On Tuesday I made a trip to the Getty Center Museum, and as always it was fascinating. There were three new photography exhibits there that I wanted to check out. Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958) and Jo Ann Callis (b. 1940) are the two featured photographers.

I often wondered how some photographs are deemed museum quality and others are not. Today I believe that I got the answer. Other than having an agent, the way an artist is marketed and presented, it is also about the artist's approach to his work. The photographers featured today approach their photography as did the great masters approached their painting; a study of something or another. Such as complimentary colors, natural light, or merely the various affects of light on film. It is no doubt that the way a photograph was made in the early 1900's is an art form in its own right. Even more artistic was the way a negative was projected and then printed, and even more so color printing before Cibachrome.

Now we are in the digital era and manipulating photos is an art form. Using photography to creating something quite different than what was seen by the lens . The study of complimentary colors or how the light hits the sensor makes photography even more interesting and artistic. It proves to me once again that anything can be viewed as art, it all depends on the intentions of the artist.