The Photographer as Artist

[Bill Clark]

I'm a nerd. When photography became available with digital I fell right in. I had a hard time getting going with Photoshop but once I figured it out; it's about layers and blending; the light bulb went off in my mind. I could write several pages here about digital but will refrain. In business I found it was an absolute necessity to understand and use digital. Many reasons.

Several years ago, yikes it maybe 12 years ago, my coach had me take a workshop with Eddie Tapp and that helped.

I still use film. All my black and white is film.

But, with tongue in cheek, digital is the only way to go.

 

[Steve Bellayr]

Reading the biographies of photographers I learned that many had specialist who did the printing. I do not do my own printing as it is too time consuming and not cost effective to have a portion of my home devoted to a darkroom. In addition I was informed by a friend who is a photographer that the chemicals are not completely hazard free. (I don't know if this is true or not bu I will go with safety first.)

 

[icebear]

The capturing medium is just that a medium nothing more, nothing less.
But "As long as it's not printed, it's not a photo" (motto of my camera store)😀.
Does anyone really care if huge Salgado prints have been shot with a digital camera?
The great photographers of 2030 will have used digital cameras.😉

If a great photo is shot with a Leica, a Hasselblad or a Holga, does it make a difference? For the pixel peepers, yes. It's like if a great movie is bad because you watch it on a 42 LCD screen from 2005 and a movie with a bad story but lots of action and fast moving scenes on a latest 82 inch 4k UltraHD is better:bang:.
It's about the content, isn't it?

Have said all of the above, I totally get the point that someone feels more connected to the result when he worked on the entire development and printing process in a wet darkroom. For the visitor of a gallery all this background info isn't all that important. Unless a collector wants a traditional process wet print, there is no difference in the direct message of the print. A boring shot can be "fine art" and a great shot can be a digital print.
End of rant 😱

 

[Wuzwinder]

For some deep down dark reason I feel as if I am cheating when I shoot digital, except for the cost I prefer film and of that I prefer Medium Format, but as some have mentioned - "What is Art?"... it seems society looks at an artist as someone who does things the hard way, the more unconventional the more they seem to be respected as an artist, that's why I always shoot my digital while standing on one foot with one eye closed.

 

[charjohncarter]

kodachrome...

Simple, effective answer. It can easily be expanded to include many of the extinct films of my past.

But I do feel more artistically connected to my film images, it is what I know and am comfortable with. (or that should be 'of which I'm comfortable')

My digital work is mostly deleted after sitting on my computer for a few months.

 

[back alley]

Simple, effective answer. It can easily be expanded to include many of the extinct films of my past.

But I do feel more artistically connected to my film images, it is what I know and am comfortable with. (or that should be 'of which I'm comfortable')

My digital work is mostly deleted after sitting on my computer for a few months.

for me, the meaning for the one word answer is that like digital, kodachrome was an in and out process, maybe more so than digital. the only real control we had over slide film was getting the exposure right otherwise it was like a sooc digital image.

 

[back alley]

For some deep down dark reason I feel as if I am cheating when I shoot digital, except for the cost I prefer film and of that I prefer Medium Format, but as some have mentioned - "What is Art?"... it seems society looks at an artist as someone who does things the hard way, the more unconventional the more they seem to be respected as an artist, that's why I always shoot my digital while standing on one foot with one eye closed.

i feel like i'm cheating if i use long lenses for street shooting...but i much prefer the computer than a smelly dark room...

 

[nasmformyzombie]

Learning how to use a camera, learning how to use film, a darkroom, learning how to shoot digital images and manipulate them on a computer is not art. It's a learned skill, a craft.

In rare moments of lucidity, or luck, or madness or whatever happens when an image becomes art is not something we can control. All we can do is work on the craft and hope that improved technique will somehow translate into an improved chance that with a multitude of images captured there might be an image or two that will look like something that can be called art.

In the early days of digital photography (late 1990's, early 2000's) I worked at a fine arts college. During this time, when viewing a printed image of at least 8x10 in size I found I could determine correctly without exception if the image was shot on film or shot digitally. I despised digital capture. It was clearly inferior. And by extension for inferior photographers---or at least misguided photogs.

The subsequent improvements in recent years with digital capture (as well as with post processing) have changed the dynamic. When viewing printed images I find quite often that I can no longer discern a difference in the results of film capture and digital capture.

