Is This The Future for Photography?

[Thebes]

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.

Not at all. And I am not talking about the word "photography" but about "photograph". It seems to me that a new paradigm is reappropriating that term in an attempt to destroy an older paradigm that includes much of my previous work. If digital camera artists want to debate the validity of a manipulated image and if they call their final work a photograph then they are defacto debating the validity of work that has always been considered a photograph. Part of how new paradigms destroy older ones IS by taking the language and changing its meaning, and this is not true just for art. For example, Lucifer was originally an Italian bringer of light, similar to Promethius, but the Catholic church appropriated the name for their devil in their (largely successful) efforts to destroy an older pagan religion. I am merely defending my art against this attempt to subvert it through theft of its previously existing language. If a photograph is the "capture" then many of my prints were not photographs, though no one ever suggested such a thing a dozen years ago I see it regularly now that a manipulated picture is not a "real photograph".

And now, I really must go to bed. I am no longer a healthy young man able to get by on less than six hours of sleep. I hope others will carry the torch as they see fit. That digital imaging is causing problems with the concept of manipulated images should be no surprise, that these problems should invalidate the work of photographers, including many pioneers in the art, is unacceptable.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

I fail to see how digital photography will devalue film photography that came before it.

You seem more concerned, though, with the fact that you have decided that you want to come back to making prints in a darkroom and are fearful that the existence of digital processes makes that irrelevant. If you are trying to make art to sell, it's the consumers of art that will make that decision, not the makers of digital cameras and inkjet printers. Should art buyers decide that digital prints are preferable to silver prints, all of your "defense" of silver will make not a whit of difference.

 

[sig]

So are the people out there who are angry because car is used to describe something else than a 'A wheeled vehicle, drawn by a horse or other animal'

The digital revolution has made it easier and faster for everyone to be creative. Of course artists will also use it, and they will use it in the future. And for the people out there stating that it is cheating or not as arty as 'the real thing', you better not drive a car 🙂

 

[oftheherd]

That is my understanding of the difference between photography and (digital) imaging. I don't think there is anything like "digital photography" because nothing is "written", it is a A / D data-conversion process followed by digital data processing and storing.

What the Chinese call writing isn't. Oh, it ends up on a media and expresses ideas, but the charaters aren't an alphabet, so it isn't writing, just pictures that have become stylized so they don't always look like pictures. Clever Chinese! But we have figured it out and they can't get away with it, because they aren't writing.

Now I am confusing myself. We are talking about pictures, I tried to relate it to writing because as pointed out above, a photograph is written, but is a picture ...

My head aches.

And somebody tried to relate it to painted art. Who are you trying to kid? Ancient man had all these lovely earthly pigments and created art. Then modernists changed to colored water and oils and still tried to call it painting? And using canvas at that! Not those powerfully expressive cave and cliff walls.

A traditional camera controlled light falling on a chemical coating on metal or paper. A digital camera controls analog light falling on chemicals captured in cells that allow it to be converted to electrical signals. Arrrgh, my head aches even more. Where are we taking ourselves?

Come on people. I love film. I intend to use it for some time to come. But I also have a digital P&S that provides what I have no problem calling a photograph when it comes out of an inkjet. Chemicals on paper. from light written by a lens across chemical cells that convert the image from analog to digital.

Photoshop only does what used to be done in the darkroom. I am not good at PP. I don't do enough of it to be good. I envy those that are. They have "darkroom" skills I don't. And Joe mentioned Jerry Uelsmann, did he not produce photographs? They sure looked like it to me. And he also had darkroom skills that I envy.

 

[oftheherd]

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.
...

Ah, I get it now. It isn't a photograph because of the medium to record the image, but only due to the way of making the final print? So, I can use digital to make a paper negative, expose normal silver paper to that paper negative and I will have a photograph? Oh, I'm so excited I think I will leave work and rush home to do that.

😀 😀 😀 😀

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I think we all have our preferences of how we like to make photographs. I don't think that diminishes anyone else's preference.

 

[Thebes]

Well weather has canceled my shoot so I will weigh in again. I know I am in the minority, but still I can't reconcile a photograph being something other than that which was created by light writing upon a surface, and by that I do mean the actual object being called a photograph, in most cases we would be talking about a photographic print though it could be a tin type or a polaroid or quite a few other things.

IF a photograph is instead the camera's recorded image, then much of my previous work, as well as that of my betters, are not photographs... for the final image exists only as the print. That does devalue my work, which isn't so valuable as it is, but it also devalues Uelsmann's, Man Ray's and many others- and all of these were clearly considered photographs a dozen years ago. None of these were the camera image. For that matter Ansel Adam's prints were not accurate representations of his camera negatives either, for they were dodged burned preflashed etc to better represent the range of tonality captured in the negative within the final print. Ergo the prints were the photograph.

If we call something a photograph merely because the image printed upon it is a camera image, then it is not the print itself that is the photograph, but rather the digital capture, negative, chrome, etc. If an image of a pipe is painted upon a canvas, that is a painting and not a pipe- does anyone disagree with this? Why is it different if the image came from a camera? If soley because the viewer might call it a photograph, they might well call the painting a pipe, so why the difference? And for that matter was a drawing made with the aid of a camera lucida then a photograph? I never heard one called that before, though I acknowledge it is part of the history of photography- but here we are speaking of the process rather than the created object.

I stand by my original position, a giclee print is a giclee and is not a photograph even though it may be a perfectly truthful representation of a photograph (or of a camera image). We are talking about the print itself, not what it represents. This language wasn't much of a problem a decade ago, nor was the idea that manipulated camera images could destroy the nature of photography, for until recently, in most cases, we were talking about the final print and that was created via a photographic printing process.

