Comment: Dude can you tell be a short summary of this plzz i dont understand it plzzzz e mail it to me at
talhakhan_123@hotmail.com
Comment: hi
Comment: After Peter Plagens moved to New York from Los Angeles, he apparently forgot that art and the art market aren't identical. Pretending that the art of photography changes in lockstep with every trendy gyration in the galleries is like claiming the atomic weight of gold increases or decreases with every turnaround in the spot price of gold.
Jacob Freeze and his obscure circle of friends still miss you at USC, Peter. Come home!
http://jacobfreeze.com
Comment: No, photography is not dead, as is suggested y the article's title, but it has experienced changes, just as it has all along since 1827 when Joseph Nic??phore Ni??pce created the first photograph. We have traded the traditional darkroom for the digital one, just as we have traded one model of camera for successively more sophicticated ones. Some people complain that there is manipulation now, but hey, that is nothing new; there was/is dodging and burning in the traditional darkroom, the selection of, for example, Fuji 50 over an Ilford film for a warmer effect, the use of a particular ASA/ISO for a certain look.
I think what has really changed is the fact that with the availability of affordable digital cameras, there are more instances of individuals perceiving themselves as photographers. Add to that the fact that in many quarters, education has gotten quite sloppy. Now, even many ???pros??? have no real concept about the tools that go into making a strong, eye-catching photograph. They do not understand the concepts of different styles of composition and what works best for them; they know nothing about the properties of color; they do not appreciate the magic of light and what it can do for an image; they are ignorant of the work of previous masters. And most of all, no one has told them that they need passion in their images. It is the eye and the soul, combined with some basic, classic knowledge of what goes into the making a good photograph, that create great photographs.
The art buying world has not helped. While there are many exceptions, often in advertising or exhibitions, what is larger and more outrageous gets attention over that which has substance and quality. Artists are also beset with requests for something to hang over the sofa/couch and match the covering. Alas, many people acquire art because so-and-so is the ???In??? artist, rather than because the buyer is genuinely moved by the piece. Look at some of the prices commanded at auctions for what some of us would deem atrocious, non-examples of photography.
All the above said, I would still disagree with Peter Plagens??? statement, ???It's hard to say ???gee whiz??? anymore.??? While there is a lot of ho-hum photography out there, there is a lot of great photography. Clearly, he has not recently looked at the works of Patrick Demarchelier, Bill Allard, John Sexton, and Frans Lanting, among many, many others. Those photographers understand the ???WOW??? factor, whether in color or black and white.
Margo Pinkerton, Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures
Comment: Photography dead? No! If anything it now has more life than ever before! There are many follies to this article, but my favorite is the idea that a photograph lacks manual touch and surface variation. It has never lacked either. Being a photographer myself, I can tell you that the time spent in the darkroom, be it digital, or conventional is very hands on. Mixing of chemicals, enlarger setup, processing, burning, dodging, contrast filtering, oh yes, there is much that may vary from artist to artist, but it is hands on. The workflow of each kind of art may be different, but even with digital photography, there is still the need for good composition, light, and the need to know where to be, and when to be there. As for surface variation, I think it is now easier than ever to put a photograph on an unusual surface. Just today at the local art gallery, I saw photographs created on canvas, latex, tin, and wood. Just like any other art, the digital world requires proper education. "Joe the snapshot man" takes pictures to rekindle a moment in his life. Artists photograph for any number of reasons, mine being to invoke an emotion in the viewer. "Joe" neither does, nor should care about obeying the laws of graphic design. The artist does have to obey (or specifically disobey) those laws. Photography is not dead, so long as it remains an artistic equation of graphic art. - L.A. Wayman III
Comment: Photography started to break with reality as soon as it started being taken seriously as an art. .The truth is most photos intersect with the digital realm at some point, especially commercial images. Foregrounding modern photography???s fragile status as ???evidence??? is an important cultural critique and has been going on for decades. The current trend of manipulation through technology is what photography has always been about; the dance between emerging technology, realism and subjectivity.
Comment: No, photography isn`t dead (yet). But the knowledge what is photography and what is mereley a piece of art created with photoshop and other programs has diminished. This has nothing do with film vs. digital -debate. It has everything to do with light. One can hardly call a work with no true light a photograph. Or?
Comment: No, photography isn`t dead (yet). But the knowledge what is photography and what is mereley a piece of art created with photoshop and programs has diminished. This ot nothing do with film vs. digital -debate. It has everything to do with light. One can hardly call a work that has nothing to do with light a photograph.
Comment: No, photography isn`t dead (yet). But the knowledge what is photography and what is mereley a piece of art created with photoshop and programs has diminished. This ot nothing do with film vs. digital -debate. It has everything to do with light. One can hardly call a work that has nothing to do with light a photograph.
Comment: I would argue that photography is finally coming into its own as an art form for the very reason that one is no longer confined by any reality at all. A few megapixels is now the creative equivalent to blank canvas. Digital manipulation is scorned by purists, but it's but a tool and a technique, as legitimate as mixing egg with tempera. It's up to the artist to make it art. True purists should really confine themselves to sticks and dust.
Comment: I feel that Mr. Plagens is missing the point of the new digital medium which photography plays into. I feel that Mr. Plagens mistakes digital art (of which digital composites are one part) for documentary photography. This would be like saying that Dada, Picasso, Dali and many more of the schools of modern painters are destroying the virtue of the artform by not painting what exactly is in front of them. Yet Mr. Plagens would have photographers shoot only what is before them and nothing else. It seems from his article that he is bemoaning that photographers are no longer attempting to make their photographs more like his medium of expressions - paintings.
The technology and techniques now exist for photographic artists to express themselves digitally and in ways that were not available before. The cinema verite ethic of journalistic and documentary photography still exists and is closely followed by its adherants. However, this does not mean that the only form of photography that should be allowed is this unvarnished recording of moments. There is now the ability to create scenes that stretch the imagination, tease the eyes and push the boundaries of what is visually possible.
Each person is entitled to their opinions on art and what moves them as people to gravitate towards one form or another. But when an acolyte of one form, such as painting, decries the "lack of honesty" in another form which they do not themselves participate in nor understand the new technology thereof, then critique becomes forced and uninformed. Their words sound more like the bleating of old men frightened of being left behind with yesterday's paintbrushes and dusty masterpieces than enlightened opinions on a new and innovative style.
Comment: The power of photography as an art form depends not on its connection to physical reality but on its power to evoke real emotion. Dependence on physical reality is more the province of photographic journalism, and though art and journalism may coincide, neither is required to occupy the other's world or play by the other's rules.
