Looks like we are asking "What is a photograph?" again...

[Darin Boville]

Haven't we been here before?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/arts/design/with-cameras-optional-new-directions-in-photography.html?hp

--Darin

[dasBlute]

these days, it's almost 'anything printed on an inkjet'

[bigdog]

Yawn ...

[Stephen Willard]

I am a simple minded guy who can easily become lost in all of this heady stuff. So for give me if I sound stupid, but to me a photograph is how we have always thought of a photograph. It is made from a camera that captures an instant in time of an event that ACTUALLY occurred. Everything else lives in the virtual world of computer fabrications. To day, most fabricate while only a few truly photograph.

For me, it is just that simple....

[Michael E]

Actually, it is not a simple question. And it needs to be asked again every once in while, because things keep changing. Turns out you don't need film anymore (a sensor will do), you don't need a lens (a pin hole is fine), you don't need a dedicated camera (just use your phone), you don't need a recognizable depiction (there are a hundred ways to make an abstract photograph). But what about images made on the glass of a scanner? They check many of the boxes associated with photography. Are they photographs? Photorealistic images from the darkroom or Photoshop, using refining tools without the underlying photographic image to start with? I'm glad that I don't have to make the call, I will get by just fine with the traditional bottom-of-the-pants use of the term. But art historians and philosophers will have to keep redefining "photography", and it is not an easy task.

[paulr]

It is made from a camera that captures an instant in time of an event that ACTUALLY occurred. ...
For me, it is just that simple....

It hasn't been that simple in the last 150 years! The questions these curators are asking have been confounded by work that goes back at least that far.

[paulr]

Scanners and photocopiers seem like very traditional photography machines. They make indexical images from objects in the world using light.

[BetterSense]

There is nothing about a digital image that makes it a photograph. To me, a photograph is still a physical object written onto with light. Digital images are images just the same and there is nothing worse about them than photographic images, but they are not photographs. If digital images can count as photographs because they can superficially resemble them, then photographs can count as paintings.

The fact that digital images are called photographs wouldn't bother me if it was just a matter of semantics, however, it's evidence that society did not and does not recognize what a radical innovation digital images are, and that is a sad thing.

[Tin Can]

I knew what the word meant, but I thought I would look it up. I'll try to use it more often. :)

Definition of INDEXICAL

: an indexical word, sign, or feature
First Known Use of INDEXICAL

1971


Scanners and photocopiers seem like very traditional photography machines. They make indexical images from objects in the world using light.

[Darin Boville]

I knew what the word meant, but I thought I would look it up. I'll try to use it more often. :)

Definition of INDEXICAL

: an indexical word, sign, or feature
First Known Use of INDEXICAL

1971

As much as I admire Merriam-Webster over its rivals, that is a horrible definition as it contains the word being defined. Ugh. The word "indexical" is one of those art world words, morphed from literature theory. If you like talking like a English grad student then you should learn it well. Start here: http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/S4B/sem02.html

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

There is nothing about a digital image that makes it a photograph. To me, a photograph is still a physical object written onto with light. Digital images are images just the same and there is nothing worse about them than photographic images, but they are not photographs. If digital images can count as photographs because they can superficially resemble them, then photographs can count as paintings.

The fact that digital images are called photographs wouldn't bother me if it was just a matter of semantics, however, it's evidence that society did not and does not recognize what a radical innovation digital images are, and that is a sad thing.

If a digitally printed image is not a photograph then a Tesla is not a car.

--Darin

[Stephen Willard]

It hasn't been that simple in the last 150 years! The questions these curators are asking have been confounded by work that goes back at least that far.

Absolutely paulr, but as noted a camera can be anything that records a real world image using light. I had a friend in college who pulled her pants down for me and sat on a copier and then tripped the copy button. For me that qualifies as a real photograph, and I believe I still have that image. If I can find it, I will post it. It is quite lovely, although many would find it pornographic.

I remember reading about a doctor who bought one of those big 18 wheeler tractor tailors and drilled a small hole in the back door and hung a gigantic piece of photographic paper on the opposing wall. It was a giant mobile camera obscura. To my simple mind, that fits the definition of a photograph.

Anyway, I am just trying to have some simple fun with a question that is not that important:rolleyes:.

[paulr]

For me that qualifies as a real photograph...

Sounds like an awesome photograph.

Re: the word "indexical," it comes from semiotics, and describes one of the three basic ways a sign can point to the thing it signifies. An indexical sign is one that has a causal relationship with its referent. A photograph, unlike a painting, has in some sense been caused by the thing it describes.

Another example of an index is a fingerprint.

People debate how important indexicality is to photography. I see it as one of the only significant things that distinguishes it from other media.

When we debate if something is a photograph (like, after it's been painted on or photoshopped), I think terms of degree. How much of it is still photographic? I look at how much of the image still bears an indexical connection to its source. Manipulations that change color or tone, or that crop, distort, sharpen, or blur, don't seem to break this link. Airbrushing in a celebrity, or removing a political enemy ... different story.

A lot of the new work being done today pokes pretty hard at these limits. With this work, I don't think the question "is it a photograph" is the most interesting one. It matters to institutions who need to decide what budget pays for it, but I think these questions of taxonomy generally sort themselves out.

[paulr]

Some of the questions in that article apply to work that goes back a long way. I'm thinking of Steichen's multi-layered, hand-colored landscapes, Man Ray's photograms (the scanner work in questions sounds like part collage, part photogram), and all the elaborately constructed and retouched studio work from the 19th century.

Some of the most interesting work in question uses traditional photographic materials in non-photographic ways (as opposed to what we're most used to ... modern materials used in traditionally photographic ways).

[Rollinhofuji]

I fear this might be putting me in trouble again (as happened some years ago on APUG), but two friends of mine and I have "defined" (or rather occupied) the term "genuine photograph" several years ago.
It might not have been a good choice of the name. But we set up some kind of manifesto (yeah, really) and described what we think photography is about.
We did not say what photography is - we instead defined what we had called "Genuine Photography". The main reason for us was to be able to let the viewer distinguish between a photograph (let´s say as described by Stephen) and a photorealistic image.

I´d rather not go into the details, but in short, hell broke loose when we published our "manifesto"...
The main point for us was: Decisive moment vs. post-exposure alteration of the image "content" and so on.
Because we thought( and I still do) that it MAKES a difference whether the image is produced in a camera (either analog or digital) by opening a shutter, capturing light, and then processing the captured light somehow, or whether it is being created ina computer/darkroom/whatever by removing, adding, resizing, ... different PARTS of the original image.

Example: Gursky´s work mostly wouldn´t be a "genuine photograph" in our definition. Some of Man Ray´s work also. Definitely Cartier-Bresson´s work would be genuine photography.

Since we all are German, we noticed too late that the term "genuine" implied that everything else is not genuine, i.e. fake. OK, let´s face it, I think it IS. But anyway, we lost the battle ;-)

Perhaps Ulrich reads this, he probaly can explain it better than me...

[BetterSense]

If a digitally printed image is not a photograph then a Tesla is not a car.

