Is This The Future for Photography?

[Thebes]

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).

An inkjet isn't a photographic process. Try using one to print a serigraph, call it a serigraph, and hang it on a gallery wall. It still won't be a serigraph. I am talking about the final item, and the final item is a giclee regardless of what you call it. Cyanotype was a photographic process. Van Dyke Brown too. Ink Jets print with piezoelectric pulses, no matter what the printed file is. A painting scanned and printed is no longer a painting.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

A painting scanned and printed is no longer a painting.

Well that's pretty incontestable!

 

[Keith]

I'm struggling to understand why an inkjet print can't be a photgraph and why inkjet printing is subsequently not a photographic process!

Does this also mean digital photography is not a photographic process?

 

[maddoc]

I'm struggling to understand why an inkjet print can't be a photgraph and why inkjet printing is subsequently not a photographic process!

Does this also mean digital photography is not a photographic process?

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.

 

[Keith]

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.

I'd never considered that Gabor ... so when all the film is gone and film cameras are all lying idle in cupboards is this all we're left with:

'Digital Imaging' ... doesn't sound very enticing to me! 😛

Oh yes ... and does this mean that someone with an M9 is not really a photographer but a 'digital imager?'

If so ... don't tell jaapv! 😀

 

[40oz]

If you aren't using light to expose the medium, I'd say it's not "photographic," based on the meaning of the word "photographic." It may be an inkjet print of a digital photograph, and we can shorthand that to "photograph," but there is actually a word describing an inkjet print from a digital file - "giclée."

At some point it is relevant to distinguish between photographic prints and inkjet prints. If one claims it is not relevant, then one could also claim it's *never* relevant to distinguish between a horse and a car and a bicycle since they are all, on some level, transportation methods. It would seem rather silly to insist that all horses are bicycles, at least to anyone that knows what the word "bicycle" means.

That's just my opinion.

 

[Thebes]

I'm struggling to understand why an inkjet print can't be a photgraph and why inkjet printing is subsequently not a photographic process!

Does this also mean digital photography is not a photographic process?

Photo Graph means Light Writing. A ink jet does not use light to write. A cyanotype, daguerreotype, polaroid, etc use light to write on the actual object that is a photograph. Photograms have been considered photographs because light was used to write them, even though no camera was involved. Manipulated photographs were still considered photographs even if not straight photography.

A digital photograph, to me, sounds like a lambda print or some other digitally controlled printing process using light. A digital camera could certainly be used to make a digital photograph, though more typically they are used to create a digital file to be viewed on a computer monitor. A computer monitor with such an image is still a computer monitor.

This is kind of like the French painting La trahison des images which is the famous painting depicting a pipe and text in French saying "This is not a pipe". The image printed upon a piece of paper by a giclee printer might well be photo-realistic and created with a camera, but the print itself isn't a photograph. It may depict a photograph, just as an calender might depict an Ansel Adams photograph, but that is only a reproduction of his photograph, not a photograph itself.

Now we have people trying to label works Real Photograph, for example, saying that label can only be applied to a straight camera image, not a retouched or manipulated one. That implies that Uelsmann and other photographers works aren't actually photographs and serves to rewrite the history of photography based upon (commonly accepted I admit) marketing hype that is only about a decade old. Before that I never heard of an Iris print called an actual photograph.

 

[40oz]

I'd never considered that Gabor ... so when all the film is gone and film cameras are all lying idle in cupboards is this all we're left with:

'Digital Imaging' ... doesn't sound very enticing to me! 😛

Oh yes ... and does this mean that someone with an M9 is not really a photographer but a 'digital imager?'

If so ... don't tell jaapv! 😀

How is it even relevant? Digital cameras aren't very enticing to lots of people. On the other hand, lots of people do find them very enticing. I fail to see what difference it makes what something is called if you enjoy the process.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

An inkjet isn't a photographic process. Try using one to print a serigraph, call it a serigraph, and hang it on a gallery wall. It still won't be a serigraph. I am talking about the final item, and the final item is a giclee regardless of what you call it. Cyanotype was a photographic process. Van Dyke Brown too. Ink Jets print with piezoelectric pulses, no matter what the printed file is. A painting scanned and printed is no longer a painting.

A serigraph is a printmaking process. Like Etching or Lithography. You're setting up a logical fallacy here. There's a gallery where I live that has an annual printmaking show. They exhibit Etching, Litho, Screenprints, Engravings, block prints, etc. All totally different processes that fall under the rubric of 'printmaking'. Photography is the same way, lots of ways to make a print but all are photography.

What it comes down to is that you can screech and scream and cry and wring your hands all you want but the people who matter long ago decided against your narrow-minded view. Sorry. Inkjets are regularly exhibited as photography at places like MOMA and the Art Institute of Chicago. Galleries that exhibit photography regularly show inkjets. That is undeniable proof that you are wrong.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Photo Graph means Light Writing. A ink jet does not use light to write.

Photo-Intaglio prints, like the ones Edward S. Curtis did of his "North American Indian" project, are and always have been photography despite the fact that the print is made from a copper plate etched in acid. I've seen a number of Curtis' original prints and the plates they were made from.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

If you aren't using light to expose the medium, I'd say it's not "photographic," based on the meaning of the word "photographic." It may be an inkjet print of a digital photograph, and we can shorthand that to "photograph," but there is actually a word describing an inkjet print from a digital file - "giclée."

At some point it is relevant to distinguish between photographic prints and inkjet prints. If one claims it is not relevant, then one could also claim it's *never* relevant to distinguish between a horse and a car and a bicycle since they are all, on some level, transportation methods. It would seem rather silly to insist that all horses are bicycles, at least to anyone that knows what the word "bicycle" means.

