The Point of Photography

Now I absolutely abhore modern art on the basis that I think it too cold, talentless, emotionless, and just generally not very good at all. In other words, I don't get it and the "reasons" for it existing are made up on the spot whenever anyone asks "what it means".

Which is why I don't want to do another photography course. I have got better since doing the three years doing about it in college, but I really don't like the exam criteria they set for it. On the basis that they try to read too much into it.

I confess that i'm not very good at describing (when they ask me to) the reason for me taking the photo when I know full well that I only took it because it looks good with regards to the whole composition thing. I won't put that down as to why I took it because isn't what they want to hear and it gets downgraded because it doesn't have a purpose.

The point is this: why justify photography when you know full well you only took the photo because you thought the subject would look good recorded in the set format? I would say the same for art, except that that, much like photography or writing or singing etc requires actual skill and talent, not just some crummie excuse for it being exhibited. I mean, the painted potraits of the Royals and other nobility by Painters such as Sir Thomas Lawrence or Goya and other such portrait artists are blatantly obviously for vanity or propaganda purposes but they are good to look at because they managed to recreate silk and other substances out of paint and Chardin managed to turn pain into copper pots and make them look so realistic his paintings are almost like photographs themselves.

Plonking an unmade bed in an art gallery then saying its "everyone's bed" doesn't make it art (or good for that matter, either). Same goes for a whistle being stuck to a towel rail bolted to a white wall...