Full-fledged Photographic Art or Lesser Facsimile Substitute

For some time I have been locked in a -- lets not call it argument, rather lets say -- heated discussion with a good friend and fellow photographer. Derek has over the years changed his opinions and convictions as the essence of his philosophy evolves and changes. Amusingly, he still manages to land every time somewhere opposite of most of my opinions; but, this is the very bread that nourishes intellectual discourse.

At first the rift in opinions was more of a divide between commercial photography pitted against strictly artistic photography. In his words, either to be a "Merchant of Photography" or a "Photographic Artist." This stance evolved to encompass a shunning of all tools in his opinion emblematic of the contemporary commercial photographer: elaborate lighting, digital capture, all manner of digital retouching and manipulation, etc. In reality these things are not solely the domain of the working commercial photographer and can be very powerful tools for creating non-commercial work.

Of course the preeminent sin for many is working digitally. All manner or flimsy arguments have been made, from talk about perverting some imagined truth intrinsic in photographic imagery to an even more laughable argument pinning the very identity of and novel value of photography in the chemical reaction present at the time of exposure. There are other arguments as well, some prove the speaker's detachment form the current state-of-the-art by citing a lesser sharpness and overall quality in the ultimate print. My all time favorite is always the argument that without the traditional chemical reaction of silver halide suspended in a gelatin medium there is no photography. This diminishes the scope of photography and removes the photographic process it from its true arena, the photographers mind. The ultimate print or flickering image projected or transmitted on a screen has always been to me the final representation of a process that is largely unseeable and that takes place in the creator's mind.

My friend most recently seems to posit that images created digitally lack a quintessential property that prevents them from being beautiful objects, and maybe then it follows that they could not be objects of art. It is not fully clear how the distinction can be made, or for what purpose other than to place one subset of images as superior to others. The discourse continues, maybe other readers will share their ideas as comments here or post links to their opinions so that the discussion thread can be continued.

Derek's two recent posts to his own blog prompted the above, and can be seen at the links below:
Object Photography & Digital Camptures
Looking at Photographs