Comment: The power of photography as an art form depends not on its connection to physical reality but on its power to evoke real emotion. Dependence on physical reality is more the province of photographic journalism, and though art and journalism may coincide, neither is required to occupy the other's world or play by the other's rules.
Comment: Nonsense. This is an old argument wholly discredited a long time ago. As the wise man said, "The camera never lies, but photographers do." As courts never allowed photos to be evidence without a photographer testifying that the photographs do indeed represent what they appear to be representing, the future's photography's connection with reality will lie with the photographer, not the camera or the pixels it organizes into an image.
Comment: Nonsense. This is an old argument wholly discredited a long time ago. As the wise man said, "The camera never lies, but photographers do." As courts never allowed photos to be evidence without a photographer testifying that the photographs do indeed represent what they appear to be representing, the future's photography's connection with reality will lie with the photographer, not the camera or the pixels it organizes into an image.
Comment: Tut-tut, a new tool is on the horizon, allowing more access to more people, to express themselves. The author seems to be ready to jump back to a time where the click of a lens didn???t involve checking the rear of the camera to check the image, and in every household there was that overflowing box containing a few photographic gems and all to many cropped off heads and inexplicable shots of the ground at the photographers feet. Sister Wendy said it best, ???Art never improves, it just changes??? Forgive a long winded response, but there can be a different, more inclusive viewpoint of the digital revolution.
Art History showed that humanity has always created fiction with art, be it the Neolithic stone figurines of women for fertility rituals..assumed as it wasn???t likely to be a representation of women, but an ideal, to Bosch and others before and after creating terrifying worlds from their imagination, well before the Modernist era I???m sure you???d agree. Remember ???The School of Athens??? by Raphael? Even the dawn of photography shows that artistic fantasy was to be embraced, Oscar Rejlanders ???The Two paths of Life??? can be seen at the George Eastman House in Rochester the birthplace of the idea that photography was for everyone. Ansel Adams dodged and burned images into existence that, while structurally accurate, never existed in reality???that cross on the door in the New Mexico cemetery was most definitely NOT as bright as in the final print; an illusion to create an emotion?
Technology has merely made a creative outlet more accessible to the masses, what is good, fictional or fact is still up for debate.
So entropy has grabbed the reins of the creative impulses in all of mankind, and this is a bad thing how? Was it better to have the Big 3 Automobiles, or how well did creativity flourish with just 3 Big Networks?
Perhaps it???s that 1000 words no longer are enough to give to a picture, just maybe we need to insert 1 more, inclusion.
Comment: Tut-tut, a new tool is on the horizon, allowing more access to more people, to express themselves. The author seems to be ready to jump back to a time where the click of a lens didn???t involve checking the rear of the camera to check the image, and in every household there was that overflowing box containing a few photographic gems and all to many cropped off heads and inexplicable shots of the ground at the photographers feet. Sister Wendy said it best, ???Art never improves, it just changes??? Forgive a long winded response, but there can be a different, more inclusive viewpoint of the digital revolution.
Art History showed that humanity has always created fiction with art, be it the Neolithic stone figurines of women for fertility rituals..assumed as it wasn???t likely to be a representation of women, but an ideal, to Bosch and others before and after creating terrifying worlds from their imagination, well before the Modernist era I???m sure you???d agree. Remember ???The School of Athens??? by Raphael? Even the dawn of photography shows that artistic fantasy was to be embraced, Oscar Rejlanders ???The Two paths of Life??? can be seen at the George Eastman House in Rochester the birthplace of the idea that photography was for everyone. Ansel Adams dodged and burned images into existence that, while structurally accurate, never existed in reality???that cross on the door in the New Mexico cemetery was most definitely NOT as bright as in the final print; an illusion to create an emotion?
Technology has merely made a creative outlet more accessible to the masses, what is good, fictional or fact is still up for debate.
So entropy has grabbed the reins of the creative impulses in all of mankind, and this is a bad thing how? Was it better to have the Big 3 Automobiles, or how well did creativity flourish with just 3 Big Networks?
Perhaps it???s that 1000 words no longer are enough to give to a picture, just maybe we need to insert 1 more, inclusion.
Comment: Photography HAS NOT lost its art form, it has simply changed, the mediume has changed, but people still take photos the same, and edit the same, the only difference is that photographers do not pay for film, and edit on a computer, not in the darkroom, but the essence and passion are still there,
if you like, have a look at my website here:
http://www.brookewhatnall.com
See if I have captured the esscence
Comment: There has always been photography of one's interior thoughts and what one sees in front of oneself. To damn the "pixel" is as silly as damning a certain kind of paintbrush. The people who use Photoshop to totally create are not sinning against photography, only against self proclaimed critics.
For those of us using Photoshop as our darkrooms it is liberating to have better control over the basics like contrast, color intensity, etc.
Comment: Mr. Plagen has written an interesting essay. As always in discussions of photography as art, the central issue is the premise that photography differs from other visual arts in evidentiary value -- that "special link to reality."
Photographs could always be altered. Digital technologies have merely made it easier to make alterations -- dramatic ones, at that. The link to reality is what often makes such alterations controversial.
What is the difference between an unaltered photograph and a painting by an artist whose "thing" is visual realism? The photograph is likely to portray a scene more accurately simply because that is the nature of the medium. But what, theoretically, of the painter whose technique is such that his or her images exceed the camera's ability to capture reality? Impossible, you say? Perhaps. The point is that evidentiary value does not correlate to artistic value, whether one is discussing photographs, paintings, sculptures, etc.
What are we to make of the courtroom sketch artist? Their work is accepted as substitutes for photographs, not because photographic images of courtroom drama might be disturbing to the public but rather because cameras are unwelcome in that setting. Nobody cares whether such sketches comprise "art" because the images are created specifically for their evidentiary value.
That said, I wouldn't show up in small claims court with artist's sketches to prove damage to my car. These days, however, a digital photograph might not provide much more compelling evidence.
And, perhaps, that is as it should be.
