Artist

I just finished researching the ins and outs of owning art gallery for a while on my laptop... and I came out with more questions than before I started. It made me question the very definition of an artist.

The problem for me is that the title artist is a self given title; for an individual to be an artist, all they have to do is have some create something, call it art, and give themselves the title of artist. There is no organization or person out there that can formally qualify or deny someone as an artist, because art itself is so broad and in so many varieties it is difficult to say what is art and what is not. This brings me to my next point.
Photography is rapidly becoming nothing. Photography, at least in a classical sense, was a hard and respectable thing, because film was expensive, cameras and darkrooms were difficult to use, and the whole thing was a bundle of expense and talent that surely any average person could not pull off. Of course, I'm thinking of classic photographers like Avedon, Lange, Adams, Karsh, and the lot. That stuff was hard to do man! Karsh or Avedon are great examples of this, because of the sheer amount of equipment they used.. I've read things that said Karsh used to use at least 5 lights for most of his portraits!
But look at photography now. Digital photography is here to stay, and I feel, like a plague, diminish the title of photographer. Now more than ever, people can use a camera. Cameras are attached to almost all cell phones, ipods, whatever. Heck, you can buy a canon camera for 100 dollars that will give you tons of features to monkey around with. Being able to take a photograph is now no more than the click of a button, no juggling of film or negatives or prints anymore. Hell, there are SD cards with wifi attached to them that start to upload photos the minute we get inside of our home's wifi signal. Of course, this is a wonderful thing, to be able to do such things with such ease, but at the same time, this is slowly killing the need for talent in a photographer. Every year, the line between professional level camers and consumer level cameras is blurred, and it will continue in the future. I myself have a "Pro-sumer" camera, the Canon 7D. Its somewhere in between, and its fitting because I am training to become a professional photographer. They had to invent a word just for my type of camera.
And with the invasion and explosion of Facebook photos and Flickr, the worth of an individual image is at an all time low. If a photos were like stocks, I'd be a stock broker jumping out a window right now, because the volume of trading has just made this photography market the biggest bear ever. And this means that to be a professional photographer, you don't really need as much anymore. Because the line between pro equipment and consumer equipment is blurred, so is the actual line between professional and consumer. In short, the 200 12 megapixel photos you just posted on Facebook of you and your friends getting drunk for no other reason than "Its the weekend let's party!" are making my photos equally as worthless on the internet.

Okay back to the artist. The photography example is the biggest example of what I'm personally scared about. With things like Flickr, who's to buy art anymore? They can just go surfing about on Flickr if they want to see something amazing, free of charge. And they don't have to see the same painting or photo over and over, they can see millions of different ones. This absolute sea of art is now floating on the internet, and its creating the biggest problem in art ever. To have a flickr, you have to fill out a registration page and you're done, so there is no authentication that what you post there will be of any worth to the world or not. No one polices it, and no one filters it. Banksy, Karsh, Avedon, a five year old's drawings of dogs, a high school student in a photography 1 class, Its all in the same place.

Please buy art. Buy an art piece that you truly believe is good. Go to a local art gallery, support them. Its good for everyone, especially the art community. I suppose this is the only remedy/defense out there against all the awful art in this world. I'm afraid art means no one to anyone anymore.

I digress... Everyone's art starts from somewhere. I mean, I started posting on flickr when I was in high school, and my old stuff is awful.