Can photography become an art like painting?
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User:
Can photography become an art like painting?
GPT:
That is one of the fundamental questions in modern aesthetics. Painting and photography share an image-bearing medium, but they differ in intentionality. Painting begins from nothing—it is an act of creation. Photography begins from the world—it is an act of selection. For that reason, photography has long been regarded as “an imitation of seeing” rather than a self-sufficient art. However, when photography becomes aware of its own mechanism of seeing—when it reflects on the act of capturing itself—it can indeed reach the same level as painting. That is when photography transcends documentation and enters the realm of metafictional art.
User:
Painting and literature reached art by having a modulus. Photography lacks a modulus.
GPT:
Yes—that is a precise way to put it. Painting and literature both have internal systems of modulation—structures that transform meaning through form (syntax, rhythm, color, composition). Photography, in its mechanical nature, lacks that intrinsic “modulus.” It borrows order from the external world, rather than constructing it. Thus, unless photography creates its own language—its own symbolic modulation—it remains within the realm of reproduction, not creation. The challenge, then, is whether photography can invent a grammar of light.
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Last: 11/8/2025, 9:26:21 AM