Comment: As a digital photography instructor with a foot firmly planted in both the traditional and digital realms, I found this article fascinating and useful. To read more about my perspective, please check this out: http://randallarmor.blogspot.com/2007/12/truth-about-reality.html
Comment: To suggest that the opinions of the "so called authorities" as to what is a "great image" are of no validity or should not be accorded respect, is to call into question the entire history of Critical Values and the Study of ART. Certainly an individual has every right to like whatever they like, but such preferences if they are born of ignorance or a disdain for long established critical criteria, are rightly to be considered irrelevant to the more serious advancement of what we know as ART. That said, Curators being individuals with personal biases and ambitions that often have little to do with genuine critical values as with what we know as the 'Business of Art', what they choose to promote or support must appropriately be considered or valued in the light of that understanding. Or to put it simply, while well educated or knowledgeable Curators deserve our respect for their scholarship, this is NOT to say that ALL that they extol as GOLD necessarily qualifies as same. This is a most compelling reason that it is essential that Art be provided Public or State, i.e., Non Profit Support, so that it may be held Free of any commercial pressures that have always been the bane of great Art and the Artists who create it as motivated by the most honest passion and creative inspiration. ART at its best is NOT to do with MONEY and when required to be subject to criteria having more to do with Market concerns, it is doomed to decadence and decay. ARTISTS do NOT lust for Fame and Fortune the way many misguided members of the Art Establishment would have themselves and others believe. The Artist has as their most passionate objective only the expression of their soul's experience and the ongoing evolution of their produce and its quality. Therein is described exactly the conflict that Peter Plagens has so profoundly and I would add courageously, seen fit to attempt to make us conscious of. There are people who will take him to task for speaking these Truths, i.e. for not 'playing the game' they would prefer us all to play.
Comment: What is a great image is a very subjective thing. So how can the so called authorities decide on what is great and what is trite?
jimandalyce@mac.com 12/18/07
Comment: One of the biggest mysteries about a photograph is what is it that makes an image considered to be a "great" image? I have been photographing for many years and no one has ever answered that question in an less than an obtuse manner. Most of what the 'authorities' consider to be wonderful leaves me scratching my head. jimandalyce@mac.com 12/18/07
Comment: To say that manipulation of photography only began with the rise of digital methods shows a complete ignorance of the medium. It???s obviously that Mr. Plagens longs for the good ol??? days of photography: Adams, Cartier-Bresson, Lange, etc. The only thing wrong with his longing is that there is manipulation everywhere, from dodging and burning to cropping. Go to a museum or a library with a good collection of photography books and look around you.
Look at Ansel Adam's iconic 'Moonrise. Hernandez, New Mexico'? Beautifully composed for sure. But see how dramatically manipulated it is by Adam???s artful use of dodging and burning. And look at the work of Jerry Ulsmann. All done in a traditional darkroom. Just think of what Jerry could have done using Photoshop instead.
Yes, we see wilder manipulations in the digital age, some good, a lot of them bad IMHO. I, for one, am bored to tears with the so-called new aesthetic of large c-prints that, quite frankly, convey no more than lack of imagination on the part of the photographer and the curator who chooses them to hang on his/her gallery or museum walls.
As a photographer who has managed to combine shooting film while digitally outputting his work via PCs, film scanners, Photoshop, and pigment ink printers (as opposed to enlargers, photo paper and toners), I manipulate my photos both in-camera on film (blur, shallow depth of field, etc.) and use Photoshop to mimic traditional darkroom techniques (dodging, burning, toning, etc.).
I have a good friend who is represented by several galleries who goes even further by making her own film cameras from camera parts, science kits, etc. and creating incredibly beautiful and dreamlike images. Certainly, she, too, is manipulating the image, at least in-camera. Is that no different from digital manipulations? Not necessarily.
Do I like everything I currently see out there? No. But, like most artists, I have strong opinions as to what constitutes a good (or for that matter, great) photograph. Has photography lost its soul? Maybe, for the time being. At least in the museum scene. But that???s my own opinion. Your opinions may vary.
Have we seen the last of great photographers? I think not. They're out there. They just haven't received their recognition yet by the powers that be in the art world.
Bill Vaccaro
www.billvaccaro.com
Comment: There is nothing at all wrong with Digital Technology applied to Photography, it's a great boon to the Medium as others have said, as the development of Roll Film in replacement of Sheet Film was likewise, the arrival of the 35 mm Camera in replacement of the cumbersome View Camera, etc. etc.
Digital Photography is a boon also because again as others have said in this Forum, Photographers are now FREE of the Toxic Chemical Darkroom with all its problems. NOW one is FREE to deal with the ART itself, the VISION. You can go out and shoot as many pictures as you like or need to, that limited only the capacity of your Flash Card, go immediately to your Computer and Upload the images, STUDY them in the most faithful and large enough size on your Monitor...and THEN, now having been able to SEE what is developing in your work, what you are getting 'INTO' if you will, you can go right back out into the 'field' or whatever the locus of the work may be, and EXPAND the work now fully aware of what it's about.
But that still leaves the question of WHAT that is? If it's just a Fantasy you're conjuring, while it may have some interest in that way, it's still doomed to FAILURE in comparison or in competition with a great Painting.
For the latter IS what it IS, Paint or Pigment if you will, applied to Canvas or whatever other media with the most intense organic PASSION and this act of Passion not confined to a MOMENT but going On and On and ON as the Painter works and reworks the application of that Paint for DAYS if not WEEKS if not Months.
HOW can a Photograph COMPETE is the Question? And the answer is that by BEING ITSELF! A small 8x10 Print by Robert Frank or a 16x20 by Dianne Arbus or another 8x10 by one of the greatest Photographers of all time who FEW so called 'Fans' of the medium even know much about by the name of Fredrick Sommer, could compete quite well alongside a huge most passionate of all Paintings by the great Anselm Kiefer.
Because those Photographs are based on the MOST PROFOUND intrinsic ability of Photography which is of course it's ability to FAITHFULLY RECORD the Physical Facts of REALITY! What Photography can do that NO OTHER MEDIUM CAN!
I rest my case.
Comment: You make an interesting comment in, "...Film photography's artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera. A digital photograph, on the other hand, can be a Photoshop fairy tale, containing only a tiny trace of a small fragment of reality."
Nothing has changed in photography. Using digital programs to "fiddle" with a photograph still leaves at it's core that, "...something real that occurred in front of the camera." The point is not to confuse photography with the digital artist who creates a scene from either nothing or manipulates a photo to the point that it becomes "art" and not a photograph.
And, most people don't necessarily think of "nonfiction reportage" as the sole of great photography. Yes, there were some great pictures people remember, the "rape of Nanking" photo, the "Iwo Jima" flag raising, and MacArthur coming ashore in the Phillipines. But newsreporting, or photojournalism, and photography, in all its forms, landscape, nature, portrait, etc., are all the same medium. People identify with Ansel Adams and Art Wolfe just as well, and they were and are photographers.
