Not FINE ART

No Irish, No Photographers need apply, okay so I paraphrased a turn of the century sign, but the unfortunate message is painfully familiar. I just encountered another juried show where photographs are not welcome.

Yes, indeed any organizer may set the rules to allow any media they want, but why is it so common for juries to bar photographs.

This latest bar came in a snidely worded message stating, “Photographs are rightly ‘decorative arts’, not FINE ART at all…” Okay, then a photograph wouldn’t have a chance of being juried in, so why ban it in the first place?

The discovery of the “lost” negatives of Ansel Adams has set the New York art world aflame. These plates were thought to have been lost in a studio fire in the thirties. Now after years of being counted among the missing they’ve surfaced and the horns and bells are ring in the news. These glass negatives have been valued at two hundred million and yes, there are those who say they are forgeries, but the thrill remains, Ansel Adams lost photographs have been found!

So there is some photography which qualifies as FINE ART.

Nope I’m not Ansel Adams. In fact I’m more in line with Pompeo Posar, Francesco Scuvallo or Peter Gowland and it has been hard to adjust to finding the beauty in nature and the vast expanses of the Pacific Northwest, where people in pictures makes them hard to place and awards go to sailing ships and birds.

And no, I have the most extreme admiration for the naturalist photographs of the brilliant Kelle Herrick, the tiny, fragile, but exquisitely carved birds of Ron Wright and the maritime works of Dutch Mosart; it’s just not my thing.

Art is supposed to expand the mind, challenge the spirit and touch the heart and there are no rules about how to do that. Yes, in the hands of a gifted painter like Kim Wurster, wildlife becomes so jewel-like it rivals the masterpieces of Faberge, and when Stephanie Donaldson paints a buffalo, there is just a bit of Alton Kelly lurking and why not? But why can’t a photograph do the same?