Category talk:Fine art photographers

What is a "fine art photographer"?

What is a "fine art photographer", Rosiestep?

It always smells to me like a marketing term for saccharine, candy-colored landscapes, or maybe for "artistic" B/W nudes, or perhaps anything B/W where people rhapsodize over the print quality because the photo itself is so boring -- anyway, bland photography for people who want something to stick on the wall. But I see that you applied it to Boris Mikhailov, who of course is very different. So perhaps it's not a matter of genre but one of critical or financial success.

A quick look through the list for Japanese photographers -- I'm in Japan -- brought up a distinctly Japanese but completely unfamiliar name: Tetsugo Hyakutake. (Its history shows that I had seen it earlier. But I'd quite forgotten this.) That article starts:

Tetsugo Hyakutake (百武 てつ吾, Hyakutake Tetsugo, born 1975 in Tokyo, grew up in Kawasaki, Japan) is a Japanese artist and a fine art photographer

A source for this is provided. I click on it, and am allowed to read the first half-paragraph of a Philadelphia Inquirer article "of 598 words". The half paragraph mentions neither Hyakutake nor fine art; the full article seems to be about a photo exhibition by "A dozen budding photographers who want to get into the fray and take us along", and presumably Hyakutake is one of the dozen.

(This is the only example in the whole Wikipedia article on Hyakutake of specific sourcing, or anyway the appearance thereof. The article was created by somebody who often applied the term "fine art" to photographers.)

Is the/a criterion for inclusion perhaps the mere appearance of the term "fine art" in the Wikipedia article? (I don't think I've ever added it myself, because its connotations make it risible.) -- Hoary (talk) 23:11, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Hello @Hoary, regarding your question, What is a "fine art photographer", see, Fine-art photography. There are >100 bios on the En wiki where the subject is described as a "fine art photographer", so that's the reason for categorizing them as such. Cheers, --Rosiestep (talk) 23:14, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

The article starts:

Fine art photography is photography created in accordance with the vision of the artist as photographer. Fine art photography stands in contrast to representational photography, such as photojournalism, which provides a documentary visual account of specific subjects and events, literally re-presenting objective reality rather than the subjective intent of the photographer; and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to advertise products or services.

I don't know how seriously to take this ("primary focus" is a hilariously misplaced metaphor), but let's have a go at taking it seriously. I'd expected "the photographer as artist", but instead it's the other way around. Do we look for people who showed clear artistic tendencies that only later were channeled into photography? And the first illustration given is the tremendously famous photo by Stieglitz; this seems to me to be in accordance with Stieglitz's (probably artistic) intent and to represent objective reality (of course as selected by Stieglitz).

Of course that one image (one boat, one position, one angle, one twenty-fifth of a second or thereabouts) can't represent more than a facet of the reality of immigration at that time, but few people would argue these days that "straight" photojournalism could either.

But you seem to be saying that this doesn't really matter -- that what matters is that some WP editor inserted the phrase and that nobody then deleted it. Maybe the phrase is actually sourced -- but then lot of "reliable sources" are little more than recycled press releases.

Here's how the article on Mikhailov starts:

Boris Andreyevich Mikhailov (Бори́с Андрі́йович Миха́йлов, born August 25, 1938) is a fine art photographer who has been described as one of the most important artists to have emerged from the former USSR.

There's a reference at the end of the sentence. This source says that he

is hailed as one of the most important artists to have emerged from the former USSR

Good, good (though quotation marks should have been used in the WP article) -- but the word "fine" appears nowhere. Perhaps the WP editor thought "It's art. And it has no obvious application, so it's not applied art. Ergo, it's fine art." That's reasonable enough. But one could says the same for not hundreds but thousands of photographers who have articles in Wikipedia. (Actually I could have said the same for dozens of bios I've edited. But I didn't, because it seemed superfluous at best.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:01, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

This isn't going anywhere yet. Hoary asked Rosiestep what a fine art photographer is, pointing out that one individual "often applied the term "fine art" to photographers". Rosiestep merely pointed Hoary to the fine-art photography article for an explanation, and claimed "There are >100 bios on the En wiki where the subject is described as a "fine art photographer"", reiterating Hoary's point precisely. Do those >100 articles have refs that backup this assertion? Hoary is suggesting they do not. Rosiestep, we need to see a reliable reference beside each claim of a photographer being a fine-art photographer before adding them to the fine art photographers category. -Lopifalko (talk) 10:55, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I think adding a RS to support a fact is good form. Or iff you feels it would be best to revert any of the cats I added, please go for it. I didn't mean to create work for anyone; I just thought adding the cat was a good idea. --Rosiestep (talk) 02:36, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Rosiestep. -Lopifalko (talk) 19:18, 4 May 2016 (UTC)