Again, don't include the digital "artist" with the photographer. They're not the same. One uses digital programs to create their medium; the other works in the program on their medium, like working in a darkroom. Apples and Oranges.
Oh, and there may be "hordes" of photographers out there; just as there is a plethora of news reporters and wannabe writers. Has writing and reporting lost it's sole? Perhaps it already has and is looking for a scapegoat?
Comment: Yes.
Comment: If technology should take the blame for making what was an exclusive preserve of the rich and famous commonly available then we do not know to draw the line between art and utility.yes,Kodak brought photos into the drawing room and in convenient albums.Imagine a portrait of some old goat-may be your best friend's grandpa staring you down from 12 feet up.That was art and a picture then.you can still do it in art form or tuck it away in a file.The freedom is what matters,no more galleries to show around with all your relatives staring down with impressionist style portrayals
Comment: I think that photography has not lost its artistic soul, but rather is alive. Every day and every person who takes or makes an image is being allowed to capture their world in that instant. You may not like that fact that photography is changing with the new technology, but I say that we are just the next movement in the history of photography. I just don't understand why someone who should embrace change would want to stem its flow when there is an explosion of creativity that allows arts to cross lines that they have never been able to before. You can create art on a computer or camera and add some of your style from painting as well as put it to music while being displayed in your gallery. My generations art is becoming all inclusive. And personally, I love it.
Comment: As a professional photographer for 26 years it is sad to see light and art go by the wayside. I still do work more as a hobby beacause anybody wh can buy a $2.000 camera is now in the business. I went to Europe in my 20s and worked under a German Master Herr Spann, who father was also a photographer. In the darkroom only slight manipulation of Henri Cartier "Desisive Moment" was manipulated. Now we change hair color take out braces and blemishes, fat rolls from neck all on the computer. Digital photgraphy is much better environmentally! No more harsh cemicals down the drain. But now it this the moment, the second of ummanipulated beauty that is going down the drain....
Comment: I beg to differ, I don't think art has ever been about reality, even before impressionist took over. In those hyper-realistic portraits painted by the masters, of Pinky or Blue Boy, I'm sure the artist didn't bother to add the skin blemishes that were certainly there, and landscapes were altered if an errant tree was blocking an otherwise perfect rendition of a valley. Even unaltered photographs are just an interpretation of an slice of time. Without the fabrication of macro photography, we might overlook the yellow pollen sprinkled on the red flower petal. Without Harold Edgertons invention of the flash, we might never have seen the power of a fighters blow. How boring would photos be, if were were forced to use 50mm lenses so as not to distort reality ,or relegated to f64, so as not to create shallow depth of field. When I take photos, I want people to experience how I felt when I took the shot. If I want them to feel the congestion of the city, I'll use my telephoto to compress the distances. If I want them to feel the expanse of the desert I'll use my fisheye. If I want them to feel my sadness I might pull the color out of a shot. In short, I don't think photography, or any art medium can ever be about the truth, even if we are shooting for forensic science, the human operator will always add their own interpretation of what he or she sees.
Comment: I beg to differ, I don't think art has ever been about reality, even before impressionist took over. In those hyper-realistic portraits painted by the masters, of Pinky or Blue Boy, I'm sure the artist didn't bother to add the skin blemishes that were certainly there, and landscapes were altered if an errant tree was blocking an otherwise perfect rendition of a valley. Even unaltered photographs are just an interpretation of an slice of time. Without the fabrication of macro photography, we might overlook the yellow pollen sprinkled on the red flower petal. Without Harold Edgertons invention of the flash, we might never have seen the power of a fighters blow. How boring would photos be, if were were forced to use 50mm lenses so as not to distort reality ,or relegated to f64, so as not to create shallow depth of field. When I take photos, I want people to experience how I felt when I took the shot. If I want them to feel the congestion of the city, I'll use my telephoto to compress the distances. If I want them to feel the expanse of the desert I'll use my fisheye. If I want them to feel my sadness I might pull the color out of a shot. In short, I don't think photography, or any art medium can ever be about the truth, even if we are shooting for forensic science, the human operator will always add their own interpretation of what he or she sees.
Comment: Digital photography is ***, it is obvious. But it is a future. While digital film printing can make photography's craft quite a good thing. No big loose for slide to be printed by HQ scanner and printer in photolab. Slide stays still the same, not in form of chunks of bytes in waiting software.
Andrius Burlega
http://www.painter-decorator.eu
Comment: ThepeopleinLightnessPerception,machinevision,andneurosciencehaveforgedanewwayforphotographytotrulyrepresentvisualreality.Thisisnotmanipulation,butthewayrealityisseenbythebrainandeye.Photographyfromthecameraneverwaswhattheeyeandbrainactuallysaw.Soonthetechnologywillbeavailableforustodothistruly.Doyourhomework.
GeorgeDeWolfe
SeniorEditor
CameraArts
Comment: 'The next great photographers???if there are to be any???will have to find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality."
Wow, what an audacious statement. Though I see it more as a challenge, one I intend on meeting head on. Maybe in a few years you'll (hopefully) be writing about me.
Comment: Mr. Plagens writes: 'the medium seems to have lost its soul'.
I would like to ask Plagens to define this so-called 'soul of photography' first, before he declares it to be soulless.
Perhaps in Holland there are arguments to accuse photography of 'lack of life' but here the cause of the problem should be adressed more to the lack of inspiring curating and the choices of musea and the institutes, than it has to do with the photographers themselves.
Of course I speak for myself and for myself only when I say that I feel a little bit underrated by Mr. Plagens suggestion, but his wondering about whether there are going to be good(or great) photographers is as ridiculous as his short-sightedness when he only bases his wish for reclamation of photography's 'special link to reality' to what is shown in museums, galleries and the like.
An awful lot of postcard-photography indeed, as 10 in 12 photographers adapted the Becher-Schule approach.
'Objective' (and boring) pictures of buildings, water towers, stadiums and offices seem to be the standard in marketable photography.
But hey! we don't declare poetry or literature dead anytime the phonebook or the yellow-pages is delivered now do we?
I think the biggest mistake Mr. Plagens makes is that he based his conclusion only on what his eyes are lead to by predominantly a culture of impressive huge prints that completely lack any creativity of the photographer and any vision of the curator.
The spectator, the viewer, the public, which always should be critical about the content and the message he or she is confronted with (as in theater, cinema, literature) is not in any way aware of 'the powers that be' in the world of photography with its undefinable yet always seemingly faultless quality standards.
