Is Photography Really Art?

Kyle told me how he got started taking pictures:

"After my grandfather passed away, I started doing just small stuff with his point-and-click, but after my uncle passed away, they had given me his camera at the time, which I used for a long while. Then I just got hooked on it and I've been doing it since then, since I've gotten my own camera and different equipment."
"Social critic Susan Sontag said that photography isn't really an art form like painting or poetry is. What would you say to that?"
"It's tough to say. The photography a lot of people take, like modeling and the still stuff, I see as an art, but there is a lot of it where I could see where people say it isn't. Nowadays you see people walk around with a cell phone or an iPad and they think they're the greatest photographer in the world. Sometimes they get a great shot with that, but really it's kind of down to what's really there is art within itself. I've been told numerous times that my stuff is really good: My friend a painter and she's asked me if she can use my photos for painting and I'll give her one for it. But it depends on how you see it. I always say that the world looks a lot different through a lens."

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