Slippery Slope

I don't think I want to make a habit of this, but I am going to comment on an email I recently received.  Attached to the message was a PowerPoint presentation of art work by a Russian artist by the name of Anna Kostenko.  The friend who sent me the message and attachment indicated that what was remarkable about the images was that they were NOT photographs, but paintings.  I viewed the PPT slides and said to myself that the images certainly were remarkable paintings, because they looked just like photographs.  REALLY looked just like photographs.  So I googled (when a noun becomes a verb, pay attention) "Anna Kostenko", and it turns out that there are two artists named Anna Kostenko.  One of them is a painter and one of them is a photographer.  The slides in the ppt presentation were indeed photographs, taken by the photographer Anna Kostenko.  Further googling turned up a statement by the painter Anna Kostenko saying that she did NOT take the photographs in the slide show.

This mistaken identity/mis-identification brings up some interesting issues.  Does it matter whether the images are photographs or paintings?  Does adding the concept of  "art" change how you view and evaluate the image?  Does a photographic image have any validity as a documentary object?  Does the artist matter if you cannot detect the artist's hand?

At a photographic workshop conducted by Ansel Adams in the early 70s, one of the students showed Ansel a good technical print of a picturesque landscape.  "That's very nice," Ansel said, "you've made a jewel out of a jewel."