In their vision 'art' photography is either black and white, nudes, landscape, or anything else that is presented as ' art photography' in musea and galleries. No matter what it shows.
The digitalisation has up till now changed the way advertising companies develop their campaigns and fashion labels show their clothes. But it is only one of the techniques photographers use to satisfy the customer and secure their income.
The biggest mistake to make is to think of photography as an outdated medium to keep a link to reality.
As for me -as a photographer- the link with reality is very clear.
So I would like to suggest Mr. Plagens to maybe rephrase his statement after he has done some proper research on photography before any of you readers jump to the conclusion today's photographers aren't as good anymore as they where 'In The Old Days'.
Rogier Maaskant
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
http://www.rogiermaaskant.com
Comment: Neither photography nor art is truth, never was. Beauty is truth, truth is beauty....at least so thought John Keats, who first presented the idea that is near universal for us today. Photography is no more than a window to frame in what we see. Or you may want to think of it as a tool for viewing and presenting whatever you will, as long as someone cares to have a look at it. Photography doesn't have a discipline or a topic. Photography has nothing to follow, not journalism, reality, art, truth, not even beauty. Photography goes where we go, and the only query is where do we go?
Comment: Neither photography nor art is truth, never was. Beauty is truth, truth is beauty....at least so thought John Keats, who first presented the idea that is near universal for us today. Photography is no more than a window to frame in what we see. Or you may want to think of it as a tool for viewing and presenting whatever you will, as long as someone cares to have a look at it. Photography doesn't have a discipline or a topic. Photography has nothing to follow, not journalism, reality, art, truth, not even beauty. Photography goes where we go, and the only query is where do we go?
Comment: Photography has never been truth. A photograph has always been a representation of something else. It is indexical, but it is not the same as whatever was in front of the camera. The idea that the next great photographers are going to have to find a new way to "find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality" is ridiculous. Perhaps the next great photographers are working already, and are challenging your ideas of photographic truth.
Comment: Bravo. Neither photography nor art is truth, never was. Beauty is truth, truth is beauty....at least so thought John Keats, who first presented the idea that is near universal for us today. Photography is no more than a window to frame in what we see. Or you may want to think of it as a tool for viewing and presenting whatever you will, as long as someone cares to have a look at it. Photography doesn't have a discipline or a topic. Photography has nothing to follow, not journalism, reality, art, truth, not even beauty. Photography goes where we go, and the only query is where do we go?
Comment: Photography may be fading away in the main stream (sort of like Dante King's hair), but there are still on-line communities such as POTN for photographers and enthusiasts who have a genuine passion for creating images without manipulating them to a point beyond reality. Casual observers will still stop to notice a great image as long as there are those willing to capture them.
Comment: Photography may be fading away in the main stream (sort of like Dante King's hair), but there are still on-line communities such as POTN for photographers and enthusiasts who have a genuine passion for creating images without manipulating them to a point beyond reality. Casual observers will still stop to notice a great image as long as there are those willing to capture them.
Comment: heck no!!!!! Photography is not dead! It's here to stay. Thank goodness!!!!!!!!
Comment: Heck no! Photography is not dead!!!! Thank goodness!!!!!!!!!
Comment: THE SNAPSHOT CONUNDRUM
MOST PHOTOGRAPHERS AND VIRTUALLY ALL CRITICS HAVE BEEN CONFOUNDED BY THE FACT THAT IF YOU GO THROUGH THOUSANDS OF SNAPSHOTS YOU CAN FIND A GREAT PHOTOGRAPH. THEY SHOULDN'T BE. THE GREAT PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE THOSE THAT CAN DO IT CONSCIOUSLY. THEY DO NOT DO IT BY "SELECTING THEIR SUBJECTS CAREFULLY AND FRAMING THEM PRECISELY". LEAVE THAT FOR THE OTHER MEDIUMS. THEY REACT INSTINCTIVELY AND TAKE A RECORD OF SOMETHING THAT CAN ILLUMINATE OR EVEN TRANSCEND. THAT IS IT'S POWER.
Comment: I think this is an obviously old argument. Manipulation has always been married with photography.
A more relevant contemporary concern would be.... "THE DEATH OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER".
Photography will be here to stay, but will professional and artistic photographers lose out to amateurs, stock photos, and clip art? I am more concerned with how few recognize the difference in the quality of a professional photograph.
www.flickr.com/photos/lady_apollo - Michelle Murphy
Mi
-Miche
Comment: Bravo for that. Everyone who can now buy a D40 or Digital Rebel believes themselves to be a "photographer." To many, the "craft" of photography has either never been known or has been lost. Those who grew up using viewfinders and light meters, darkrooms and chemicals, and now, digital, understand the "art" in photography.
sdrake
www.drakephotoimages.com
Comment: The author of this article is ignorant and a luddite. Photography has always been fictional, subjective to the one-point perspective of lens-space, limited to the selection that the photographer makes from "reality." The process of making an image using the light recorded on a piece of film is never "real;" it is always manipulated, in some form or another, by photographers. (Need I even mention the early surrealist photographers? This isn't something new.) Stop writing sensational eschatologies, and start writing real criticism, please.
Comment: I just want to thank Peter Plagens and Newsweek for publishing this article. Finally someone who dares tackle this issue and put it out there. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time now. No matter what people say it is important to talk about "you can't help but wonder if the entire medium hasn't fractured itself beyond all recognition". So just a big Thank You for bringing out this debate!
Comment: Just to be fair, journalism itself has been fractured beyond recognition. It is now based on sensationalism and meaningless stories; when did Paris Hilton become news, or the collision between a school bus and a taxi? Does any US news source report on European, African or other news beyond the middle-east and our involvement there? No; the world does not exist to them, because they believe it doesn't exist for us. Photography is a minor issue compared to the current state of journalism.
sdrake
Comment: I just want to thank Peter Plagens and Newsweek for publishing this article. Finally someone who dares tackle this issue and put it out there. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time now. No matter what people say it is important to talk about "you can't help but wonder if the entire medium hasn't fractured itself beyond all recognition". So just a big Thank You for bringing out this debate!
Comment: Idiotic article by someone ignorant of photography. Image manipulation dates back to the dawn of photography, and many of our most famous images present a falsehood as factual truth. For this reason, photos cannot even be admitted as evidence in a courtroom without the photographer's afidavit of authenticity. We're at the dawn of a new age, where photography like painting is less encumbered by an absolute physical reality. This expands, not contracts, the creative possibilities.
