The question may look silly. There are some ’simple’ questions asking for a ’simple’ things that we consider ridiculous. It’s because we don’t get the fact that the simple questions are nothing but a slight parcel with infinite amount of succesive queries about the general sense.
In its complicity, photography cannot be perceived as a single entity, obviously. The fashion photographers and documentalists are maybe the birds of the same tree but, surely, not of the same nest. I am not about, nevertheless, to list all photography types and tag on whether or not it is an art. The list would be too long; but still incomplete. I am not an art pundit. I do not believe the art can be a subject matter for science, anyway. The art is not what we see, the art is what we feel. Van Gogh’s “Vincent’s Room” is not an art because it has beautiful colours; it is work of art due to emotions it arouses. It contains a messsage. And the canvas is fully finished when its message reaches viewers’ perception, when it is read.
Photography acts in the same way. Penn’s portrait of Picasso and Capa’s D-Day landing cannot be compared but they both are works of art. Even if the critics not gave opinion on them, they exist. And the question do not concerns just the great names of photography as Penn, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Avedon, Kértesz, Brassaï. I believe there are thousands of unknown genius we pass by every day. I believe there are millions of works of art, hidden in drawers for timidity that their creators feel. And I believe they will be shown someday.
To end, I would like to quote words of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, a great Spanish Romantic:
Do not say that, treasure depleted,
subjects lacking, the lyre sits silently:
There may not be poets, but always
there will be poetry.