Has to Be a Photograph a Factual Rendition of Reality?

The judgement of whether a thing is a work of art is a simple one and can be answered unambiguously. The term art has been settled to mean objects expressing human skill and imagination (read: creativity). Anything that meets these qualifications is—by definition—art.

[…] What remains ambiguous and open to subjective judgement is not whether a thing is or is not art, but whether, and by what criteria, that thing may be considered as “good” art. This is, and should always remain, a matter of opinion.

Guy Tal

As everyone who had learned photography, I learned the rules of composition: rule of thirds, golden ratio, etc.

When I was a member of a Photo club I participated in some competitions and I tried to apply these rules.

The only thing I learned was that my photographs were analysed by a group of individuals called ‘the Experts’ who would be looking for contents and features that meet the established rules.

That is what Alain Briot name ‘the photo police’, who ‘consist of photographers who are telling other photographers what to do by imposing arbitrary rules because they believe they are right and other photographers are wrong’.

Many times, in my exhibitions, some people say to me: Oh…you’ve used Photoshop…! The reality doesn’t look like that!

My answer used to be: Sorry but I’m a Linux user, so there is not Photoshop for Linux. And, why a photograph hast to show the reality? Why cannot I post-processing my pictures the way I want?

Unfortunately there are a lot of people who believe they are connoisseurs, but at the end what they have are a lot of prejudices and they are not able to think that art is, and should always remain, a matter of opinion.…