Photography

Artistic photography, also known as photographic art or art photography, refers to the use of photographic means to express a content-related or formal concern. In contrast to commercial photography, its purpose is usually not exclusively commercial exploitation, and it is not usually initiated by specific orders or commissions. Instead, it is often referred to as ”conceptual photography”, as it pursues an intentional approach in order to change the view of reality and convey a message or statement by the photographer.

Artistic photography encompasses various sub-areas, including experimental photography, impressionistic photography and surreal photography. The styles of artistic photography include documentary, reportage, portrait, industrial, architectural, advertising, fashion, nude, nature and landscape, genre and experimental photography. The documentation and photographic interpretation of artistic creation, such as the actions and works of the artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude, can also be counted as artistic photography and make this genre of photography part of object art.

A special case within artistic photography is black and white photography, in which the real color-brightness nuances of objects are captured in shades of gray, including black and white, on an image memory. Black and white photography is characterized by its ability to achieve minimalist abstraction of the subject and is therefore particularly suitable for the artistic intensification of an image statement. Despite the predominance of colorful images since the 1970s, black and white photography remains the medium of choice for many photographers. The basic photographic problems hardly differ from those of color photography. The aim of black and white photography is to concentrate on structures, light and shadow as well as abstraction.