HAZEL M.

ADORABLE BS CRIMINOLOGY 3

Are Photographs Art?

I grew up watching my grandmother photograph various events such as graduations,
weddings, and birthdays. That is why I promised myself that I would carry on her legacy in
some way. I started by being a student journalist in my elementary years. Fast forward to Junior
High School, I was able to convince the school to give me the chance to compete for the Photo
Journalism Contest. Won in the district level then moved in to the Division Level. I was with my
younger brother who happened to be one of the members of our School Publication, he is our
editorial cartoonist.
While we were waiting for our turn to compete, we sat down and spoke about how photo
journalism and editorial cartooning are both distinct. As I watched him organize his art supplies
into his bag, I couldn't help but wonder if he believed photography to be art. I was just curious
knowing the fact that he is a young artist himself. He then answered me “You should answer that
question yourself because I’m not doing photojournalism here but you are”. He laughed and
continued “but for me, I think photography is an art. Photographers like you have this skill of
turning ordinary things into something extraordinary. If someone hands you a camera, you
capture something that the naked eye cannot see, if someone hands us a pen and a piece of paper
we draw something that conveys a powerful message. We are both artist with different kinds of
art”. That is when I believed that Photography is an art. I was encouraged by what he said, and
we made a promise to each other that we would do everything we could to win. Glory to God we
both made it to the Top 5 and we are qualified to compete for the Regionals, this time we were
not just representing our school but the whole Province of Bohol.
According to Aaron Hertzmann many people believed that photography could not be art,
because it was made by a machine rather than by human creativity. From the beginning, artists
were dismissive of photography, and saw it as a threat to “real art.’’ Even in the first
presentations of 1839, classical painter Paul Delaroche is reported to have blurted out “From
today, painting is dead!” Two decades later, the poet Charles Baudelaire wrote, in a review of the
Salon of 1859. It seems likely, in fact, that photography was one of the major catalysts of the
Modern Art movement: its influence led to decades of vitality in the world of painting, as artists
were both inspired by photographic images and pushed beyond realism. Without photography,
perhaps modern art would never have existed.