The Phonograph

The concept of "art photography" seems to be straightforward.

In the quoted phrase "art" appears as a modifier. The suggestion is that some types of photography aren't artistic -- my tourist shots of Stonehenge, for example. They are momentos, acquired with the use of a readily available technology and without a lot of skill.

A real artist with a camera could, of course, do wonders with Stonehenge.

Somewhere in between "art photography" and "tourist snapshots" there exists the land of "commercial photography," in which craftsmen and women who pay careful attention to framing, light, the film-or-pixels question, help sell automobiles or hand soap.

But what about the humble phonograph? Is there are art phonography? Is the recording of sound limited to ther amateur-to-professional range or can this sort of memorialization, too, burst out the top end of the commercial into the artistic?

Or is that an invalid question? a category mistake?