I’m interested in a discussion of those factors that can transform a photograph into a work of art, if indeed there are any.
Photography at its most basic is a means of capturing a specific section of the world at a specific time and place. At that level it is relatively easy to do, and there are millions of cameras, including smart phone cameras, that can do that job.
Can we articulate what things might be able to elevate a matter-of-fact photo into something that would make many people want to look at it repeatedly and possibly hang it on their wall? That would give people emotional reactions beyond the subject matter? There are great landscape and portrait photos, for example, and there are mediocre ones of the same places and faces. Are the great ones “art?” What makes them that?