Comment: Is photography dead? I don't think so. It is a bit strange to link digital photography and Photoshop to the beginning of the end for photography. For some fields, such as photojournalism, I do agree that photographers must be careful not to modify the image to the point that they are making history rather than reporting it. And I don't care for some works of art that started with a photograph, but with software end up looking more like a cartoon or a Dali painting.
But for any work of art, be it literature, a painting, the cinema, or a photograph: the truth lies both in the eye of the creator and the viewer. We all have our own frame of reference and set of experiences that affect how we interpret the work of art.
With the advances in digital cameras and film, I think the art of photography is accessible to more than it has ever been today. As someone that still loves to load up a roll of Tri-X black and white film in my camera, or on another day take out my digital camera, I feel photography is very much alive. So grab that old film camera out of the closet, or that brand new 12 Megapixel DSLR, and lets go out and takes some photos for all too enjoy! Who's with me?
Michael Watry
http://windycitycameraphile.blogspot.com
Comment: I believe that the photographers of today are great in there own way. If art did not change with the times , we would still be painting on cave walls. As far as making great images, it's about consistency. Allot of people can make one or two great photos, but only a small amount of people can produce consistent bodies of work and that is how you know if a photographer is good or not
Comment: Photography is more vital than ever. The digital darkroom is a powerful draw to many tech-savy photography buffs, many of whom would never step near a chemical darkroom. But what Plagens perceives to be the concept of fiction in photography is nothing new; it started in the 1850???s with Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Rejlander making composite prints using as many as 30 separate negatives. When the public discovered that the dying girl in Robinson???s photo ???Fading Away??? was, in fact, a healthy girl who had just modeled for the photo, people were incensed; they expected photos to depict reality, and the scene in the photo wasn???t ???real???. It sounds like Plagens is making the same argument at a different point in time based on a slightly different definition of reality.
But has the camera ever really captured ???reality???? The camera does not see as the human eye does; therefore, it is not capable of capturing what we see. Often, manipulating the image, digitally or in the darkroom, enhances the image to more accurately represent what we perceived with our eyes. Or with our hearts. Or both. These are exciting times, and photography has multiple purposes. One, which must be based on reality, is documentary; the result can also be art, but it doesn???t have to be. Another is art: the result can also be documentary, but it doesn???t have to be. Let creativity reign!
Comment: We are experiencing a similar situation with analog and digital imaging that happened with painting and photography in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Photography's influence upon painting was dramatic, causing painters to examine new ways of using paint, thus creating modern painting, impressionism, expressionism, cubisim etc. Pictorial Photography had to borrow aesthetics from painting to be considered a valid art form. It then rejected the aesthetics of painting and worked with its own inherent characteristics through straight photography. We now are at a similar point in history. Digital imaging has borrowed aesthetics from analog photography. Everything digital seems to be a simulation for something analog. It is time that digital imaging come into its own, by fully exploring its inherent characteristics. This is already happening in the work we see being exhibited. I am excited to be a part of this exploration.
Simon Blundell
www.simonfoto.com
simon@simonfoto.com
Comment: We are experiencing a similar situation with analog and digital imaging that happened with painting and photography in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Photography's influence upon painting was dramatic, causing painters to examine new ways of using paint, thus creating modern painting, impressionism, expressionism, cubisim etc. Pictorial Photography had to borrow aesthetics from painting to be considered a valid art form. It then rejected the aesthetics of painting and worked with its own inherent characteristics through straight photography. We now are at a similar point in history. Digital imaging has borrowed aesthetics from analog photography. Everything digital seems to be a simulation for something analog. It is time that digital imaging come into its own, by fully exploring its inherent characteristics. This is already happening in the work we see being exhibited. I am excited to be a part of this exploration.
Simon Blundell
www.simonfoto.com
simon@simonfoto.com
Comment: I can appreciate one's view that photograhy has become a subject of often intense commentary particularly about its relative position in the so-called "world of art." But, in essence, the mistake that is made is not so much how a paintng is done, or a photgrapgh is taken, but rather the end result. In the days of cavemen who chiseled figures on the walls of a cave to the latest "photoshop" actions, is it not what we see rtaher than how it was done the more important consideration? Early painters made their own paint using eggs and other materials available to them. Is that not basically the same as using technology to create another view of life? We use whatever is available to make the end result, which is the key to the entire process. The problem that exists today is the limited view taken by those who cannot for whatever reason enter a new era. They are stuck in th past and with little ability tomove foward and accept change. Art is art. How one creates it is not as important as what has been created. And to say iphotography is not real is essentially saying that anything created in the mind is not real as well. What would all those religious painters from centuries gone by who painted their own versions of Jesus Christ say. I mean did they ever meet him or really know what he looked like? And whether is is a statue, a painting a photographgh or graffitti, it is all art. Enjoy it. It will be here forever.
Comment: The overall of Andy-Rooney-esque tone of the piece is making me crazy, first of all... It's as if it's saying, "Today's photos are not real like the ones when I was a kid, and that bothers me." The thesis here, that somehow photography has become lately unreal in its Photoshop-drenched depictions, is old news in any sense (see Walter Benjamin's famous 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" for example). Anyone observing a photo today has seen enough films, TV commercials and magazine spreads to know almost instinctively that a printed or projected image is a manufactured object. As for this call to action at the end of the article: "The next great photographers???if there are to be any???will have to find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality. And they'll have to do it in a brand-new way," it's adolescent and ridiculous. Of course there are going to be great image-makers of tomorrow, and no, they will not have to "reclaim photography's special link to reality," which never really existed in the first place. The great overarching story of the medium from Talbot to Sherman (and beyond) has been the gradual acknowledgement that photography is not the same as your own uninflected eye, but a largely subjective effort. That's why we call it an "art".
Comment: "The next great photographers???if there are to be any???will have to find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality. And they'll have to do it in a brand-new way."
nahhhh... simply continue to shoot film.
joebuissink.com
Comment: "But her pictures represented something new in the way that photography was considered as art". Well, Alfred Stieglitz (1864 - 1946) fought for the recognition of photography as an art form all his life. HIS photos represented something new in the way that photography was considered as art.
Comment: Plagens must know that his title recalls the reaction of Paul Delaroche, a French painter, who around 1839 saw a daguerreotype -- the first photographic image --- and famously said, "From this day forth, painting is dead." Was he right? of course not. Though Delaroche's speciality --- the smooth, highly detailed, canvases devoted to historical subjects --- was eventually superceded by technicolor spectaculars -- though it took at least half a century to tkae place. Most painters took up new challenges, and kept their medium alive. Only a person who belives in the good old days will also believe that new technology ruins everything forever after. Dear Mr. Plagens: There weren't any good old days, and new technology may create new ways to make pictures, and make others look obsolete, but you still need an author/artist to make the picture happen. Otherwise I guess all painters would certainly be out of a job by now.
