Is This The Future for Photography?

[Pickett Wilson]

No, prints are made with enlargers. Photographs are made with cameras. This is silly. Times change, definitions change.

From the Webster Online Dictionary:

Main Entry: pho·tog·ra·phy
Pronunciation: \fə-ˈtä-grə-fē\
Function: noun
Date: 1839
: the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface (as film or a CCD chip)

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Lots of ways to "write with light" these days.

 

[Thebes]

BTW, I studied the history of photography in college at Indiana University. I don't recall anyone ever referring to, say, an offset print as an actual photograph. I would have called a photographic print of a negative a photograph, and indeed often shot multiple negatives to sandwich, the process of making the photograph taking quite a few steps... ie some of the negatives were created with the intent of combining them with another negative, the end result being my photograph.

Also, most of my camera work in the past decade has been more commercial than fine art. I did, however study fine art and had work in university sponsored shows. I intended to go on, before life got in the way, and am now getting back into fine art.

Another thought. I have no problem calling a digital camera's processed image a "photo", it was after all made with photons - light. Its just the graph part that is now often missing. I'd have had no problem in college calling a photocopy of a photograph a photo, or an offset print of it (nice photo on page 3 of the paper today). But I'd never had framed an offset print and put SomeTitle, 1998, photograph under it.

 

[Thebes]

Data is not writing. Arguable the file created is normally destroyed as part of the process. It is capturing, or perhaps recorded, there is no object upon which it can be seen. Perhaps I could even go so far as to understand the PROCESS of creating a giclee print from data captured by light as photography... but the print itself is not a photograph. I'm fine with calling it a print. Often my photographs only existed as prints, same is true for Uelsmann and many many others. They were not representations of a negative.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Thebes, a film negative is just "data" as well. Put a Tri-x negative under a low power microscope and you will not see a photo, you will see only "data," tiny sensitized silver particles. It is our eyes and brains that interpret all that discrete "data" as images.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

If that's the case then the negative is the only true photograph and the print, even if made in an enlarger, is still just a copy, or representation, as you call it, of the thing itself. .

I've been cogitating on this point since it was implied by an earlier contributor. Although I suspect the definition is too narrow and plays into the hands of the Luddites (as you call them) I think in absolute terms you're right. Everything after the negative (or slide) is a print of some kind and therefore a copy.

Similarly as another contributor pointed out, a scan of a painting printed out is a print, not a painting.

Sometimes both are even presented as posters! I have a couple of Ansel Adams' I can see on the wall as I write.

So, are "hobbyists" engaged in another of General Custer's last stands? Is the battle already lost and does anyone else really care? It has present day implications for competition categories, prizes and awards and for camera clubs where judges weightily pronounce upon the merits of the entries. But what else?

Is it just open slather and are hobbyists doomed to become a minority within the broad photographic community in the same way that veteran and vintage car enthusiasts are a quaint but irrelevant subset of the group we call motorists?

 

[Leigh Youdale]

Thebes, a film negative is just "data" as well. Put a Tri-x negative under a low power microscope and you will not see a photo, you will see only "data," tiny sensitized silver particles. It is our eyes and brains that interpret all that discrete "data" as images.

That's a pretty valid point!

 

[Thebes]

No, prints are made with enlargers. Photographs are made with cameras. This is silly. Times change, definitions change.

Actually, lots of photographic prints are still made via contact printing. And again, since much of my photography used to involve multiple steps, images and manipulations, some of which were NOT even done in camera (even dodging and burning qualify here), photographs are not just what is made with a camera. They are the end product of a light sensitive process. My photographs were not made by a camera but by light onto the final photosensitive material. To say a photograph is what is made by a camera means much of Man Ray's work, Uelsmann's work, etc, are not photographs, and that is rewriting history.

 

[Thebes]

Thebes, a film negative is just "data" as well. Put a Tri-x negative under a low power microscope and you will not see a photo, you will see only "data," tiny sensitized silver particles. It is our eyes and brains that interpret all that discrete "data" as images.

No, data is discrete, as in a number, fact or figure. Silver particles are not descrete, ie you can not precisely say the location of even a single crystal in relation to another, or a single grain of sand, or whatnot. Data is exact and precise, meant to be used in calculations. Silver crystals (or iron salts, or whatever) are not. A film is analog and is not data, though it is a record of the light which hit it.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Thebes, you seem to be arguing against your own thesis.

Regardless, you are being pedantic. "Photography" was originally done on photosensitive material simply because it was done that way. Had they had CCD's, they probably wouldn't have messed with smelly, dangerous materials. And we would be arguing that subsequently developed film technology wasn't really "photography."

 

[Sparrow]

No, the print is made via a light sensitive process, so it is a photograph. I would argue that it is still a photograph (written with light) even if there were no negative and even no camera.

BTW, I don't hate digital nor photoshop. I use them often. When I get home from a trip I'm on I will be using my scanner and photoshop to help make a cyanotype photograph on felt. I actually shoot far more digital than I do film. I just want to call things what they are. A thing written upon by light is a photograph. A thing written upon with an ink jet printer is a giclee print. That doesn't make it any worse than if it were a photograph with the same image printed upon it.

What a bizarre argument, by that definition a lithograph would have to be printed on a real stone plate to have any validity, clearly a nonsense

 

[maddoc]

Thebes, a film negative is just "data" as well. Put a Tri-x negative under a low power microscope and you will not see a photo, you will see only "data," tiny sensitized silver particles. It is our eyes and brains that interpret all that discrete "data" as images.