I bought my first camera in 1979. A few years later I built a darkroom. The wonder and joy I felt in those early days of learning film photography far exceeds anything I've experienced learning digital capture. I think I'm too results oriented now. With a digital camera I get discouraged when I shoot a group of images and none of them grab my attention. I blame it on the instant gratification of digital. With film there was always a roll to process, a negative to print. A feeling like maybe the film gods would smile on something in my film canister or on my photo paper. But I would not experience it right away. I had to wait for the intersect---or collision---between technique and magic.

For me, in today's world of digital capture something has been lost.

 

[Nowhereman]

The consensus in this thread seems to be that the process doesn’t matter in whether an mage is art (for "Art", if you will), but the choice of process is meaningful and important for the photographer. Despite the admonitions against digital vs film discussions that are rampant on photo forums, it is an important issue for many photograpgers. I am currently trying to decide whether to return, fully or partially, to film and have started a thread titled Go back to film? Sell the M9-P/MM? Wanna talk me down?.

In that thread I wrote that it is interesting, although not necessarily instructive, to consider how some well-known photographers have approached film vs digital:


David Alan Harvey, having tried the M9 and M-Monochrom, is clearly happy with the Fuji X100T and X-Pro 2, although I believe that he has recently made some darkroom prints and last year shot some medium format film.


Ralph Gibson, after saying for years that digital was not “real photography,” happily switched to the M-Monochrom — it seems that recently he has also been shooting color with the M240. If you're interested in his work you may want to read this interview: http://museemagazine.com/art-2/features/ralph-gibson-political-abstraction-at-mary-boone-gallery/...in which he says that, with film, he couldn't have done his latest book, Political Abstraction, in as little time as a year. Here is an excerpt:

...The point being that I immediately achieved my visual signature through the digital space. It obeyed my visual intention. Now, that all of the sudden rang a lot of bells in my head because it meant that I could work a lot faster...I did this book in a year. I could have never processed the imagery fast enough to achieve that book in that time I did.

Jacob Aue Sobol showed that he could use the M-Monochrom to maintain the look he had with film, but after his trip on the Trans-Siberian railway for Leica with the M-Monochrom went back to film, presumably using small point-and-shoot film cameras in the manner of Moriyama Daido and Anders Peterson.

Paulo Nozolino, in whom I've become interested recently, shoots with an M6 and maintains that "digital is not photography." I like the idea that Nozolino is gutsy enough not even to have a website.

Moriyama Daido has been shooting with digital point-and-shoot cameras for a few years, and likes the fact that he can decide whether a particular photo should be color or B&W. A few days ago I saw the Moriyama color exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Anyone interested should have a look at the two short videos (with English subtitles) on the Fondation Cartier website, one of them an interview with Moriyama. I have two books of Moriyama’s earlier color photography, both published in Japan: the first, shot with color negative film, has pale, pastel-like prints; the second, shot in digital, has “digital-looking” prints. In the current exhibition, Moriyama’s color is much more saturated, intense and vibrant. In my view, this is an important exhibition, not only for how the exhibition is presented (to parallel how photographs are seen in a book), but also for how Moriyama treats color, which essentially becomes equivalent to his high-contrast B&W work.

 

[Keith]

Any artist who can state that "digital is not photography" has lost me straight away and I have little respect for them. If the same artist said "I can't use digital because for 'me' photography is film" ... I'm OK with that.

There are far to many expressing their opinions as absolutes and also way to many people shooting film because it is their badge of honour rather than an honest choice of suitable medium for them!

 

[Keith]

I don't make any digital photography.

I have heard you mention that quite a few times over the period I've been here at RFF. It's unfortunate that your contribution to these types of threads often follows this pattern. 🙂

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

All that matters to me is the image. How I got there is irrelevant to my audience, and I tend to view both darkroom work and digital editing as necessary evils, hard work that I do not enjoy, but I do it so I can have full control over the image.

 

[mani]

I spent over a decade working in one way or another with digital imaging - still-images or video. I still spend 80% of my waking time sitting at a computer screen, and my film images all end-up scanned and on my computer. Apart from a couple days when I tried out film development at University, I've never been in a darkroom.

And yet I feel a totally different connection to my film images.

