Not everyone would answer that question the same way. For someone, the act of a meaningful selection is artistic in itself - in a way similar to pointing the camera somewhere and clicking a button as long as there is an intention to do so. But someone else might say “no, you simply picked up an image that already existed, so it is not art”. There is no objective set of parameters to define art, so there are lots of different subjective opinions.

Meaningful selection is the key here.

As I understand it, art is neither about being beautiful, nor unique. We seldom produce anything that is truly unique. Art is about the artist’s interpretation of his own work. There’s an image out there, and I photographed it. The art lies not in the technic, but in why I photographed it in that particular way.

The way people backlashed was not cool I must say. However, the world of design and the world of art share technics, but are very different in their intentions. Design is always about fulfilling a purpose, to communicate something efficiently. Art is secondary there.