PH21 Gallery - Scene and Meaning: the art of photography

Although photography first emerged as a technological invention, it was also quickly conceived as an artistic practice as well. Pictorialist photographs in the nineteenth century were created to look like paintings, while advocates of straight photography in the first part of the twentieth century strived for the purely photographic means of creating photographic meaning. Street photographers devoted the medium to capturing the fleeting moment, while in the last part of the twentieth century many photographers turned to staging and directing to utilize photography for artistic visual communication. Straight photography creates photographic meaning from the scene observed, while directorial, staged photography creates a scene to be photographed from a preceding conception. Art photography also includes numerous genres and creative practices from portraiture, landscape and still life to abstract and conceptual photography. In this call we ask contemporary photographers to show how they understand photography as a fine art practice in the twenty first century.