That's just my opinion.

And it is wrong. The difference between an inkjet and the holy sacred silver gelatin print is like the difference between an electric car and a diesel car. Both are still cars despite the completely different means of propulsion. Giclee is a name of a print process, like Bromoil or Silver Gelatin or Cyanotype. Bromoil, an old photographic process, uses acid-etched copper plates, not light, to make the image.

 

[Thebes]

I agree "digital imager" doesn't have a nice sound to it, so why not another term. The shooter is using a camera, so "camera artist" works for me, and "digital arts" seems fine for those working with significantly more than just a camera.

BTW, I seriously doubt that photographic media for cameras will ever totally disappear. I guess maybe we will fall under a totalitarian regime that regulates all chemical usage, but beside that it is quite plausible for an individual or small group to at least make photographic plates, and if a suitable base can be bought and coated, one can make his own films... I will grant that we may never see better films than are available today.

 

[Keith]

I have to admit that if digital was my sole choice for output as long I was successful by my own standards I wouldn't have a problem with being thought of as a 'digital imager.' 🙂

 

[Thebes]

Christopher, I don't deny that a giclee can and should be exhibited in the MOMA. I am just saying that the print itself is not made via a photographic process. And as far as I recall no one in this thread said only a Silver Gelitan print was a photograph. I am merely saying that sticking to the traditional language is important otherwise we end up with a situation in which a photograph suddenly can't be manipulated or retouched to be a real photograph. Your mostly recent definition of what consititutes a photographic print causes a slew of problems, some of which go against the theories of photography as art, ie that we are talking about the thing itself rather than what it represents.

What it comes down to, in one case a thing was created with light causing an image to be formed, with the other it was created in the same way I print out a map.

BTW, you said, also, that a "drawing" could be made on a computer and the giclee was a drawing. I disagree with this too, it is a print of a digital drawing. You are mistaking a representation of an image for the thing itself.

 

[Thebes]

Photo-Intaglio prints, like the ones Edward S. Curtis did of his "North American Indian" project, are and always have been photography despite the fact that the print is made from a copper plate etched in acid. I've seen a number of Curtis' original prints and the plates they were made from.

And here you just referred to these as "prints", not as "photographs". They were prints that were representations of photographs, or of photographic negatives. Such an art is clearly still photography though the final print in the process is not a photograph.

 

[maddoc]

Keith,

at work I used to use "digital cameras" that consisted of nothing more than a FPA (liquid nitrogen cooled focal plane array detector, in principle a IR radiation sensitive semiconductor sensor connected to some computer with imaging software), some optical mirrors as "lens", an aperture and an IR source as my "light". When taking images with that, nobody ever asked if I had taken new "photographs" .... Despite the fact that these devices were in principle nothing else than a "digital camera" with specific IR sensitivity nobody called them "camera" but "imaging device" or "imaging setup"... 🙂

Without film or any other light-sensitive medium that is irreversible changed in its properties by exposure to light there is no "photography". Of course my 2 cents only .... 😉

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Christopher, I don't deny that a giclee can and should be exhibited in the MOMA. I am just saying that the print itself is not made via a photographic process. And as far as I recall no one in this thread said only a Silver Gelitan print was a photograph. I am merely saying that sticking to the traditional language is important otherwise we end up with a situation in which a photograph suddenly can't be manipulated or retouched to be a real photograph. Your mostly recent definition of what consititutes a photographic print causes a slew of problems, some of which go against the theories of photography as art, ie that we are talking about the thing itself rather than what it represents.

What it comes down to, in one case a thing was created with light causing an image to be formed, with the other it was created in the same way I print out a map.

BTW, you said, also, that a "drawing" could be made on a computer and the giclee was a drawing. I disagree with this too, it is a print of a digital drawing. You are mistaking a representation of an image for the thing itself.

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 don't mean to be insulting, but this is like the silly 'is photography art' threads that people still keep starting here. In that case the question was settled a century ago. In the case of using computers to do photo editing, that was settled a long time ago too. The art world accepted it immediately and never looked back, yet photographers, most of whom have no exhibition or publication record (this isn't aimed at you since I don't know anything about you, but I do know about many others who diss inkjets and photoshop) keep wringing their hands over a non-issue.

Professional photographers of all types just don't worry about stuff like this. Fine Art photographers can use computers and its totally fine. Commercial photographers do too. So do portrait photographers. Even photojournalists! Hobbyists seem to be the only ones with a problem. Time for all the luddites and hand-wringers to just get over it and join the 21st century. Are amateurs 100 years from now going to be crying over this stuff like they are still doing over the issue of photography being art?

The history of photography is filled with new technologies and techniques and tools, many of which DO NOT INVOLVE THE DARKROOM (as I have repeatedly pointed out).

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

And here you just referred to these as "prints", not as "photographs". They were prints that were representations of photographs, or of photographic negatives. Such an art is clearly still photography though the final print in the process is not a photograph.

Oh Jesus Christ. Photographs in printed form are CALLED PRINTS. No matter what process was used. :bang: Give it up. Before someone goes spouting off about something they know nothing about, PLEASE for the sake of keeping yourself from looking foolish, study the history of photography. Newhall's "History of Photography" is a decent starting point. I recommend him because he had a personal preference for unmanipulated silver-gelatin prints yet he still wrote about other print processes INCLUDING DIGITAL PRINT PROCESSES and recognized them as photographs, as everyone in the world of fine art photography does.

 

[Thebes]

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.

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.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

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.

I don't want to be pedantic (too much of that goes on around here) but isn't what you described above more appropriately called a "Photogram"?