--Darin

Thank you. I could not have asked for a better illustration of my point that society does not recognize that digital images represent a radical novelty and that digital imaging is not analogous to photography except that both can be a source of recognizable images. That you respond with an analogy is telling; analogies are destructive for understanding radical novelties, as the OP's article, and the fact that this photography/digital art confusion continues to drag on are evidence of this type of thought confusion.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD924.html

[Stephen Willard]

When we debate if something is a photograph (like, after it's been painted on or photoshopped), I think terms of degree. How much of it is still photographic? I look at how much of the image still bears an indexical connection to its source. Manipulations that change color or tone, or that crop, distort, sharpen, or blur, don't seem to break this link. Airbrushing in a celebrity, or removing a political enemy ... different story.


I would agree with this viewpoint, but I would be somewhat more restrictive allowing only light contrast or color contrast manipulations. To me it is no longer a photograph, but rather a computer fabrication once you add, subtract, or alter the form of any element in the original scene.

Personally I have nothing against digital imagery, but I am also a purist. I would love the definition of photography to be restricted solely to the craft of film and what happens in a darkroom. Everything else is either computer imagery or computer fabrications depending on the degree of computer manipulations applied. If you are afraid of the word "computer", then call it digital imagery or digital fabrications.

I leave you with one thought. It would be very doable to engineer a robotic machine to actually paint canvas. You could load it with paint brushes and a bunch of tubes of paint, and you would drive it with some software similar to photoshop that would allow you to draw, color, and control the brush strokes applied. With this type of technology you could replicate an infinite number of digitally derived paintings that are exactly the same. Should the resulting product be considered a painting in the traditional sense? Would the curators that accept digital imagery as photographs accept these digital paintings as real paintings? On a more primitive note, how about paint by numbers? Should they be considered real paintings? We could also make this argument just as easily with sculpturing as well.

For me it is very simple. Digitally derived art should have its own place and title. It is a very different media altogether....

[Drew Wiley]

Some of these flatlanders need to get a life.

[Drew Wiley]

I don't really care HOW it is done, one tool set versus another. I do care about the actual quality. And I also primarily identify photography with actually discovering something visually and somehow translating that specific moment in personal experience and time into a tangible record. Lardassography, the inevitable temptation in our digital age, is something I equate more to cheap painting by people too lazy to even mix pigments. But the damn gear doesn't know the difference, either way. I like the relatively seamless look of darkroom workflow, but have no prejudice against the alternative techniques, including hybrid. What I tend to mock is the gotta-have materialistic mentality of consumer electronics, which does such a good job of convincing people that creativity is synonymous with gadgetry, and the art academics that substance is synomymous with mere novelty. But nothing new there - that kind of mentality has plagued the art scene at least as long as I've been alive.

[jnantz]

There is nothing about a digital image that makes it a photograph. To me, a photograph is still a physical object written onto with light. Digital images are images just the same and there is nothing worse about them than photographic images, but they are not photographs. If digital images can count as photographs because they can superficially resemble them, then photographs can count as paintings.

The fact that digital images are called photographs wouldn't bother me if it was just a matter of semantics, however, it's evidence that society did not and does not recognize what a radical innovation digital images are, and that is a sad thing.

so, what are they not the same again ?
because one needs an electronic intermediary step to translate it to a physical object
and the other needs chemistry to do the same thing ?

[BetterSense]

so, what are they not the same again ?
because one needs an electronic intermediary step to translate it to a physical object
and the other needs chemistry to do the same thing ?

Yes, that is about it. Very simple. Does the distinction matter? That is a completely different question.

[Darin Boville]

Thank you. I could not have asked for a better illustration of my point that society does not recognize that digital images represent a radical novelty and that digital imaging is not analogous to photography except that both can be a source of recognizable images. That you respond with an analogy is telling; analogies are destructive for understanding radical novelties, as the OP's article, and the fact that this photography/digital art confusion continues to drag on are evidence of this type of thought confusion.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD924.html

So you link to an article on computer science, suggesting the situation is *analogous* to that in photography? Or are you suggesting that it is not an analogy but the exactly same situation in photography, and by extension, all other fields--that computers changed everything?

Note to mathematicians: don't follow the link. :)

In any event, Paulr has it exactly right (if I might paraphrase): Asking "what is a photograph?" is a perfectly legitimate question. It just isn't a particularly interesting question.

--Darin

[BetterSense]

So you link to an article on computer science, suggesting the situation is *analogous* to that in photography? Or are you suggesting that it is not an analogy but the exactly same situation in photography, and by extension, all other fields--that computers changed everything?

Well, both. But mostly the former, that in the same way society has not recognized the radical novelty of automatic computers and in fact call them by the same term once used for human calculators, it has not recognized the radical novelty of digital imaging and still thinks it's some advanced form of photography.

[Darin Boville]

Well, both. But mostly the former, that in the same way society has not recognized the radical novelty of automatic computers and in fact call them by the same term once used for human calculators, it has not recognized the radical novelty of digital imaging and still thinks it's some advanced form of photography.

Oh, I'm with you in general. But part of that reason is that the implications of the new technology are still largely just that. Only in the past ten years or so have computers, in terms of everyday lives, started to do things that weren't just really fast versions of what could be done before by hand. They (computers) are only now really integrating with our everyday lives--and we are only now starting to grabble with the sort of questions that result. What the future holds no one knows but it seems certain we are just at the beginning of something big, something radical.

Likewise with photography. Digital photography is now largely seen as simple as easier way to do photography. Easier to make and share. But more radical changes are coming, no doubt. Changes in out very conception of photography, deep down.

The only difference I perceive in our views is one of scale. Is all of this just the next step in a long evolution or is it really some weird, dichotomous break? Or maybe both--a sort of technological punctuated equilibrium?

--Darin

[Drew Wiley]

It's that very "integration" with our "daily lives" that I find so unappealing about the new digital era. I'd rather call it an "invasion" of our daily lives.

[Darin Boville]

It's that very "integration" with our "daily lives" that I find so unappealing about the new digital era. I'd rather call it an "invasion" of our daily lives.

If it is an invasion then the soldier's boots are still in the water, wading ashore. So much more to come...hope we can handle it!

--Darin

[Tin Can]

I agree, we have much to come technologically in every aspect of our lives, I am sure in just a few years, I am 63, I will be a sputtering old man cursing the tech gods to stop. Imaging will become something we may not even recognize. I contend imaging will invade our brains in both directions. The blind now see with digital cameras, hard wired to their bodies. More to come, news at 6.

Science will either save us or bury us. But the invasion stated a long time ago...




If it is an invasion then the soldier's boots are still in the water, wading ashore. So much more to come...hope we can handle it!

--Darin

[Maris Rusis]

Try this for an understanding of the identity of photography not so far explored in this thread:


Foundation Text: Photography

"Note on the use of Photography or the application
of the Chemical rays of light to the purpose of
pictorial representation,"

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6203/6108313024_771aa14e01_z.jpg
A facsimile fragment of the original manuscript in which the word "Photography" was first written down by the first man to say it:
Sir John Frederick William Herschel.

The venue was a meeting of the Royal Society at Somerset House in London on Thursday 14 March, 1839. Such meetings were a great social occasion where the glitterati of the day could meet famous figures of science and industry. The best part was a lavish banquet set for approximately 8.30 pm but before that lectures and presentations were on the agenda. The last presentation before the feast was by Sir John Herschel in which he presented the neologism “Photography” and displayed twenty three examples of photographs. It is not recorded how many of the attendees waiting for their dinner realised that they had heard "Photography" for the first time.

Subsequently it has not been recorded how many scholars have forgotten that a well formed neologism cannot, even in principle, be wrong or become wrong through the passage of time.

The only true photographs are made from light sensitive materials.

