I can understand your point of view, but to me, content and framing are a lot more important than whether a digital or analog camera was used. That said, there are many photographers who exploit film's attributes so much so that it would be hard to imagine them ever getting the same feel from digital. That said, maybe I feel his work holds up in digital form well enough.
I saw the EE show as well and thought that books translate the spirit of the images just as well. I see a difference between a print and a book, but my days of worshiping grain are over and I'm not enamored with size for size sake. EE's photography wiould be beautiful even as 4x6" prints IMO.
Perhaps I was being a little bit of an ass, but I just don't like it when people tend to focus on small technical aspects of images instead of what really matters. Great photography is great photography.
I don't think we're that far apart. My point is that even 'small' details may be what takes a piece of work from 'nothing' to 'monumental' in a viewer's eyes. That's what 'art' is all about. I'm not at all suggesting that Salgado's modern images aren't worth viewing. I'm saying that i can completely empathize with the original post, that suggests that the digital stuff might be 'less magnificent' than the film stuff.
And, re: Erwitt — as i was saying... i've loved his stuff, from the small repro size of the books — but the large exhibition prints were significantly more grand and impacting. In that particular instance, the grain and texture improved the presentation for me. It didn't 'make' the image, since i had liked those same pictures before i saw them larger than 5" x 7".
"Great photograph is great photograph." With this, I disagree. There are certain photographers i've followed who have images i love, but if those same images were made digitally, and did not have the same texture (grain), i would not like them. At all. There's a guy calling himself "Vardana" on flickr, who shoots with a Leica SLR, and push processed negative film. The look he gets is what draws me to those images. If they were shot with a dSLR and left grainless, those same compositions would be of zero interest to me. Take Ralph Gibson. He made his career on a certain aesthetic. Tri-X and Rodinal. Take that away, and you have an entirely different set of photographs, and who knows how I'd feel about them.
To me, the character of an image is as important as the content, in many cases. An analogy is if you visited a museum, and the paintings no longer had brushstrokes. Some people stand back from a painting and take in the wholeness of it. I do that, but then i also look at it very closely, and those strokes are a part of what makes painting interesting and compelling to me. Not everyone sees or thinks of things the same way.
I don't see this discussion as being very different from the ones about bokeh. I cringe when i read some 'photographer' saying that he's only concerned about what's in focus in his image. I don't quite understand how you can ignore anything within the frame you are presenting. Hey - what matters to me doesn't have to matter to anyone else. But, i'm certainly going to judge a piece of work by my own criteria — not his.
When you say "small technical aspects of images" aren't tremendously relevant, we do need to understand in which context we're speaking. In the realm of photojournalism, i might agree. But, i don't feel Salgado's work is 'limited' to that field. We're talking about artfully conceived, captured, and printed works. Exhibited. In that context, the technical and aesthetic details
perhaps should be critically important.
