we feel about what we have seen. I do not think you can separate these phases. They both work together in the plasticine world we live in. The photo is the eye and the eye is but a memory of things past which we do hardly grasp. Both phases work together usually unconsciously although when we congeal them into fine art language as a transformation into mythology. In the infinite universe of time and space everything is changing and so anything we state through our present use of language is true but only "relatively true". Like wise the difference between looking through a camera and not looking through a camera when it comes to defining fine art may only be slight. It can only be a relative difference mathematically speaking while diagetically speaking there difference can take on a much larger sense because pedagogy will always seep in. If one understands that there is no difference between the other and oneself then photography will be an integral part of art. My answer to the question is yes a photo can be considered fine art.
Balletta
Not only iPhone but all mobiles. It is the eye of the artist not the device. 😉
Is art defined by the media to achieve it or the actual result? Is collage an art? Is finger painting an art? For me, what is important in a picture is not how it was taken, but the result : what is in the image, what is the structure, and/or the light, the colours. Maybe I'm wrong, so what? My pencils drawings will then never be art, just pencil
By this account then, does it matter if an artist uses AI as their tool with which to make artwork?
I'm not sure I can answer with full knowledge of the facts. I look around me at people who use it. Example: I want a drawing of a forest. We take the result and paste it into a document. There is no creativity for me. Example 2: I would like a forest in a certain format, with a specific lighting, tree density, underbrush; to redo it X times by asking for changes here and there to the composition, or the tones, so the content is largely that of the person who asks, the machine's output. What do you think?
Also not sure.. I look at artists who use assistants to do much of their work in large studios, like Dale Chihuly, or Andy Warhol.
I think about film making where the director directs what is created.
There is just so much nuance to think about w regards to all of this where AI is concerned and I don’t think we’ve yet developed the proper language around it for artists.
Thanks for engaging in a thoughtful manner 💕
A poor artist is not saved by oil paint, and a good artist is not hindered by an iPhone. That is perhaps the essence of what is meant in most of these comments.
Moreover, one should think twice before calling oneself an artist, and perhaps three times before deciding who is not. Art survives its gatekeepers. It always has 😇
110% Yes! Since 2015 I've won international Color and B+W awards with iPhone photos. The best camera is the one we always have with us!
If its a great photo, yes. There are some incredible photos taken with iPhones that are exceptional quality.
@Michael. I love this image by Jeff Greinke. I would interpret a painting just as he has captured this photo. I responded with feeling when I first saw it! That's a very artistic expression in my view!
Absolutely, the camera that captures isn't the artist, it is the person behind the camera. Look at what Mathew Brady used on the Civil War battlefields, he was still the artist.
This debate keeps coming up everywhere! I've seen so many photographers jump into this discussion with strong feelings on both sides. The tool vs. the vision argument never seems to get old, and honestly, I think that tension is what makes it such a rich conversation.
The phone is just another tool to create an image. It is absolutely possible to create fine art with it. I have an image from an iphone 5s (taken probably 10 years ago) that is timeless and very meaningful. I even had it printed in 11x14 and gave it as a gift years ago.
Yes it is art. The device you choose to use does not matter. It’s how you capture & create the story with it.
I absolutely agree yes your iPhone can get better pictures then a camera at time and a camera is a camera no matter the size shape or quality type of equipment that is used. I have been blessed with many photos thanks to my iPhones abilities. Color contrast is beautiful and crisp in detail more then I can say for my Sony unfortunately.
I would think it could. If the iPhone photo was intentionally composed AND if it went under an editing process to refine it and make it express what the photographer had in mind, it COULD be. Using the iPhone photo as a starting point in a journey through methods and techniques to develop a unique aesthetic or expression of thought might turn it into fine art. BUT, using simply an iPhone photo as fine art doesn't really cut the mustard. It would need the artist to make it into fine art. It could be used to record a fine art event, but the photo is still not fine art itself.
The critically acclaimed film Tangerine ( 2015) dir. Sean Baker was entirely shot on an i-Phone and is a beautiful example of art being defined not my the limitations of resources, materials, or or technology, but the imagination and skill of the artist!
Absolutely, just as a watercolour painting painted on archival pulp paper can be considered fine art.
I have come to understand that that is absolutely the case given that it is not the capture device. It’s the “capturer” most certainly. Now I must admit that I’ve come to believe this so recently only because cell phone photos are often taken much more casually than when you bring your official “good camera”. It’s only recently that I found that my iPhone 13 Pro has ability to take pictures in raw. To me that was a game changer with reference to quality and potential with what?can be done with that file.
The iPhones of today produce better quality images than DSLR cameras from the early 2000’s so I think it a bit of a non argument. When I retired from normal work I took up wedding photography with a Nikon D70. Much smaller MB file sizes than today’s iPhones. Technology will always keep pushing boundaries. Unfortunately I think that is already affecting the Artist market. Clever AI users are now producing ‘paintings’ that capture people’s attention and money eg I see regularly an advert on FB for Mae McPherson Art. People love the ‘paintings’. Mae McPherson doesn’t exist and the ‘paintings’ are completely AI generated. That is more of an issue, I think, over a photograph being generated on an iPhone or a DSLR camera.
Sure... because the most important thing is what you use to take a photo, that's how.
Absolutely! Unfortunately one cannot always get a perfect weather day nor have the required hours to start and finish a painting!
I completely agree with everyone—high-quality photography is an art form in its own right. Not everyone can take good photos.
They asked the analogous question in 1901 with huge success of the Box Brownie. They rejected the first Leica in 1914 because its image quality was inferior to that of sheet film. And of course in late 1990s they poo-poohed digital photography for giving to horrible images.
The technique does not determine what kind of work will be produced. This is of course important. But the author's vision is more important. The ability to find something in the ordinary and simple that makes a creator a creator. And it doesn't matter that he has a camera or a brush in his hands.
a) what is art? b) what is fine art? and c) is photography ever art? I think you will find these are eternal questions with personal non-universal answers
Absolutely. I have had many sharp, properly exposed iPhone images included in my shows in sizes up to 3x4’. And no… nobody has ever called me on it nor has anybody ever asked if the image was taken with a ‘real camera’.
Absolutely. The photo I posted as a work of mine "Sunset Heaven in Suburban Hell" was taken with my android phone. I had never seen such a spectacular sunset in my hometown, and I couldn't resist snapping the moment. I am including it in my portfolio to show some of the moments that inspire my work...even in the midst of the city, I can still find a little of that wildness...
Can a drawing made in pencil even be considered fine art?
A phone, or camera, or pencil, or whatever you need to create with are just tools….. what’s matter are the outcome….
agree with all the comments that say yes! It is the quality of the creation, not the device/material used to make it.
Of course it can, because the ultimate tool for creating fine art is the mind of an engaged artist with the skill to see art in the mundane or atypical, shoot it, and process it. The digital darkroom is a legitimate form, as it's built on the innovations and techniques of traditional artists like Ansel Adams and other giants in fine art photography. It still takes years to learn and grow in photographic artmaking. Now we have phones that are highly capable to capturehigh res, raw data and artists have software and develop skills to magnify that data to scale and quality previously unknown and unprecedented. Throughout history the tools of art have changed and the artist is called to grow in their vision and skills to use them.
Of course. Most phones today have a higher resolution camera and more features than my first digital camera did!
Absolutely. The quality of the photo is what makes it art not the device you use to capture it.
Is a good quality photograph art then?
I think so
We should see it.
It's one of the criteria, but that isn't enough...
True 👍