Photography, in its big desire to accepted as an authentic art form by the modernist art institution in the late 20th century, allowed itself to become subsumed into both art history written by modernist art historians as a history of form, and a standard modernist aesthetics based around forms, creativity and artistic vision.

What hasn't really been considered is whether photography changes our understanding of both art and artists. Walter Benjamin, for instance, argued that photography undercut the aura of art. Are photographers identical to artists (eg., creators of original works by painters, sculptors), or does photography change the way we understand the category 'artist'.

One consideration here is that the photographer's archive is made up of thousands, or tens of thousands, of images with many of them realized with a meaning and for a purpose different from those of the observer /curator/historian/reader. The photographer's archive is a space of disorder open to a variety of interpretations, and many of the images in the archive would not considered to be art. This is quite different from painters producing masterpieces for the art institution.

The art photographer is both inside and outside the art institution.