Is photography art?

I meant to post this article earlier in the month but life and Christmas overtook me...Jonathon Jones  stirred up a lot of comments on his Guardian article 'The $6.5m canyon: it's the most expensive photograph ever' on 10 December 2014 at http://ow.ly/GynXi  .. I also picked up on some debate re his view of photography on the OCA student website on 11 December...

What kick-started the furore was the news that Peter Lik, a landscape photographer, had sold the above image ( Phantom ) for £4.1m, setting a new world record for the most expensive photograph of all time. In Jones' view this image is  ' derivative, sentimental in its studied romantiscism, and consequently in very poor taste. It looks like a posh poster you might find framed in a pretentious hotel room'. 

Personally, 'Phantom' does nothing to stir my emotions ( a strong criterion when I visit exhibitions or look at works of art) but using it as Jones does as a' classic' example of why photography is not art does irritate and annoy me. To my mind it is more a 'classic' example of more money than taste. I very much welcomed Sean O'Hagan's firm rebuttal of Jones' claim also in the Guardian http://goo.gl/dhmeJF 

I agree with him when he says that photography is 'about a way of seeing, not technology'...And I like the fact that by way of illustrating his rebuttal, he includes Jane Bown's magnificent portrait of Samuel Beckett...if that amazing image is not art than 
what is..

Samuel Beckett . Photograph : Jane Bown