During the twentieth century, both fine art photography and documentary photography became accepted
by the English-speaking art world and the gallery system. In the United States, a small handful of curators spent
their lives advocating to put photography in such a system, with Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, John
Szarkowski, and Hugh Edwards the most prominent among them.
Yet the aesthetics of photography is a matter that continues to be discussed regularly,
especially in artistic circles. Many artists argued that photography was the mechanical reproduction of an image.
If photography is authentically art, then photography in the context of art would need redefinition, such as
determining what component of a photograph makes it beautiful to the viewer.
The controversy began with the earliest images "written with light": Nicéphore
Niépce, Louis Daguerre, and others among the very earliest photographers were met with acclaimed, but some
questioned if it met the definitions and purposes of art.
Clive Bell in his classic essay "Art" states that only one thing can distinguish art from what is
not art: "significant form." Bell wrote: "There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist;
possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless. What is this quality? What quality is
shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the windows at
Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto's frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of
Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cezanne? Only one answer seems possible - significant form. In each, lines and
colors combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic
emotions."