[Drew Wiley]

I dunno. I thought a camera and a telephone were two different things also. I'd sure like to have a "mute" button for a lot of photographs taken nowadays. But they can just erase them with a touch of a button. At least my pictures will have to be either burned or dumped. Guess that gives them tangible value.

[Darin Boville]

Try this for an understanding of the identity of photography not so far explored in this thread:


Foundation Text: Photography

"Note on the use of Photography or the application
of the Chemical rays of light to the purpose of
pictorial representation,"

[/B]

I apply the chemical rays of light for the purposes of pictorial representation every time I make an image with my digital camera. What do you do with yours?

--Darin

[jnantz]

Yes, that is about it. Very simple. Does the distinction matter? That is a completely different question.

i have to say it, but even with maris' long illegible quote from the person who said "photography"
and his quote ( maris' signature: "Photography:first utterance. Sir John Herschel, 14 March 1839 at the Royal Society. "...Photography or the application of the Chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation,..".
"

i don't understand the distinction ...

everything is a chemical reaction .. light on a sensor or light on silver nitrate/film-paper.

or is one a physics reaction and the other a chemical reaction ?
one creates a tangible thing and the other creates "somethnig" that later
creates a "something"

sorry for being so aloof

[BetterSense]

In one case you have a physical image and in the other you have encoded information. Do you not see the distinction between a physical object and an encoding of information? Do you think those are the same thing or even belong in the same category, e.g. that "piano" and "2683" are not only similar but the same thing altogether? I find it hard to believe that you do. I think it's more likely that you conceptualize mostly in terms of images, and the problem you are having is that of confusing the thing (image) with means of achieving or referencing the thing (photogragh, digital file, punched tape...). Photography and digital imaging are both imaging technologies, but the concept of image is different altogether. Although painting, engraving, photography, and various digital imaging technologies are all techniques that can be used to generate manipulated images, I do not understand how you could think that a photograph and a digital image could be the same thing, or even similar, or even analogous.

If you encode numerical data onto magnetic tape, flash memory or punch cards, you do not have a pbotograph, or even an image. If you print a digital file with an inkjet you get an image formed by ink on paper, notably not a photograph. If you print a digital file onto transparency and contact print that in a darkroom you do have a photograph. Indexicality has nothing to do with it; it's a simple question of medium. It not complicated at all.

[Leszek Vogt]

I respectfully disagree. It's a final image that matters and not the process...tho for some the process is essential too. One can easily simulate a piano with electronic gismo keyboard....and fine tune it to perfection and anyone will not be able to tell the difference. Yes, with compressors, expanders and processors all sorts of tonalities are possible to emulate. Oh, and I'm not making a comparison between a record or a CD (no way I'm dealing with this rabbit hole). Anyway, if the artist plays behind the curtain...does it matter what's being played (a real instrument or a machine gismo with keys) ? I'd say no, so long the tonalities hold up.

With photography it's similar. It's the image on the wall that speaks volumes (or it doesn't). It has nothing to do with ink jets, film holders, sensors, enlargers or electronic signal vs tangible negative. The photographer goes through the same decisive process of choosing the image. The end game pretty much requires that some manipulation of the image is necessary...even St Ansel tweaked his prints. Some people will adjust it minimally and others will do repugnant HDR on you (and others will do the in-between)....and both have a place on the wall.

Les

[dave clayton]

i read the first part and then it was blah blah blah art speak to justify why the person in question had done said work my exact thoughts on this are a string of expletives hate this nonsense art

[jnantz]

In one case you have a physical image and in the other you have encoded information. Do you not see the distinction between a physical object and an encoding of information? Do you think those are the same thing or even belong in the same category, e.g. that "piano" and "2683" are not only similar but the same thing altogether? I find it hard to believe that you do. I think it's more likely that you conceptualize mostly in terms of images, and the problem you are having is that of confusing the thing (image) with means of achieving or referencing the thing (photogragh, digital file, punched tape...). Photography and digital imaging are both imaging technologies, but the concept of image is different altogether. Although painting, engraving, photography, and various digital imaging technologies are all techniques that can be used to generate manipulated images, I do not understand how you could think that a photograph and a digital image could be the same thing, or even similar, or even analogous.

If you encode numerical data onto magnetic tape, flash memory or punch cards, you do not have a pbotograph, or even an image. If you print a digital file with an inkjet you get an image formed by ink on paper, notably not a photograph. If you print a digital file onto transparency and contact print that in a darkroom you do have a photograph. Indexicality has nothing to do with it; it's a simple question of medium. It not complicated at all.

i guess it just boils down to what one accepts as the same.
to me at least the latent image is an invisible / encoded image
that requires translation much like a digital image is encoded after
it strikes the sensor and it is the same ( kindasorta ) ..
but i can see how they are different and how others see it is different as well.

thanks for xplanaition

[Lenny Eiger]

I get so sick of this. It's all about the size of one's dick. Look, by the terms outlined here, half of you wouldn't agree that a platinum print is a photograph. It isn't even made with platinum, its an iron print that gets bonded to platinum in the development (and the iron drops out). Such a lowly metal as iron! Further, it doesn't use normal light, only responds to ultraviolet. How can that be a photograph?

If you are ok with platinum's what about gravure? Sure, there is some ultraviolet light thing that is used to create a gelatin that is used as a mask to etch a plate in acid, but this kind of print is made with ink on a press. Ink ! How dare they! Wait, isn't that ink just like the ink in inkjet? Not exactly, but very close.

Do you really want to say that gravure images, like most of the images in CameraWork, aren't photographs? We should dismiss people like Steichen and Strand? Our history?

It's a specious argument, not to mention divisive in a way that is totally unnecessary. It serves no purpose.

The original question is a good one, i would say that many people here are interested in images that move the viewers in an emotional way. Some are not. I think post-modernism is dead (at least I hope so). I don't think humans want to look at it. I think these things that the ICP is putting on is ridiculous. This is a good topic, what is the role of intellectual vs emotional content in an image. What do we want viewers to experience? To send us down into this muck and mire of digital printing vs darkroom printing again and again is depressing. Let's talk about something worth talking about, for chrissakes.

Lenny

[Tin Can]

+1.1

[BetterSense]

Do you really want to say that gravure images, like most of the images in CameraWork, aren't photographs?

Yes. Since I have no loyalty or emotional (or marketing) investment in particular media I am at liberty to call them like I see them.


We should dismiss people like Steichen and Strand? Our history?
Who is this "we"? Internet armchair critics? You dismiss all non-photographic art? Why? I do not share this opinion.

[Lenny Eiger]

You didn't read the post... and didn't understand it...

Lenny

[cowanw]

I thought this was interesting
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/jan/24/jessica-eaton-kaleidoscope-cubes

[cowanw]

Actually, Steiglitz thought gravures were better than Photographs. (and so, I suppose, not photographs)

[cowanw]

While the 20th century could be called the photographic century, my prediction for the 21st century, is that photographic departments will be merged with the graphic arts departments as a cost saving measure.

[Lenny Eiger]

I thought this was interesting
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/jan/24/jessica-eaton-kaleidoscope-cubes

If this worthless drivel is considered Photography, then you are certainly correct, there is no need for Photography as an art form, it is only graphics. I see no emotional content, and no intellectual content either.

