Conceptual Photography, which appeared in the 1960s, took up the ancient quarrel between photography and painting, in its own way, totally inversing the terms.
Instead of criticising photography in the name of painting, as had been done in the past, painters (from Andy Warhol to Ed Rucha and Bruce Nauman) used photography to criticise painting, engaging in an outright attack on the notion of "fine-arts" and the elitist character of artistic creation.
To reinvent painting, these painters used the essential characteristics of this photography ¨C its absence of affect, its ease of use and its ability to capture the ephemeral.
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