It looks to me like the pictures may have been for his... uhh... own self-gratification.

Had that reaction too, and it's not just us :)

"Tichy was frequently arrested for hanging around the local pool and snapping pictures of unsuspecting women."

https://www.howardgreenberg.com/artists/miroslav-tich

Though he seems to have made quite a lot of effort in the handmade cameras and deliberate processing techniques.

I think many of them are great and it has little to do with the “quality” being bad.

I truly believe their are two kind of appreciators of art in the world.

1. People who like realism, photoshopped pictures, GGI in media, etc.

vs.

2. Modern art, film noir, Black & white classical movies, etc.

If you give the second a chance, you might be suprised what your imagination does. I used to be kinda a #1 guy with the exception of bad action filmed CGI movies, but completely changed as the years went by. I've even gotten to the point where I think color in film has ruined a lot of movies, along with digital.

I truly believe that you can’t divide appreciators of art in simple, unnuanced, mutually exclusive categories. Specially just 2 like you did.

I don’t see myself in either category, at the same time that I do remember appreciating things that would fit both.

Adding context does little to change that, unfortunately.

I could understand if they evoked some kind of emotions or served as a deconstruction of photography technique, but most of them just look like deliberately bad photographs to me.

Then again, I'm only an amateur at photography.

I'd guess they invoked nostalgia in other photographers at the time about their old bad photos, so they thought it was brilliant. Like an inside thing only they understood.

I like them and it's simply because they evoke an intellectual and emotional reaction. That's art.

I get nothing from them. Does that make them not art?

For you, perhaps. I don't think there is an objective truth of "this is art, this is not art." I shared my experience of the pictures with you. Art is the experience of Art imo.

A large part of how you experience something is the context though. If people tell you something is great before showing then you are more likely to find something great about it, etc. So with that reasoning a large part of art is just telling people that it is art, it isn't the work itself but the belief that it is art that creates the art.

Context matters immensely. That’s why I can’t imagine posting an thought-provoking non-ironic short on, e.g., YouTube, knowing that it will be immediately accompanied by calls to watch 100 funniest fails and (with all my love for these creatures) wild foxes being pet or cockatoos mimicking cat meowing, and that a significant number of viewers will watch it while sitting in a toilet.

Contrasting with galleries, museums, private exhibitions surviving off subsidies or entrance fees—and I don’t think it’s as simple as “it’s just a new way of viewing that you don’t like because it’s new”—what we have settled for are “free” ad-supported platforms that are in effect much closer to casinos and malls, and to which convincing a visitor to not leave directly equals revenue.

There is, of course, this flip side, where presenting any visually unoriginal, self-gratifying, etc. work in context of an exhibition gives it not-necessarily-deserved value; and it could be that the ability to make the viewer feel something you want them to feel despite all that widely varying context is a valid skill.

I could have such an experience with nature, but nature isn't the same thing as art.

I just think art is poorly defined.

>without context

That's an effect of perspective. Knowing the fact that the "home made" appearance is deliberate changes the photos from being random bad photos to being commentary.

Having seen 100s of high def birds, mountains, weddings, even pro photos are pretty repetitive.

These say interpretive art to me more than every pixel of yet another nature shot, or airbrushed person. They make my imagination curious about the world within.

When all the details are there just as they would be outside, why not just go outside?

Yup, you can't just take awful photos and say "these are good actually". Well, in the art world you can get away with that kind of nonsense. But to most people those are just terrible photos.

There are various philosophical and artistic movements for which art should not look like art. Others are about art being abstract, inaccessible and incomprehensible. Others yet are about use of archaic techniques to blend a modern eye with faux nostalgia (proto-hipsters, one could say).

There is not one kind of art.

Art does not need to be popular or broadly understood to be art.

You are not a majority anyway.

Good taste, feeling, and emotions are personal.

There is no contradiction between something being both a terrible photo (or painting or sculpture) from a technical perspective and art.

I agree that you can’t just take awful photos and say “these are good actually,” but I think these are incredible! Haven’t enjoyed a photo series as much as these in a long time.

I suppose, as they say, there really is no accounting for taste. My own included, of course.