"After all, there's a huge genre of photography dedicated to the everyday and the banal, whose only real claim to anything is beauty in composition and light."
Yes, but I think the major difference between this and most modern artists that you'll find in galleries and museums is that photographers are far more likely to admit that their work is nothing but beauty in composition and light, without piling on claims of symbolic meaning or attributing some abstract concept.
I'm mostly indifferent to the work of most modern installation artists; it's the self-importance of it all that I bristle at.
But we also need to understand the struggle of those modern artists. They don't want to do just "composition and light" because they deem that kind of work as designing. And they didn't go to art school to learn to be a designer. I tend to believe that most of them are still failing, but maybe sometime somewhere someone could achieve something beyond just design.
Yes, but I think the major difference between this and most modern artists that you'll find in galleries and museums is that photographers are far more likely to admit that their work is nothing but beauty in composition and light, without piling on claims of symbolic meaning or attributing some abstract concept.
I'm mostly indifferent to the work of most modern installation artists; it's the self-importance of it all that I bristle at.