One of the characteristics of contemporary art is that artists use media as their methods of creation and creation, just like the multimedia art that we often hear about. And what is media? Media is the medium that carries information and the way we use it to spread information.

Photography refers to the image record of the reality of a certain moment by a photographer, and it express or disseminate certain information to the viewers, so it is classified as one types of media.

Photography technology was invented in the nineteenth century, which shocked to the world, especially to the art world, as the original art creations were mainly painting and sculpture. The emergence of photography technology caused the loss of "Aura" of artwork, which means the unique characteristics of the original artwork. The aura of a painting ceased to exist once it is being photographed. Painting was once considered to be the "reality", a way for painters to express what they see. It has considerable expressiveness and recordability. However, due to the emergence of photography technology, the recording function of painting has been replaced, and painting tends to develop expressively. As a result, the post-modern and contemporary expressions have emerged.

There are, however, still many controversies about whether photography can be regarded as an art. Photography, since its invention, has an important position and it has a great impact on human civilization. However, it is mainly due to its recording function that makes people emphasise its functional use. To classify an artwork, most people would consider whether an item can achieve a social function. An artwork is of high social value because of its rarity, yet photos, because of its composition, are not as rare as other artworks and do not contain property value. The mechanism of photography makes it reproducible hence the work is not a unique one, so most photos are not regarded as artworks or artistic expressions. Some people also believe that photos are a record of reality, which is different from the purpose of arts. The beauty of photos is only the beauty of the object being photographed, but not the creation of the photographer, so photography itself is not arts.

但亦有不少人認為，藝術品動人之處，關鍵在於其傳遞的人文訊息及價值，而攝影的重點並非攝影這個行為的本身，也不是影像的本身，而是攝影者將該時刻記錄下來的決定，以及其想傳播的信息，所以攝影也應被視為藝術。攝影將拍攝者有自覺的觀察呈現，而拍攝出來的照片就見證了一頂人類的選擇。繪畫詮譯世界的方法，是將世界轉成繪畫的語言，是一種內部參照。攝影自身則沒有語言，是外部參照，並不建構和轉換事物，只是將現實的某一瞬間孤立出來，被攝於照片甚或是或缺席的事物都納入於攝影者的考量之中。這既是攝影的限制，也是其獨特力量，在場的事物可映照出缺席的事物而帶出信息。故此，我們在觀賞影像時，要帶有批判性的觀察和思考，影像的內容要透過我們自己去體會，不同的人也會得出不同的詮譯。

References

BENJAMIN, Walter. A Short History of Photography. 1931.
BENJAMIN, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 1935.
BERGER, John. Understanding a Photograph. Penguin UK, 2013.
COTTON, Charlotte. The Photograph as Contemporary Art. Thames & Hudson, 2009.
ROSE, Gillian. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Interpreting Visual Materials. SAGE, 2011
阮義忠著，《攝影美學七問》，有鹿文化, 2016。