Summary: The great Henri Cartier-Bresson, a man who captured a thousand moments, once said that “photographers are the hunters, not the cooks.” But does that make photography a lesser medium? Are the likes of Robert Capa, Robert Frank and Cartier-Bresson himself always going to be inferior artists to Michelangelo and Monet? In this Intelligence Squared debate, AA Gill concedes that photography “revolutionised the nature of art,” but interprets the motion as implying otherwise. Was it not, Gill asked, fundamentally about the exclusivity, about “who is allowed into the club and who is merely a snapper?” Stephen Bayley disagrees. He opened his argument by saying that, “questioning photography would be like questioning sight, but the motion is about the medium, not what is art.” As such, paint is more subtle, wider in “scope and variety…far more susceptible to human interference and therefore allows for a better message.” In contrast, photography is “powerful but limited in expressive range,” as it depends most of all of on technology and equipment: “photographers are ‘dominated by their medium, not masters of it.” The photographer, Bayley concluded, is “more passive, less creative. He has to wait for his great moments; he cannot create them. Speakers for the motion - Stephen Bayley, José María Cano and Michael Mack. Speakers against the motion - A A Gill, Chris Steele-Perkin