Does anyone disagree that a new paradigm is moving towards making a photograph the camera's captured image rather than the print itself?

 

[Thebes]

Ah, I get it now. It isn't a photograph because of the medium to record the image, but only due to the way of making the final print? So, I can use digital to make a paper negative, expose normal silver paper to that paper negative and I will have a photograph? Oh, I'm so excited I think I will leave work and rush home to do that.

I would absolutely call that a photograph. Indeed, even if you uploaded the digital capture to adoramapix for them to use their spiffy light based printer, I would call that a photograph. If we call the thing itself, in either case here a print, the photograph then there is no existential crisis for digital manipulation in photography. If we call the captured camera image a photograph and the print just a print, then Uelsmann et al did not create photographs.

I am still happy to call the process photography, regardless of the printing process. I am happy to call the artist a photographer, a painter is still a painter even if they destroy their painting and sell only giclee prints of it.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Absolutely correct. These guys ranting that inkjet prints can't be photographs show an ignorance of photography's history. They act like only a silver-based print can be a 'real' photo, yet that type of print wasn't invented until photography was 75 years old. The art world long ago accepted inkjets as photographs if used to print a photographic image rather than a drawing (you can draw on a computer from scratch with no photo needed...that's a drawing. If the image came from a digital camera or film, its a photo).

Dear Chris,

Silver?

No, no, no. Bitumen of Judaea and lavender oil...
Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

Dear Chris,

Silver?

No, no, no. Bitumen of Judaea and lavender oil...
Cheers,

R.

Gum-Arabic and sunlight, accept none of these upstarts artificially lit methods …

 

[oftheherd]

I would absolutely call that a photograph. Indeed, even if you uploaded the digital capture to adoramapix for them to use their spiffy light based printer, I would call that a photograph. If we call the thing itself, in either case here a print, the photograph then there is no existential crisis for digital manipulation in photography. If we call the captured camera image a photograph and the print just a print, then Uelsmann et al did not create photographs.

I am still happy to call the process photography, regardless of the printing process. I am happy to call the artist a photographer, a painter is still a painter even if they destroy their painting and sell only giclee prints of it.

I see your frame of reference. So I take it sir, that tintypes and Kodachrome slides are not photographs?

 

[wangchung]

The argument over terminology is pretty ridiculous. I stopped reading posts past page 2. Would the creators of photography have been less impressed with modern technology and chastised their users? I thought this thread was interesting by the looks of the first post, but, quickly, the transience of art's progression never even made it past the first couple of posts. Everyone's opinion is correct.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

The argument over terminology is pretty ridiculous. I stopped reading posts past page 2. Would the creators of photography have been less impressed with modern technology and chastised their users? I thought this thread was interesting by the looks of the first post, but, quickly, the transience of art's progression never even made it past the first couple of posts. Everyone's opinion is correct.

I agree. It's become a sterile exercise is sophistry and semantics, and throws no light on my original question. It's vaguely interesting but at the same time depressing to see how doggedly individuals try to defend a point of view against alternatives. Bit like religion I suppose!

Trust Roger to throw in the Bitumen of Judea! I haven't used that in years.

 

[Sparrow]

I agree. It's become a sterile exercise is sophistry and semantics, and throws no light on my original question. It's vaguely interesting but at the same time depressing to see how doggedly individuals try to defend a point of view against alternatives. Bit like religion I suppose!

Trust Roger to throw in the Bitumen of Judea! I haven't used that in years.

There is an interesting discussion to be had regarding the the impressionists' and post-impressionists' relationship to photography, their use of Rood's theories and how all of that was seen as such a threat to the then Art Establishment ... but I suspect not in this thread 🙂

 

[chris000]

It's a few days since I had chance to look through the gallery here so I have just spent 45 minutes catching up with the the latest offerings.

Having read this thread, I am left with the feeling that I would have enjoyed the experience so much more if any of them had been photographs rather than digital images.

Apparently, to 'fine art photography' we can add 'fine art semantics'

Interesting discourse though. 🙂

 

[Thebes]

I see your frame of reference. So I take it sir, that tintypes and Kodachrome slides are not photographs?

From my post above the one you quoted

... I can't reconcile a photograph being something other than that which was created by light writing upon a surface, and by that I do mean the actual object being called a photograph, in most cases we would be talking about a photographic print though it could be a tin type or a polaroid or quite a few other things.

 

[Gumby]

jerry uelsmann used film, with no photoshop, but several enlargers.

was he a photographer or a darkroom tech?

Neither. He was a imagery magician.

 

[Chris101]

...

Apparently, to 'fine art photography' we can add 'fine art semantics'

Interesting discourse though. 🙂

They have software for that.

Neither. He was a imagery magician.

uh ... Plus one. Uelsmann did stuff they still can't do.

 

[maddoc]

I agree. It's become a sterile exercise is sophistry and semantics, and throws no light on my original question. It's vaguely interesting but at the same time depressing to see how doggedly individuals try to defend a point of view against alternatives. Bit like religion I suppose!

Trust Roger to throw in the Bitumen of Judea! I haven't used that in years.

My apologies for having contributed to that exercise in sophistry / semantics and bringing the thread off the topic.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

My apologies for having contributed to that exercise in sophistry / semantics and bringing the thread off the topic.

See my PM. No apology necessary.

 

[back alley]

Neither. He was a imagery magician.

did he make photographs?