There is nothing to learn here, just pictures of colored boxes. I'd say its a waste of time. I might contrast it from what one could learn from looking at a Lewis Hine image, Robert Frank, Caponigro, or Edweard Weston. Not to mention a Walker Evans portrait, or say, Dorothea Lange.

People in Photography, from the earliest history used it to speak about their life's experiences and share their unique view of the world with the rest of us. When they had something to say about life, they were recognized.

Finally, Steiglitz was a character. He was a genius in some ways, to be sure. He was also an ass. To say he was opinionated about things would be the understatement of the year. To suggest that he didn't consider photography printed in gravure is kind of ridiculous. All the images in CameraWork were printed with gravure. I am sure he considered his magazine a Photographic magazine. What he considered Photography (or not) should be of no consequence, it certainly changed with his every whim.

Lenny

[Corran]

There is nothing about a digital image that makes it a photograph.

It's this kind of asinine statement that gives film Luddites a bad rap.

If all you care about is the tools used to make an image, rather than the image itself, you are everything wrong with photography/art today.

[Drew Wiley]

Stieglitz mastered gravure because he wanted to bring fine photography to a wider audience, but wanted to do so at a very high level of quality. Subscriptions were
limited, and he probably wouldn't have wanted his own images defiled by today's web quality and promiscuous use, if he were still alive. Those old gravures are intensely collectible. But a bit of research shows that all kinds of high-quality reproduction processes have come and gone. One of them being revived is Woodburytype. I don't regard the method of making a print as the defining factor, but whether or not something actually existed in some discrete moment in light
and time that was seen, psychologically perceived, and registered in both the mind and a capture device. A lot of the tricks done in PS these days might be fine
for special effects in the movies or ads, but I don't equate them with photography because they're basically paintings (still or motion) apart from direct visual
experience. Not necessarily bad, but philosophically something else.

[Darin Boville]

And here is the (highly negative) New York Times review of that show:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/arts/design/what-is-a-photograph-opens-at-the-icp.html?src=dayp&_r=0

--Darin

[Tin Can]

And people wonder about my text symbol, which is primarily a conversation starter. I had so much fun with this 15 years ago...

109595




And here is the (highly negative) New York Times review of that show:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/arts/design/what-is-a-photograph-opens-at-the-icp.html?src=dayp&_r=0

--Darin

[Colin Robertson]

I shoot film, and I like silver prints. I know I'm making photographs.
I've seen Platinum, and that looked like photography to me.
I've seen paintings that mimicked photographs, which was pretty clever,
.http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/40-mind-blowing-photorealistic-paintings/
But they were paintings.
I don't shoot digital, because digital cameras are shit to use, and I don't really like inkjets. But then, I don't like Jazz and I can't stand Celery. Others disagree.
Suppose you look at an image on screen, or framed under glass.
You can't tell if it was Velvia 100 shot in a Nikon, or if it's a JPeg from a Fuji XE1. Both made by recording the reflected light that fell upon the subject. If one is a photograph so , surely, is the other.
How does anyone feel about Man Ray's photograms? In the interest of debate, I don't think they are photographs.

ps- What does post 31 mean???

[Maris Rusis]

It's this kind of asinine statement that gives film Luddites a bad rap.

If all you care about is the tools used to make an image, rather than the image itself, you are everything wrong with photography/art today.

I once tried an argument like that with someone who made platinotypes. "Hey, the image is the visible content and it doesn't matter how it got there. Inkjet is way cheaper."

The rejoinder was, "Maris, you're like the football fan who cares only about the final score: no interest in the game, the rules, the players, the play itself, or the peripheral commentary; just the final score. There ain't a football fan like that. The final score is deeply interesting only because of the way it came to be. The same with photographs. It is the process that confers inherent value. An image bare of history and intellectual context is to the eyes as chewing gum is to the teeth; engages but does not nourish".

That was a long time ago. I thought it was a persuasive piece of advice at the time.

[Tin Can]

Process is art.


I once tried an argument like that with someone who made platinotypes. "Hey, the image is the visible content and it doesn't matter how it got there. Inkjet is way cheaper."

The rejoinder was, "Maris, you're like the football fan who cares only about the final score: no interest in the game, the rules, the players, the play itself, or the peripheral commentary; just the final score. There ain't a football fan like that. The final score is deeply interesting only because of the way it came to be. The same with photographs. It is the process that confers inherent value. An image bare of history and intellectual context is to the eyes as chewing gum is to the teeth; engages but does not nourish".

That was a long time ago. I thought it was a persuasive piece of advice at the time.

[Darin Boville]

The final score is deeply interesting only because of the way it came to be.

Certainly of interest, but not central.


It is the process that confers inherent value.

Nonsense. The process, in almost all cases, offers very little in the way of "inherent value."


An image bare of history and intellectual context is to the eyes as chewing gum is to the teeth; engages but does not nourish".

There is something to that--but surely it is not the *process* that confers that history and intellectual context.

--Darin

[cowanw]

If this worthless drivel is considered Photography, then you are certainly correct, there is no need for Photography as an art form, it is only graphics. I see no emotional content, and no intellectual content either.
What I thought was interesting is that these images are by the most stringent definitions, Photographs. even by Maris's tight definition. Yet you have rejected them (no complaints from me for that).
I am thinking we will be discussing "what is a photograph" several lifetimes from now.

[Tin Can]

Art + artist = 1

Artist define art.

no rule

[jnantz]

How does anyone feel about Man Ray's photograms? In the interest of debate, I don't think they are photographs.

ps- What does post 31 mean???



how are they not photographic?
they are drawings made with light ...

[Corran]

I just can't agree with this. Photography isn't a sport. There isn't fans cheering you on in the darkroom and making bets on the sideline about whether you'll burn that highlight just right.

If it's "the process that confers inherent value," why is Gursky selling million-dollar inkjets? Why are my woefully under-priced silver prints getting accolades but not selling worth a damn at the gallery? Maybe because I'm an unknown crappy photographer, but wait! I made real silver prints in the darkroom! I have inherent value!

If all I cared about was making money with photography the film cameras and such would've been in the dumpster two years ago. It's absolute hogwash that one process is better than another - especially when we can silver print digitally too, even make alt. process prints with digital files! Wow, what a time to live in, and yet all this drivel about film being inherently better and having intrinsic value.

It's only the (film) photographers in my experience that have this anti-digital viewpoint. It's just another bit of one-upmanship. "Oh, you've got the newest Nikon DSLR? Well, I'VE got a 300mm f/4.5 Heliar!! So there!" "Pfft, you call that photography? It's just an inkjet, anyone can spit those out! Real photos are made with silver!!"


I once tried an argument like that with someone who made platinotypes. "Hey, the image is the visible content and it doesn't matter how it got there. Inkjet is way cheaper."

The rejoinder was, "Maris, you're like the football fan who cares only about the final score: no interest in the game, the rules, the players, the play itself, or the peripheral commentary; just the final score. There ain't a football fan like that. The final score is deeply interesting only because of the way it came to be. The same with photographs. It is the process that confers inherent value. An image bare of history and intellectual context is to the eyes as chewing gum is to the teeth; engages but does not nourish".

That was a long time ago. I thought it was a persuasive piece of advice at the time.

[BetterSense]

Double post

[BetterSense]

If all you care about is the tools used to make an image, rather than the image itself, you are everything wrong with photography/art today.