Comment: "Savvy museum-goers know to bypass photography exhibits " What an asanine thing to say. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Comment: To see that digital photography can still be about recording one only needs to look at the work of Mark Kitaoka. http://photos.kitaoka.us/index.htm
Comment: I disagree with the author's notion that "art and truth used to be fast friends". I think that there should be a distinction made between images that render realism and images that render the artist's view of reality. Few people will say that impressionism looked "real", or that Cubism was "real". Back in the days when these two schools of art emerged, people were also in an uproar over their qualification as art. But today they are considered art, and I think it is wonderful. I believe that by taking an image and using digital media to change it makes the photograph a new form of canvas and the digital media the new kind of paint. I don't believe these artists are necessarily looking for realism when they use photoshop, I believe they look to enhance or change - whether the final product is art in its own right is up for discussion, certainly, but the very thing they are doing shouldn't be criticized. I look forward to seeing photography that can break up space like cubism did and can make a photograph look like expressionism. Art, music, and every other expressive form evolves. To say photography is dead isn't true - but to say that a branch of art based on photography has emerged is right on the money. In conclusion, I say "Don't knock it til you try it." Not everyone who wields a digital camera or cell phone camera photoshops all of their photos - just ask a friend to send you a photo album of their most recent vacation. Photography lives on, and thrives.
Comment: Savvy museum-goers know to bypass photography exhibits and proceed to paintings and sculptures. Photographs are simply documents and better viewed in coffee table books.
Comment: So much for the digital world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment: truth and beauty. if that's the real goal, the work of art is not the answer. we are the answer. it's not that photography or any other media has lots it's ability to represent truth and beauty. we have. louisleray.com
Comment: I fully agree with the questions Mr. Plagens brings to the fore here. As a photographer (and as a viewer), what has always fascinated me with the medium was the sense that it can record a moment of reality that takes us beyond that reality to another level of things. Digital computer games can't do that. Yet regardless of media, there will always be people working in photography who seek a truth beyond mere visual play.
Comment: Mr Plagens has a point I think. However, digital cameras are ever more capable of spontaneously recording images (surely a good thing?) and the mountain is getting bigger - but the transcription to printing is a more clinical process - sort of the reverse of analogue wet process photography. But if we pop off a few pics and auto print them digitally - how does that have less soul than a old polaroid snap? I know they look different and I like the polaroids. But I am not sure if I can accept the "no-soul" argument.
Sure if you play around in Photoshop and "work up the image" it's made-over qualities can easily look buffed up like they are on steroids - or it can mime wet silver process - or a polaroid. Is photoshop as pleasing and satisfying as the old wet silver process to do - well not for me, there's no magic feeling in it. Traditional photography is the baseline. Photoshop type composite imaging is a new graphic art-form that can also mimic traditional photography to perfection, for a price in very technical effort.
Comment: On the one hand, the author, Peter Plagens (who is a painter as well as Newsweek's Art Crtiic, something I think is important to note) seems to be pining for the "good old days" of photography, when men were men and pixels were scared. He waxes rhapsodically about the era of the Pictorialists, who, in the early 20th century "used soft focus, toothy paper, sepia tones, multiple negatives and even scratching back into the image as ways of getting photographs to look more like paintings" and also talks about how "great photographers have never merely recorded visual facts indiscriminately, like a court stenographer taking down testimony. They've selected their subjects carefully and framed their views of them precisely, in order to give their pictures the look of 'art.'"
On the other hand, he says that "...the medium seems to have lost its soul. Film photography's artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera." He claims that "truth" is the essential quality of a photograph, and that early photographers only wanted to be "truthful" whereas contemporary photographers want to take "flight into fable."
So... wait... the "old" photography, where photographers carefully selected subjects and, if the mood struck them, manipulated their results to get the effect they wanted is better than the "new" photography where photographers do the same thing, but using different (read: better and faster) technology?
This supposition is, to me, ludicrous. Photographers have subverted the camera's grasp of the real since the start of the medium. Moreover, the camera has always lied.
Plagens' piece is confounding and, I think, misguided.
The more I think about it, I think that what transpired is this:
*Metropolitan Museum opens newly-renovated photo galleries
*Newsweek feels compelled to report on news story
*Assignment falls to Newsweek art critic
*Art critic can't just "report on new photo galleries" but mustaa also express his opinion on *what* he sees in the new galleries
*Art critic is a-skeert of photographs 'cause they're getting bigger and tackling bigger ideas ("just like painting.... look out ma!")
*If you can't say something new, you might as well be controversial, and nothing says "controversial" more than a headline that trumpets the question, "Is Photography Dead?"
Plagens doesn't say anything wrong... he just doesn't say anything new or particularly interesting, either.
He ends with this: "The next great photographers--if there are to be any--will have to find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality. And they'll have to do it in a brand-new way."Sounds like a challenge to me.
Now where did I put that Photoshop license?
Jeff Curto
http://www.jeffcurto.com
http://www.cameraposition.com
http://photohistory.jeffcurto.com
Comment: I know nothing about the techniques of photography. However I can make a comment on the tone and tenor of the article. It is similar to ones which have been written for years about the death of the novel, or the death of tragedy or the death of countless other creative forms. This might lead one to be tempted to therefore dismiss the article out of hand. The novel for one at least still thrives despite all the predictions of Doom?
But the fact is that 'forms' do 'die' or lose their creative life. Consider 'epic' which continued to be attempted long after it seems any real epic was viable.
What is the conclusion of this in regard to this particular article on 'Photography'?
I think the answer lies at least in part in understanding what no one really understands yet- how value and status heirarchies are going to emerge in the 'culture of endlessly more' which is the 'Internet'.
And in fact whether such heirarchies will be ' general' or merely small communal niches in which groups of 'fans and performers' celebrate together their teensy- weensy bit of cosmic space.
Comment: I believe that what the author is lamented is the loss of photography's *indexical* relationship to the truth. Photographs have always been manipulated, created, framed, they are representations, not fact, yet they have, until recently, been invested with the belief that they bear an indexical relationship to something that is 'out there' in the world, however mediated and modified by the camera (and in the darkroom).