Nope. They are silver grains and contain not any information itself. The whole frame (negative) or better the distribution of silver grain in various amounts and agglomerations is what contains the "data" or "image". A sensor recorded "digital" image however contains information (brightness) in discrete values (after A / D converting) for every single pixel.

BTW, the final "printed" image using an enlarger is called "Fotografie" or "Foto" in German language and not "print".

 

[Pickett Wilson]

"Silver particles are not descrete"

Take a single silver halide grain from a Tri-X negative and show me a photo.

 

[Thebes]

I've been cogitating on this point since it was implied by an earlier contributor. Although I suspect the definition is too narrow and plays into the hands of the Luddites (as you call them) I think in absolute terms you're right. Everything after the negative (or slide) is a print of some kind and therefore a copy.

Similarly as another contributor pointed out, a scan of a painting printed out is a print, not a painting.

Sometimes both are even presented as posters! I have a couple of Ansel Adams' I can see on the wall as I write.

So, are "hobbyists" engaged in another of General Custer's last stands? Is the battle already lost and does anyone else really care? It has present day implications for competition categories, prizes and awards and for camera clubs where judges weightily pronounce upon the merits of the entries. But what else?

Is it just open slather and are hobbyists doomed to become a minority within the broad photographic community in the same way that veteran and vintage car enthusiasts are a quaint but irrelevant subset of the group we call motorists?

And yet the poster you have of AA's photograph on your wall is something more than is contained within the negative. He chose what paper to print it upon, what developer to use, how to dodge and burn it, if and how to preflash, etc. This was part of making a photograph.

yeah, perhaps I am doomed to irrelevance, perhaps dodging and burning will give way to so called "HDR" (really tone mapping), and will no longer be considered a part of "real photography". Thats why I care enough to stay up until three am when I have to get up and drive to do a shoot in the morning. I want to do what I can to see that this doesn't happen and that art I poured my heart and soul into remains relevant.

FWIW, I haven't printed an actual photograph in years, but I am setting back up to and my current project is about making those photographs, ie the final photographic print is my medium. For years I shot occasional very decent fetish work commercially (though normally the compenstion was indirect)... but I couldn't figure out what was missing until I printed some giclees and then looked at my old, half forgoten, portfolio... then I realized what was wrong with my work and why I no longer felt the love of the art I did back in college. So now I want to make some photographs again.

 

[maddoc]

"Silver particles are not descrete"

Take a single silver halide grain from a Tri-X negative and show me a photo.

That was my point, single silver grains don't contain information or a photo, thus they are not "data". The amount of silver particles on a given area (their density) is the photo. The more light the more single discrete silver particle agglomerate on a certain area and let the area appear dark after developing. On the other hand, the amount of pixel of a sensor will not change when you expose a sensor to light. On a sensor EVERY single pixel records a value about the brightness, thus "data".

 

[Leigh Youdale]

"Silver particles are not descrete"

Take a single silver halide grain from a Tri-X negative and show me a photo.

Now just hold your (collective) foot in the air a moment fellows. Aren't we getting to the point of arguing about how many angels fit on the head of a pin?

My original question was to do with the future of photography as an art form and here we are engaging in semantics and minutia that move us away from relevance and towards bunkersville. (Sorry if there's such a place - I suspect there will be in the USA).

Let's forget for a moment what we call it and focus a bit on imagining future scenarios. What will photography become?

 

[Pickett Wilson]

It seems to me, Thebes, that what you are actually doing is trying to make what others do irrelevant to add value to your new "revelation" about your own photography.

 

[Thebes]

Thebes, you seem to be arguing against your own thesis.

Regardless, you are being pedantic. "Photography" was originally done on photosensitive material simply because it was done that way. Had they had CCD's, they probably wouldn't have messed with smelly, dangerous materials. And we would be arguing that subsequently developed film technology wasn't really "photography."

I have already conceded that the PROCESS of using light recorded as data to make a giclee is photography, even though the end result is not a photograph because the print is not written by light. Actually, searching through what I've written tonight I never said that photography had to involve making a photographic print.

Smelly dangerous chemicals? I bet that chemicals under your kitchen sink are more dangerous than those I need to make develop a B&W negative and print it. Heck, you can do that in coffee and washing soda. The only smelly one I have used is acetic acid (vinegar) as a stop bath, though I now use it so dilute that the smell doesn't bother me... I am allergic to corn and so many things are now derived from it that I take troublesome smells as a warning sign of things to avoid. Swimming pools use the same chemical as fixer to correct over-chlorination. It is true that some older processes were very (even insanely) dangerous... daguerreotypes for example... others like cyanotypes are so benign they are used in demonstrations with young children. Egads, gasoline is more dangerous than any photographic chemical I've used and yet most people use it on a daily basis.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Leigh, as an art form I think photography will survive like other art forms, constantly changing. There will eventually be a reaction against post-modern, conceptual photography and it will either move back toward more traditional themes or move into some area we've not thought of.

My short term concern, though, is that conceptual photography is so self-referential that it has become irrelevant to most folks outside the "art" world. And that's a problem for "art" photographers. But the history of photography hasn't been exactly linear, so it's hard to say where it might go next.

Narrow definitions, though, of what is "real" photography will certainly doom it in the end.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Thebes, the original photographic processes were not as benign as modern ones.

In the 1970's, I learned really fast that the E-3 processing chemicals were really dangerous when it took only a very short time for them to eat through the metal trap on my darkroom sink. And Cibachrome came with tablets to neutralize the chemicals before you disposed of them because they were so caustic. Let's not even talk about earlier processes that involved mercury.