I believe this was directed at me which means my arguments are being taken out-of-scope. I make no statements whatsoever about what "matters". In this thread I have only made statements about taxonomy...what entities the word "photograph" should be applied to, and I stand by my opinion that a digital image is nothing like a photograph and should not be called such. To do so is to make the word meaningless, which in contemporary use, it very nearly is for this reason.

Unlike many defensive people here, I have no emotional investment in this. My identity is not tied up with the label "photographer". I am free to make images with any means available whether that be photography, digital imaging, painting, or electron microscopy, or whatever. Exactly the opposite of accusations against me, I do not think that process is supremely important in the visual arts; image is supreme and has been so even throughout the era of photography (craft is a different thing).

If you are a digital artist that makes images using ink on paper, that's what you are, and not a photographer. If this idea upsets you, maybe you need to think about your media and your identity and conceptualize your artistic goals and practices clearly and without unthinkingly and inappropriately adopting the language of photography, which is still happily practiced by many.

[Corran]

Maybe I took it out of scope but in my opinion your hard-line argument that digital images printed in ink is not photography is even worse.

I can not even conceptualize how someone could be so arrogant as to deem an image taken with a camera that captures light onto a digital sensor rather than silver, and printed on light-reflecting ink, as not photography. And please note, I say this as someone who doesn't even LIKE inkjet printing!

I think you need to think about your media and what makes light-sensitive particles different than light-sensitive sensors, and light-reflecting ink. This is literally the same BS argument that painters made about photography back in the early days of the art, except now the purist film photographers have become the aggressors against the new medium! How ridiculous.

To be completely honest, I sometimes think about leaving film simply due to the arrogant, self-aggrandizing attitude of many film photographers. I don't even want to be associated to people who say these thinks like above. It is disgraceful, and wrong. It is only on forums like these that I read such tripe and I am pretty passionate about pointing this out.

[BetterSense]

how someone could be so arrogant as to deem...

How could arrogance have anything to do with it...I make observations and formulate statements. Do you consider a statement arrogant if you don't agree with it?


This is literally the same BS argument that painters made about photography back in the early days of the art

Quite wrong. People were smart enough that they recognized the radical novelty of photography and recognized that it was a new and different medium. And they did the race a favor in giving it a name of its own, and not trying to argue that "it's the same thing altogether as painting...after all both make visible images and only image matters". And the early photographers were not so dishonest as to call themselves painters and label their work as paintings, even as the pictorialists labored to mimic paintings. Would that our contemporary digital artists were so scrupulous!

[Corran]

What a specious argument. Painting is fundamentally different than photography, that is obvious. Photography is photography, whether you use film or digital sensor.

There's clearly no reason to continue here but I will stick by what I said. I believe that your opinion and stance is completely arrogant and ridiculous. You think that your chosen medium is "better," for no other reason than it uses chemicals rather than computers.

Further, some of our older brethren should take note at the young artists taking advantage of any and all mediums/tools at their disposal. At the university, we have lively discussions about art and the current state of things, and not once do we actually have an argument like this. No one is a die-hard film or digital evangelist. Everyone uses both to achieve their vision as they see it.

[Darin Boville]

BetteSense,

You hold a very firm line on what is and what is not photography. Tell me why the name matters. I'd like to know what we are arguing about--and if there is anything at stake. :)

--Darin

[BetterSense]

BetteSense,
You hold a very firm line on what is and what is not photography. Tell me why the name matters. I'd like to know what we are arguing about--and if there is anything at stake. :)

--Darin

I have repeatedly said that whether the distinction matters is a separate discussion from the technical, taxonomic issue of what things should be called photographs. I'm not eager to tackle the former and will leave it to the artists. I'm becoming disappointed that we can't even seem to make this distinction in this venue. I would have expected a more developed capability to discuss semiotics from a group whose art and craft is symbols.

The latter language issue is interesting to me because fuzzy language is evidence of fuzzy thinking. The misapplication of the term is evidence that society is laboring under the gross conceptual failure of thinking that digital imaging is some form of photography and not something much more. Rather that being photography, digital imaging is an alternative to it for many purposes. And to paraphrase EWD in the essay I posted earlier, the benefit of conceptualizing the new technology as an alternative, is that alternatives are allowed to be better.

[Corran]

The technical, taxonomic truth is that film and digital imaging are fundamentally the same - that is the crux of the problem here. Again, whether it's chemicals or a computer is irrelevant.

Two images made at the same moment, one with film and one with digital, will for the most part be identical. There will of course be differences - but not of the magnitude you imply. And the fact that a film photo can be scanned and printed via inkjet, or a digital image projected and printed on silver, proves their intertwined nature. The "image" as we see it is a moving target. We use what we need to achieve that goal.

For instance - in the show I have coming up, all of my b&w images will be silver prints. All of the color work will be ink, but shot on film and scanned. This is a necessity as I have neither the tools or knowledge to print color at this time, and I think even our most staunch film shooters will agree that color darkroom prints are just about extinct. Anyway, if you were to come up to me and complain that I called the ink prints "photography" and not "graphic art" or some BS I'd have quite a few words for you.

[BetterSense]

Painting is fundamentally different than photography, that is obvious. Photography is photography, whether you use film or digital sensor.

You are switching the terms from "paintings (n.) and "photographs" to "painting (v.)" and "photography". More semantic confusion. We can't even agree on what we are discussing, so I'm about done here. It has been fun.

The conclusion that a digital image is a photograph is obvious but incorrect. An incorrect conclusion reached by grouping things on the superficial level rather than the fundamental (i.e. by what something looks like rather than by what it is). It's incorrectness becomes obvious for digital images that do not resemble photographs, of which there are infinitude. FWIW, I would group a PRINTED digital image as more like a painting; it is an assembled image, no matter the tools ised or how automated they may be.

[BetterSense]

Two images made at the same moment, one with film and one with digital, will for the most part be identical.*

They may lookidentical and they may both solve similar problems and there may exist devices that can make either one with a similar button-pressing motion, but they will not be identical things, or even similar things, or even analogous things. If you do not or cannot make that distinction between how something looks, how it may be utilized, or how the process by which it is achieved, and what it actually is, even between thing so categorically different as photographs and encoded information, then you are semiotically and ontologically confused, and you are in good company.

Society seems to be using a working definition of "I can't define a photograph, but I know one when I see it". An image is called a photograph if it looks (or is made like, or is employed like) a photograph; a totally circular definition.

[Darin Boville]

They may lookidentical and they may both solve similar problems and there may exist devices that can make either one with a similar button-pressing motion, but they will not be identical things, or even similar things, or even analogous things. If you do not or cannot make that distinction between how something looks, how it may be utilized, or how the process by which it is achieved, and what it actually is, even between thing so categorically different as photographs and encoded information, then you are semiotically and ontologically confused, and you are in good company.

BetterSense, I think you *need* to make the case as to the "distinction between how something looks, how it may be utilized, or how the process by which it is achieved, and what it actually is, even between thing so categorically different as photographs and encoded information."

Everyone knows that you can make such a distinction. You can make different distinctions depending upon your goals and the context of the discussion. But your argument, no matter how confused you think the rest of the world might be, will gain no traction until you stop the hand waving and make your case as to why *your* distinction matters. Otherwise you are merely making a distinction without a difference--a bit of logical confusion that takes this discussion nowhere.

--Darin

[Corran]

Incorrect sir. A photograph is an image made by capturing light onto a light-sensitive medium, and projecting that image back via paper or similar. Whatever was done in the intermediary is irrelevant. One might call something so far gone that it is unrecognizable as the original "graphic art" or maybe "mixed media" but otherwise it is a photograph.

