Photography as an Art Form

A while ago, we were discussing how some people would argue that photography was not an art form--that capturing an image was merely capturing an image. While surfing the internet I came across this entitled, 10 Reasons Why Photography Sucks and Isn't an Art Form, the author was playing a sort of devils advocate and came up with these reasons.

So today, I'm going to write an opposition on a few of the points he makes.

1 - "Anyone can do it." - While I agree that the point and shoot cameras make photography an accessible art form to anyone, this does not mean that anyone can do it. And I hardly believe that if we gave a group of monkeys some cameras, that the monkeys cameras could produce though provoking images. Yes, anyone can point an shoot a camera, not everyone can evoke an emotion with the image they've captured. Just like anyone can draw a picture (think about elephants creating painting), not everyone can evoke emotion out of it.

2 - "No talent involved" - There are countless books and magazines that have tips on how to better your photography skills. It's not just right place right time. It right place, right time, right lighting, right shadows, right saturation of colors, right focusing, etc, etc.

3 - "No creativity" - Just like any other art form, photography can be uncreative. The kind of photos the article describes, "the more you protest that your badly-composed, out-of-focus pictures bear your unique artistic sensibilities, the more you satisfy your own delusions" is the same as an amateur painter - just plotches of paint with no real purpose or intention....Think about photographers such as annie leibovitz, ansel adams, richard avedon.

4 - "It doesn’t help you to look at the world differently" - i'm going to use a personal story to refute this. the other day I saw a picture of a hermit crab using a broken bottle as a shell. the picture not only reinforced how sad it that we as humans, are destroying the environment for the ourselves and others that depend on it. but it caused me to reflect for a good while on how nature has this constant amazing ability to adapt to it's environment.

anyways, so that's my opposition on the first 4 points, the rest were kind of silly.

the question i'm posing is there is sucha thing as good photography and bad photography, good art and bad art. However, what is each based on? The amount of creativity and inentionality we put into it? Or how it is recieved by the public?