I still shoot digital alongside film - but often I don't even remember to transfer the digital images to my hard disk. Months go by and I'll pick up the digital camera and be surprised (and annoyed) to find the card is full of pictures I'd forgotten about - they're generally an encumbrance nowadays: a chore to get through.

When I hold up my film negatives I feel a real emotion - a real connection to them. If I can make out what event or person is recorded on them, it'll make the memory come flooding back. I can usually hardly wait to scan these images.

And then the colors in Portra! The subtle textures of the film. Just everything is so much more aesthetically pleasing to me. I can often get close to mimicking this if I work hard on a digital image - but then I feel like I'm cheating. I'm aping another medium - which I could've used in the first place, and done it better and faster and truer.

I totally agree with Stephen on this. I just wish I hadn't waited so long to try film.

 

[Nowhereman]

...There are far to many expressing their opinions as absolutes and also way to many people shooting film because it is their badge of honour rather than an honest choice of suitable medium for them!

Keith - Absolutely, on the "absolutes" — but the second part of your statement is particularly interesting and something that I never thought about. Do you mean that people actually shoot film merely because they think the concept of film is inhererenty superior to digital, no matter what?

My own interest in considering a complete return to film is driven by how Tri-X renders highlights in bright and harsh tropical light which, as shown in the pictures in the thread I linked in post #32, I have not been able to equal with digital.

 

[Nowhereman]

...I feel a totally different connection to my film images...When I hold up my film negatives I feel a real emotion - a real connection to them...

Borge, in his thread on his experience with the Leica MP, also wrote about how he likes the physical aspect of the film when he holds his negatives. While I hear what Borge and you are saying on this, for myself, this feeling of connection to holding the film is completely meaningless. On the contrary, I prefer to have all the images on a hard disk, particularly as I am a nomad that moves annually between three continents (Asia, Europe and North America). If I only had access to the negatives, I would never know where the particular negatives for any picture were.

 

[icebear]

.
.
...
Ralph Gibson, after saying for years that digital was not “real photography,” happily switched to the M-Monochrom — it seems that recently he has also been shooting color with the M240. If you're interested in his work you may want to read this interview: http://museemagazine.com/art-2/features/ralph-gibson-political-abstraction-at-mary-boone-gallery/...in which he says that, with film, he couldn't have done his latest book, Political Abstraction, in as little time as a year. Here is an excerpt:
Quote [...The point being that I immediately achieved my visual signature through the digital space. It obeyed my visual intention. Now, that all of the sudden rang a lot of bells in my head because it meant that I could work a lot faster...I did this book in a year. I could have never processed the imagery fast enough to achieve that book in that time I did. ]


.
.
...

Thanks a lot for sharing the Gibson interview, interesting read. Sadly I missed the exhibition, I have to check out his website and sign up for a newsletter😉

 

[kuuan]

I am using digital for various reasons, mostly because of life circumstances, because it has allowed me to learn fast and for convenience.
When I am viewing photos that had been taken on film, even after scanning, online, very often they have a quality that I specially like. However quite a few times I am also thinking of a photo taken on film which I like that probably I'd find the same photo, had it been taken digitally, little attractive.

 

[Bob Michaels]

All that matters to me is the image. How I got there is irrelevant to my audience ......

Chris and I are sitting at the same table off to the side from almost everyone else.

I am currently printing an exhibit of 22 prints. Some were captured on 6x7 film, some on 35mm film, and some digitally. If anyone notices any difference in the final prints, I will have failed in delivering the strength of the message I intended.

 

[35photo]

Chris and I are sitting at the same table off to the side from almost everyone else.

I am currently printing an exhibit of 22 prints. Some were captured on 6x7 film, some on 35mm film, and some digitally. If anyone notices any difference in the final prints, I will have failed in delivering the strength of the message I intended.

I'm with you Bob and Chris 100%...

 

[MIkhail]

Chris and I are sitting at the same table off to the side from almost everyone else.

I am currently printing an exhibit of 22 prints. Some were captured on 6x7 film, some on 35mm film, and some digitally. If anyone notices any difference in the final prints, I will have failed in delivering the strength of the message I intended.

Bob,
While I agree with you on this, I can't help but to ask a question: then why bother with 6x7 bulky cameras and film?