No one is confused here, trust me. As for switching nouns/verbs, I use them interchangeably because a photographer is one who takes photographs. If you think I'm not a photographer anymore when I pick up a digital camera, you are sorely mistaken. And therein lies another truth. The method of capture is identical for the most part. The fact that you continue to propose that using a camera and lens, capturing light via silver or sensor, and finally putting said image on paper with ink or otherwise, is fundamentally different, tells me that you are stubbornly clinging to an old-fashioned ideal that has no rational reason for being. No one in the art academic community that I routinely talk to thinks this way, and neither do any of the artists who routinely fill our gallery. It is simply wrong.

Also, Darin is correct. Respond to him, not me, because this is getting out of hand.

[BetterSense]

But your argument, no matter how confused you think the rest of the world might be, will gain no traction until you stop the hand waving and make your case as to why *your* distinction matters.

Perhaps it doesn't. As the OP illustrates, though, people are asking this question; I didn't raise this issue all by myself.



. A photograph is an image made by capturing light onto a light-sensitive medium

See, here is an apparently reasonable definition formulated in term of "capturing light". I used to use it myself until I realized how many problems there are with it.

[Corran]

Enumerate them then. Enlighten us.

[Wayne Lambert]

To me a photograph is a sheet of paper upon which there is an image produced by the interaction of light with a layer of light-sensitive chemicals. What many of us are calling a photograph today is a sheet of paper upon which ink has been sprayed to make an image. I'm a little troubled by calling the latter a photograph because it goes against our traditional understanding of what a photograph is and thereby confuses terminology. That said, I like the latter type of prints, and I think they can be beautiful. (And oftentimes images produced by the two different methods are virtually indistinguishable to the naked eye.) Most of us, I believe, want and expect the photographic universe to be their home.

It seems to me what we need is a term which means "image captured by means of light-sensitive chemicals or electronic sensor and reproduced by spraying ink onto paper." Anyone up to working that out in Greek or Latin roots?

Wayne

[BetterSense]

Here is a term I came up with composed from Greek and Latin roots routed through French:

"Inkjet"

[jnantz]

i think it is the difference between a platinum over cyanotype gum print
and one that is called that and made with PS and a digital file and either printed with ink or as a digital c print ...
on the surface they are the same ( they have the same visual qualities ) but deeper down they are not quite the same ...
10 years ago starbucks had a series of digital images of coffee, coffee processes and paraphernalia that were
meant to look like gum over platinum prints on glass, but in the end they were elaborate digital images meant to look antiquated ..
i agree bettersense while digital images look like photographs, they aren't the same as a chemical photograph.

[Wayne Lambert]

BetterSense, "inkjet" is close, but we need some root that implies the image was captured by a light-sensing process, chemical or electronic. Paintings can be reproduced by the inkjet process and that image on paper would also be called an "inkjet." "Photoinkjet" might work in the way "photogravure" worked for intaglio printing, but I'm sure we all know that the time to introduce a new term is long passed. (And with oink embedded in photoinkjet, let's don't even go there...)

Wayne

[Corran]

I'm a little troubled by calling the latter a photograph because it goes against our traditional understanding of what a photograph is and thereby confuses terminology.

Please explain what "our traditional understanding" is when it comes to a photograph.

I continue to be amazed that I can make a photograph by shooting film, and printing it in the darkroom, but suddenly it's not a photograph if I scan and print it via inkjet. What about Lightjet then? It's the same thing - push a button and out pops a silver gelatin print. But it's somehow different than ink?

At the end of the day, you are seeing a representation of light captured at a moment in time, and then represented on paper and seen by light bouncing off the paper. You can argue all you want about scanned fragments stitched together and the like (hmm, sounds like a photogram...), but that's irrelevant to the core argument, that somehow ink isn't photography. No one has made a cohesive argument to that end - it's all just "it's not photography because I don't like it!"

[Wayne Lambert]

Corran, I said "traditional understanding" because most photographers for over a century have presented their images in the form of a light-sensitive coating on a sheet of paper (mainly albumen and gelatin-silver, some platinum, etc.).

And, personally, I would call the Lightjet print a photograph---the image on that physical object was created by the interaction of light with a layer of light-sensitive chemicals coated onto the paper.

Wayne

[BetterSense]

I continue to be amazed that I can make a photograph by shooting film, and printing it in the darkroom, but suddenly it's not a photograph if I scan and print it via inkjet.

You are easily amazed. The scan-and-inkjet is a reproduction of your photograph. You can reproduce a photographic image using any imaging technology.



What about Lightjet then? It's the same thing - push a button and out pops a silver gelatin print. But it's somehow different than ink?

Yes, ink is not the same thing as gelatin. I'm glad we are clearing this all up.



At the end of the day, you are seeing a representation of light captured at a moment in time

No; there is a core difference.

When you view a digitally generated image that is displayed through non-photographic means (inkjet, HDTV, etc), you MAY be viewing a representation of light captured at a moment in time, if that image is a reproduction of a photographic image (remember, digital images can have any content whatsoever...you are looming at one now).

When you view a photograph, what you are viewing IS light captured at a moment in time.

[Corran]

Personally I think the only people clinging to these absurd notions are old fogeys who can't accept the advancement of technology. There is nothing that makes a digital image printed with ink different than light-sensitive chemicals on paper!

Wayne, what was standard for "over a century" has absolutely no bearing whatsoever to the discussion. Duh, digital imaging wasn't invented until recently!

Neither of you continue to answer why light-sensitive chemicals is somehow different than ink, when it comes to the final product and what it is called. BetterSense continues to throw out absurd notions like scans being a "reproduction" of a photographic image. And following that up with a comparison of an inkjet to a computer monitor! Wow, your leaps of logic continue to astound.

The definition of what is a photograph has nothing to do with the medium used to capture/print it.

Debate all you want about digital photograms or montages or whatever, but an image captured with a digital camera, edited as one could or would with normal tools available in a darkroom, and printed to ink is and forever will be a photograph. You can't change this immutable fact. You can rage against technological advancement all you want, but trying to define what I or anyone else does as "not photography" because of the medium used to create or display the final work is absurd, ridiculous, and arrogant to the extreme. Neither of you (or I) get to change the obvious relationship between a camera, a print, and ultimately a photograph.

[rbultman]

Sorry for not reading every entry, but did BetterSense provide a definition of photograph? I saw many examples of what is not a photograph. Which of the below qualifies as a photograph? The "thing" to be judged or not judged as a photograph is the final piece of paper containing the visible image.

1) Use a camera to expose photographic negative film. Develop the film. Use an enlarger (or contact printer) and a light source to expose photographic paper using the negative as the 'subject'. Develop the paper.
2) Use a camera to expose photographic negative film. Develop the film. Scan the film, which results in a digital image of the negative. Use an inkjet printer to print the digital image onto paper.
3) Use a camera to expose photographic negative film. Develop the film. Scan the film, which results in a digital image of the negative. Use an inkjet printer to print the digital image onto acetate or other clear (or translucent) medium capable of hold ink. Use an enlarger (or contact printer) and a light source to expose photographic paper using the inkjet print as the 'subject'. Develop the paper.
4) Use a camera to expose photographic negative film. Develop the film. Scan the film, which results in a digital image of the negative. Use a laser to expose photographic paper using the digital image as the subject. Develop the paper.
5) Same as 2 but use a digital camera to create the digital image.
6) Same as 3 but use a digital camera to create the digital image.
7) Same as 4 but use a digital camera to create the digital image.
8) A positive transparency, aka a slide. (I realize that this is not a piece of paper but am curious if this could be considered a photograph.)
9) Expose positive photographic film using a camera. Develop the film. Use a camera to create an "interneg" on photographic negative film. Develop the film. Use an enlarger to expose photographic paper. Develop the paper.

