Phil, it does too - film creates a direct reflection of reality, a material reflection. The digital sensor counts photons.
Actually, perhaps the poster can dissemble a bit regarding the second half of the statement.
Randy
I'm just speaking as photography, when taken simplistically, is simply the drawing of light, regardless of medium.
Digital doesn't dismiss reality at all. It is the capture of light on a light sensitive medium. As for the philosophy of the moment part of the statement, that doesn't make sense either. Someone else made that lens that I'm shooting through, so perhaps it's Dr. Wakimoto's or Dr. Azuma's or Dr. Bertele's or Dr. Mandler's vision, not our own, if that were the case.
I've been repeatedly saying that if Gibson had a gallery show and was displaying images, most folks would assume they were taken with film and printed in a darkroom. We would all go about our lives and appreciate the photo for the photo, not the process that went into its creation by virtue of the fact that we do not have access to that process. So all the excellent printed images we see in galleries which we don't have a clue about production means only lend us knowledge of that production if the photographer tells us and that we have to take on faith.
I love film work and if I had my way, I'd produce nothing but film based photos but that's a ways in the future at best.
The "traditional" or "artisanal" processes which we're debating here are neither traditional nor artisanal due to the technology (which is the crux of this whole debate) that has made them possible. It's almost a hypocritical statement to say a wet print is an "artisanal" photo when it could be shot using any number of incredible technological wonders made in the last thirty years. Example: exactly which part or stage is artisanal, of my creating a photo using a Konica Hexar RF with 35mm UC-Hexanon, developing the film in HC-110 in a Honeywell Nikor tank, then printing using a Beseler 45MXII, souping the sensitized Ilford MG paper in Dektol, washing the print in either a tray washer or a vertical print washer?
I think this whole debate about the technological differences and implied differences between digital and film, computerized and wet lab, is ridiculous as this community and all photographic communities are solely dependent upon the technology which makes their work possible. Saying that any part of that is not artisanal or traditional because of new technology is just asinine simply due to the fact that photography has always pushed the technological edge.
Phil Forrest
