Before the industrial era there was a far greater homogeneity among all objects because their production was still dependent on handcraft  Objects were far less specialized in function, and the cultural range of forms was more restricted, there being little reference to earlier or to extraneous traditions. Furthermore, there was a much tighter segregation between the class of objects that could lay claim to 'style' and the class of locally produced objects that had use value only.

Today a farmhouse table has widespread cultural value, but just fifty years ago its sole value arose from the purpose it served. In the eighteenth century there was simply no relationship between a 'Louis XV table and a peasant's table: there was an unbridgeable gulf between the two types of object, just as there was between the two corresponding social classes. No single cultural system embraced them both.  The social order was what gave objects their standing.  Nobility and affluence bestowed absolute distinction and this was reflected in the value of the goods that were bought.

In a preindustrial society, "art" refers all creative human endeavours. From this wide perspective, "art" is simply a generic term for the human creative impulse, out of which sprang all other human pursuits, such as science, via alchemy, and religion, via shamanism. Art connoted a sense of trained ability or mastery of a medium or process. 

All of this changed when it became possible to mass produce goods as serial versions of an original model.  The model was produced by a 'designer' and the reproduction of the design was in the hands of specialised crafters who each carried out a small part of a process of mass-production.

This system of designer-led commercial reproduction led to a separation of designers from artists.  Their emerged a common view that art is aesthetic rather than utilitarian. Art objects are produced by artists.  Each object is unique and expensive, and reproductions are priced in an inverse relationship to the numbers sold. A piece of artwork reflects the culture that created it, though this might not be apparent to its contemporary observers. Art depends on context. Available materials, subjects, themes, metaphors, politics, and technology all influence the creation of art. The audience's insight into a work improves as an understanding of the artist's culture grows. 

Now, art is defined as a creative and unique perception of both the artist and audience. For example, a common contemporary criticism of some modern painting might be, "my five-year old could have painted that"—implying that the work is somehow less worthy of the title "art".  This is either because the viewer fails to find meaning in the work, or because the work does not appear to have required any skill to produce. This view is often described as a "layman critique" where emphasis in Western culture has traditionally been in the direction of representationalism, the literal description of literal images. In this sense the valuation  of a work of art requires an understanding of  the 'language' used by the artist to convey meaning, with immediacy and/or depth. Making this judgment requires a basis for criticism: a way to determine whether the sensory input meets the criteria to be considered art, whether it is perceived to be ugly or beautiful.

Perception is always coloured by experience, so a reaction to art as "ugly" or "beautiful" is necessarily subjective. Art also appeals to human emotions. It can arouse aesthetic or moral feelings, and can be understood as a way of communicating these feelings. The artist has to express himself so that his public is aroused, but he does not have to do it consciously. Art both explores human emotions and ways to arouse them -  art with high value brings something new and original in either of these two respects. References are common and important; a strong piece of art is a self-referential system; that is, all parts of the system contribute to the organic integrity of the whole. Extraneous or missing elements are seen to degrade the artistic integrity of the work.

Countless schools of artists have each proposed their own ways to define quality, but they all seem to agree that value of a work is determined by its capacity to transcend the limits of its chosen medium in order to strike some universal chord, which, tends to be the most personal one. Art communicates on many levels and is open to many interpretations. If returning many times to the same work of art uncovers variations of meaning over and over again, it passes an important test. Great art communicates with people across different cultures and stands the test of time, possibly the ultimate test for any work of art.

Photography is a modern lodestone of art. The answer to the question, "Are photographs of un-posed, "real life" to be considered art?" is overwhelmingly yes.  Photographs are art because a common goal of art is to recontextualize the appearance of everyday objects.