I'm sure there many other combinations of techniques that could be listed. I hope that at least one is a photograph. I'd like to know what the names are for the rest so that I can communicate accurately.

If someone using a digital camera is a digital artist, what is someone that uses (1) above called? Are they an analog artist? An artist? A negative-negative-light-and-chemicals artist? A photographic artist? An artist that uses photographic methods to create are?

Thanks for the help
-Rob

[rbultman]

Neither of you continue to answer why light-sensitive chemicals is somehow different than ink, when it comes to the final product and what it is called. BetterSense continues to throw out absurd notions like scans being a "reproduction" of a photographic image.

Then only exposing positive paper in a camera qualifies as a photograph. Everything else is not a photograph, even those images on paper that were created using what some might call optical printing of a photographic negative as the paper is a copy of the negative, albeit reversed. All of the photographic prints made by Ansel Adams are worthless as they are only reproductions. Hmm.

[Darin Boville]

We're just playing word games here, folks. The basic question is "what is the essence of a photograph?". A few people take the word "photograph" and say that a photograph is, quite literally, "light writing." All that matters is whether the piece of paper in your hand was created by light hitting it, light itself forming the image. It does *not* matter if there was a negative or whether that negative was made in a camera. All that matters is the essence of the final print.

Then you can argue forever with others about whether their conception of a photograph matches the definition that you have decided upon. You can talk about all kinds of oddball cases where what you think is *not* a photograph by this definition actually is (photos printed by laser, photos printed via projection of LCD images, etc). You can rile everyone up who doesn't get the rules of the game and just keep repeating your definition and your example which are all sort of internally consistent.

But it all falls apart if you don't start with that specific definition of a photograph. It falls apart even worse if you don't allow a *specific* definition but allow the word to evolve.

It's just a game. Not a especially interesting game but some people like to play.

What *is* interesting, I think, coming off this discussion but not really directly addressed (despite a few direct invitations) is the idea that what we have now--photographs produced digitally--are not what we had before for a deep reason, not quite yet revealed to history.

Think of a typewriter. It prints words on paper. As time went on they got better and they changed--the keys got easier to press (electric), you could change fonts, other features were added but it was still a typewriter. Even when you were typing while looking at a tiny LCD screen and the poor printer was trying to catch up to your typing, and even when it could memorize text it was still a typewriter.

That's our chemical photograph.

Then something funny happened to the typewriter. Small computers were invented and along came word processors. At first that's all the small computers were used for. They were just fancy typewriters. You could do things more readily than with a typewriter--you could delete more cleanly, you could format more easily, you could save documents and reopen them, but you still printed them out, filed them in metal boxes or mailed them through the post office. It wasn't called a typewriter--no one thought it was--but it performed the same basic functions and served the same basics needs, all for the same basic purposes.

That's where we are now with the digital photograph.

But then as time went on things started happening with our typewriter/word processor. They came out with an index card program--stuff you could do on any typewriter--but it had this cool feature that certain words and phrases on the index card, if you clicked on them, would take you to another card. Nothing you couldn't do at home, but now collections of documents were working together as a single thing. You could do it at home with paper cards but it would be really hard. Next thing you know the you could go to a scholarly article in a special program and the references and other interesting phrases in that article had similar links. Even though all these separate documents were kept on separate computers at great physical distances it *seemed* that it was all one document, residing on your own computer.

Still stuff that could basically be accomplished with typewriters and paper (but increasingly impratical in physical terms) but we're crossing some sort of boundary here, some sort of deep conceptual change.

That's still to come in photography. The problem for definition makers is that photography isn't offering a a sharp technological break with chemical photography. It's a messy, evolving thing. Nor, upon reflection, did photography really offer a clean definition in the past from with which to break. Makes for all kinds of endless, looping, discussions on Internet forums.

The bottom line as I see it is that photography is still photography, we do it a little differently, we can share it more easily, but it is still the same functions, serves basically the same needs, for basically the same purposes. But that won't last all that much longer--computerization of photography means more than just doing more quickly, more easily, and more cheaply. What will happen is anyone's guess but whatever will happen is already happening now.

--Darin

[Erik Larsen]

IMO, it doesn't matter much what the final artwork hanging on the wall is called. People get hung up on how to categorize an image which might have validity for collectors or museums who need to identify a process, but for most folks it's just an image, art or decoration.

However, I do believe that what constitutes a photographic print is fairly well defined. It is my understanding (maybe mistakenly) that a photographic print is
one that has been "drawn with light". This can be an optical print, contact print, light jet print made from a digital file or any of the numerous ways light can make an image. Anyone who uses a camera, analogue or digital is creating a photograph because light is being used to create the image, but a photographic print as the final outcome must be created with light to be considered a photographic print. A gravure is not a photograph, but a reproduction of a photograph same as a woodburytype or collotype or inkjet print. Does it matter one bit, not really - but words do have a meaning even if we can generalize the definition to mean many things that are sometimes at odds with the original meaning. Of course, this is just my opinion of the meaning of "photograph" and obviously others think differently which is fine by me - life would be boring if we all agreed...

[Lenny Eiger]

I'm getting tired of this. I think its time to call it what it is. The underlying truth is that the folks here that are suggesting we need some kind of word that describes only prints made in a darkroom are nasty, self-serving and small.

The truth is that there are a lot of photographers here, who work in all sorts of mediums. Over the years there always have been. To suggest that a Stieglitz photograph isn't a photograph because it was printed in gravure, or gum over platinum (OMG the gum had watercolor pigment in it) is just plain ignorant. Further, it's insulting to everyone here who doesn't do it exactly like they do.

A photographer is someone who captures mostly still images in some way, creates an object of some sort and calls it photography. If it isn't a broad definition, then there is no space to grow.

The truth is that I didn't leave the darkroom prints behind because I couldn't deal with it somehow. I left darkroom prints because they weren't good enough. The platinum prints I made over the years were far superior to anything that one could make on some fiber paper coated with some goo by some manufacturer, all of whom had a different idea of what prints should look like than I did. My inkjet prints also have far more range than any darkroom print, I can make them look exactly like a platinum print, and I do, often. And no, it is not easy, not any easier than doing it any other way.

I like my style of printing. However, I recognize and appreciate excellence where I find it, and some people can make exquisitely beautiful darkroom prints. I made lots of them in my time. I'm not going to sit here and say their work is crap. But that's the implication under this discussion. There are darkroom prints that are "the top" and then there are these other things that are somehow "lesser".

I understand we are all competing for wall space in the galleries and museums. Putting other people down to make yourself look better doesn't work.

This is truly dumb, offensive, and nasty. Everyone is being kind of polite about it, but this has gone one for 9 pages now. You guys need to learn to appreciate the experts around you. There are a lot of good people here and they don't deserve your acerbic attitudes.

Lenny

[Erik Larsen]

Wow Lenny, that is kind of harsh! I hope your rant wasnt aimed at me. I must admit I haven't read the whole thread, but nowhere did I imply that one process is better than another, my only point was that words have meanings.

