Fine Art?

I thought it was really interesting looking at the emergence of photography as a viable part of the art market, and its relative infancy as a category of fine art. It was fascinating to hear Marla Rutherford's take on this particular topic and how she saw her own work. At the opening night of her exhibit at Irvine Contemporary, someone had asked her whether or not she considered her work to be 'fine art', to which she gave an interesting response. She said that she did consider her work to be in that category, and especially what she has done in the past with the fetish girls where she basically immersed herself in their world, and most recently with the character project where she had very specific ideas and conditions for which how she wanted it to turn out.

Marla's work reminds me a little of David LaChapelle's in that she likes to play around with contexts and the elements. I feel like LaChapelle is sort of known for his surrealist style in that regard. Would his work be considered fine art?

Well, he did have a retrospective in Paris (ran in 2009 I believe), which I would think contributes to his work being afforded that category. His style is so distinctive, and you can see some of his recent work really harping on a lot of our current issues. When you see a LaChapelle, you are definitely going to look twice, or a dozen times.