As for the lament about the mechanization of photography, there has, since its origins, been a debate over photography's seemingly 'mechanized' aspects, its supposedly 'objective' nature (in this regard, interesting that the french word for lens is "objective.') This debate has never really disappeared, it's just taking new forms.
What is striking to me about the shift to digital is not a loss of 'truth' or increasing mechanization, but rather that there will be a radical shift in the material culture of photographs--particularly of the everyday 'snapshot' kind, as people often erase or do not print out their pictures, esp, those that are deemed, at the moment of their making, 'failures.' Als, given the rapid obsolescence of new technologies, unless someone is willing to invest in archiving their digital files, much will be lost. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, perhaps the archival impulse is a regressive one at times, but I do think it will quickly make the 'snapshots' of our parents and our own childhoods objects of nostalgia, rather than of everyday life.
Comment: Find the origin of the darkroom and with it you fill find the origin of photo manipulation. As previous comments have mentioned, Ansel Adams used a variety of manipulation techniques in the darkroom, including dodging and burning, both of which are tools whose namesakes still exist in a similar form in Adobe Photoshop. Only in photojournalism is the directive in photography to capture exactly what is seen by the naked eye. Cameras have adjustable shutter speeds and exposure settings, ultra-saturated (Velvia) film, color filters -- flashbulbs even! -- to allow the photographer to create art out of something inherently non-artistic. I fail to see how the digital manipulation of photographs -- while not without its limits -- is any different.
Comment: Find the origin of the darkroom and with it you fill find the origin of photo manipulation. As previous comments have mentioned, Ansel Adams used a variety of manipulation techniques in the darkroom, including dodging and burning, both of which are tools whose namesakes still exist in a similar form in Adobe Photoshop. Only in photojournalism is the directive in photography to capture exactly what is seen by the naked eye. Cameras have adjustable shutter speeds and exposure settings, ultra-saturated (Velvia film), color filters -- flashbulbs even! -- to allow the photographer to create art out of something inherently non-artistic. I fail to see how the digital manipulation of photographs -- while not without its limits -- is any different.
Comment: The thing I'm worried about, and I do feel this article has an interesting point of what you call art, is that photography is more drifting away from the artist- or "the creator" of the piece. The thing evident in most art, and what I feel attracts people to it, is the fact the artwork was created by some human, with thoughts, concepts and ideas. When you call a computer, printers and other peices of equipment a "tool" for an artist the same way we call a paintbrush, you're losing the soul of the artist's intentions. When photography was new, the artist had a lot of tools chemicals and processes that made the creation an artform in itself. Plus there was an element of the unexpected, which adds to the mystique of creating artwork. Now with things so mechanized, and manufactured, I wonder if the soul of the peice (if it has any) was created by a machine rather than a person.
Comment: I don't think the author of this article knows *** about photography. Photography is not about the tool you use, it is not about the technique. No it is about what you have in your brain. About your creativity. Somehow the author is missing something up there.. Photography has never been about the truth, never. Photography is for instance 2D, it has a frame. How does that represent reality? In no way it does. It just copies certain elements, and recreates them in a 2D frame..
If you write crap like this for a serious magazine you are not much of an expert on this subject. It's disappointing. The true power of photography is that it can go beyond registration, it can convey emotions, it can convey a view. Because it does not put the viewing person into the situation, it is like a proxy.
It is a total pity crap like this gets posted... seriously.
Comment: I don't think the author of this article knows *** about photography. Photography is not about the tool you use, it is not about the technique. No it is about what you have in your brain. About your creativity. Somehow the author is missing something up there.. Photography has never been about the truth, never. Photography is for instance 2D, it has a frame. How does that represent reality? In no way it does. It just copies certain elements, and recreates them in a 2D frame..
If you write crap like this for a serious magazine you are not much of an expert on this subject. It's disappointing. The true power of photography is that it can go beyond registration, it can convey emotions, it can convey a view. Because it does not put the viewing person into the situation, it is like a proxy.
It is a total pity crap like this gets posted... seriously.
Comment: Is art not the act of creativity, imagination, viewing or thinking a subject or idea and capturing it in your own perspective? Where does it say that the act of creating a photograph must be captured as an exact representation of the form as seen with the naked eye? Art is the creative vision, whatever form that may take. Who are you to judge?
Comment: I don't think that there's anything wrong with finding art in things such as a 'hole-in-the-ground' sculpture or a cell-phone photograph. I think it just makes art more accesible to all and as long as there is a fan-base then who is to say it's not art? The author sounds like an old-fogey that doesn't want to accept where the world is going and the article seems full of misconceptions.
Comment: Manipulaiton of images did not start with Photoshop or the digital era. Over the years I have created images such as a Lake Erie shoreline enhanced by a Maui sunset. I once did a portrait for a family who had never been photographed together as adults. Using a group photo I shot at the father's funeral with spaces left for missing family members, together with a picture from one son's wedding, and a photo of the late father taken at the same son's wedding, I created a formal, family image -- with film -- that never happened. It used to be that many people shot pictures, but the creation of art began in the darkroom. The only change today with digital cameras and Photoshop is that many more people can be creative with less efffort and far less expense.
Comment: I've always been mistified by the simplicity of photography. What is seen, by the human eye, through the camera lense is the photograph. I personally have always strived to develope my work that way, both in the camera and in the darkroom. Trying not to see what isn't there, but only see what is there and still interesting to the later viewer of a print. I always felt that, like a good joke, if you had to explain it, it was ruind. Same would apply to HOW you achieve the effect . If it wasn't obviously natural and raw, then i'd failed. But even Ansel Adams manipulated his work, knowing full well when he exposed the film in the camera that he would need to adjust what he put there later in in the darkroom. That's how and why he developed his zonal system. I think most photographers, even snapshooters, realize there is a difference between photographic art and something else. It's the vision thing, that counts.
Comment: This is a woefully ignorant article. Photography and truth have never been friends. Anyone with a hint of knowledge of the history of the form would know this. From burning in to cropping, to Ansel Adams resizing the moon for effect. The only thing that has changed is that technology allows a greater range of manipulation.
Comment: All I know is, I just celebrated my 48th birthday, and although I do look unusually young for my age, my face has still accumulated a few pock-marks of life that anyone accumulates once they start approaching fifty. But I cheerfully admit to using Photoshop to take away a few of the lines and skin discoloration, with the resulting birthday photos looking every bit like the 25-year-old stud I like to THINK that I really look like. I love it! Is it "truth"? Oh hell no. But it's sure cool.
