Conceptual Photography: Photography as "art"

Something I found interesting about contemporary photography is the fact that it was able to finally secure the position of photography in the art gallery by elevating photography to the status of “art”, but it goes about doing so in a very different way than previous types of photography that attempted similar things, such as pictorialism. Both the conceptual and the pictorialist photograph attempt to prove photography’s place as an art form by arguing the presence of the hand of man- the photograph is not simply a document recorded by a machine. However, pictorialism attempts to do so through presenting the physical photograph as a work of art by relating it to past art forms, such as painting, through darkroom manipulation techniques while contemporary photography elevates photography as a whole to an “art” form by proving that photography is an effective medium through which a larger work of art can be conceived. Pictorialism presents the photograph in and of itself as a work of art through the use of techniques that are specific to that medium, while contemporary photography presents photography as a medium which can be manipulated through the use of other art mediums (painting, text, printmaking) in order to create a piece in which the use of the photograph lends to the creation of a larger meaning. The use of the photograph in contemporary photography lends itself to the desire to challenge the status quo because of its relation to reality, thus contemporary photography presents the medium of photography as a whole as a true form of “art”.