[Lenny Eiger]

Wow Lenny, that is kind of harsh! I hope your rant wasnt aimed at me.


Erik, no it wasn't directed at you. However, this is the biggest bunch of crap I have heard in a while. A photograph is a thing made by photographers. I would heartily disagree with you that a gravure is not a photograph. I have one hanging on my wall, by Clarence White, from 1910. It is one of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen, and it continues to move me every time my eyes glance upon it. For me, it is a "source" image, it brings me back to the source of the work I am doing, reminds one of who I am at my best, and where I came from.

To suggest that anyone's work, especially people who put their heart into it, who try to do something meaningful, is not photographic is offensive. This week I did some scans for someone who will make large negatives of them and print in platinum. He's a good photographer, the work is exquisite and he's pretty well known. I'm proud to be associated with him. You want to tell him his work isn't photography?

I certainly don't.

Lenny

[dsphotog]

I think an inkjet print is closer to a painting than it is to a silver print.
He says, while ducking for cover.... Wink.

[Erik Larsen]

Erik, no it wasn't directed at you. However, this is the biggest bunch of crap I have heard in a while. A photograph is a thing made by photographers. I would heartily disagree with you that a gravure is not a photograph. I have one hanging on my wall, by Clarence White, from 1910. It is one of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen, and it continues to move me every time my eyes glance upon it. For me, it is a "source" image, it brings me back to the source of the work I am doing, reminds one of who I am at my best, and where I came from.

To suggest that anyone's work, especially people who put their heart into it, who try to do something meaningful, is not photographic is offensive. This week I did some scans for someone who will make large negatives of them and print in platinum. He's a good photographer, the work is exquisite and he's pretty well known. I'm proud to be associated with him. You want to tell him his work isn't photography?

I certainly don't.

Lenny

Lenny, I think you misunderstood what I was trying to convey. Of course I believe anyone who uses a camera is a photographer, after all they are using light to make an image either on a light sensitive emulsion or a digital sensor. My point was that IMO for the final product to be considered a "photographic print" it must have been exposed with light whether that be a plate burner as in your clients platinum process, an enlarger, the sun etc. I would call the print you have from Clarence White a gravure print, your clients platinum I would call a photograph as it was exposed by light. IMO all prints are derived from photographs, but not all prints are photographs-that was the point I was trying to make. One process of making a final print is not inherently better than another, that's for each individual to decide what works best for their vision. It matters not to me what people label their prints - I'm just expressing one mans opinion on the subject, if you think I'm full of crap, I'll just have to learn to live with it:)

[Wayne Lambert]

Lenny, I would not say he is not a photographer. If at the beginning of the process the image was captured using light-sensitive materials (chemical or electronic) he is a photographer and his work is photography (as opposed for example, to his image being hand-drawn). What I am interested in is what we call the final product. I believe definitions are important for clear communication. I feel certain that a photo historian would distinguish between a photograph and a photogravure, probably not call both of them photographs, and I believe doing so facilitates academic, exhibition, and technical communication. That's what I'm about here; I have not entered into this discussion as a means to make one product seem inferior to another.

Wayne

[Wayne Lambert]

Contrary to appearances, Erik and I did not confer before writing our most recent submissions. Nor am I here going to include great minds. And alike in the same sentence.

Wayne

[Lenny Eiger]

Lenny, I think you misunderstood what I was trying to convey. Of course I believe anyone who uses a camera is a photographer, after all they are using light to make an image either on a light sensitive emulsion or a digital sensor. My point was that IMO for the final product to be considered a "photographic print" it must have been exposed with light whether that be a plate burner as in your clients platinum process, an enlarger, the sun etc. I would call the print you have from Clarence White a gravure print, your clients platinum I would call a photograph as it was exposed by light. IMO all prints are derived from photographs, but not all prints are photographs-that was the point I was trying to make. One process of making a final print is not inherently better than another, that's for each individual to decide what works best for their vision. It matters not to me what people label their prints - I'm just expressing one mans opinion on the subject, if you think I'm full of crap, I'll just have to learn to live with it:)

Erik, first of all, my comments were directed at people who posted before you.

I do believe you are incorrect about this, and that in general, its a specious argument. You and the others are coming very late to this party - and wanting to initiate some kind of rule. Photography began 2 years shy of 2 centuries ago (as far as the historians can tell). Herschel, the fellow who came up with sodium thiosulfate as a fixer, came up with a couple of dozen light sensitive substances. This drawing of the line at something invented quite a bit later, as in pre-coated darkroom paper, because its convenient, is utter foolishness. Most of those older photographers would sneer at its lack of range, awful surface, etc. Some would love it, of course.

What about hand-colored darkroom prints? Are they photographs? By your definition they can't be. Part of the image was painted on, not acted on by light at all. You probably don't care much for Henry Peach Robinson (and neither do I) but there were a lot of people doing this with Marshall's Photo Oils in the 70's and 80's. They certainly thought they were photographers, making photographs.

The resist on a gravure plate is exposed with light. If people are drawing with light, by whatever means, I am happy to call them photographs. If people draw on a plate, or scratch it, they seem to be happy to call them etchings. The rest of the world is not confused. They do understand the difference between a still image and a movie, or a street performance. There are some new things where photographs are still but they move just a bit. It's actually kind of cool. I think it has possibilities. Should I tell those people to stop, that they aren't photographers?

If the distinction of print types had a purpose I might agree. But it does not. To suggest that gravures and platinum's and salt prints or daguerrotypes, woodburytypes, cyanotypes, carbon tissue, tintypes, etc. etc., don't belong is just ignorance. I say you and the others that would contend this don't have the right to say so. You didn't invent this, you don't hold the patent. And you are coming to this party 200 years late with a meaningless and divisive rule.

I say instead of making everyone wrong who isn't doing it your way, that these distinctions are useless, misused by all sorts of art industry types and curators and that the only way past it all to any sense of community is to have a very wide definition that can include everyone, certainly every serious artist.

Lenny

[sanking]

"I believe definitions are important for clear communication. I feel certain that a photo historian would distinguish between a photograph and a photogravure, probably not call both of them photographs, and I believe doing so facilitates academic, exhibition, and technical communication."

A photo historian, assuming process relevant, would indicate what kind of photographic print it was, i.e. salted paper, albumen, silver gelatin, gum bichromate, carbon, gravure, chemigram, collotype, uranium, platinum, etc. etc. The term photograph would not be used to identify any specific process, except in the most generic sense, in which case the print/photograph could be one made with an inkjet printer, or one made by hand by the greatest platinum printer in the world.

Sandy

[cowanw]

Post deleted

decided to leave be

[BetterSense]

To suggest that anyone's work, especially people who put their heart into it, who try to do something meaningful, is not photographic is offensive.

I am sorry if I offended you or anyone else. I had no idea that people could be so emotionally invested in a medium (or their own idea of a medium) that they would be offended at the idea of working in a different one. I really did not think it was possible to offend someone in this way.

[BetterSense]

Which of the below qualifies as a photograph? The "thing" to be judged or not judged as a photograph is the final piece of paper containing the visible image.

I wonder if you are trolling me here, because your examples are very straightforward. There are some arguable grey areas, but none of your examples are.

1) photograph (projection print onto photographic paper)
2) inkjet print (that's what it is...)
3) photograph (contact print onto photographic paper)
4) photograph (lightjet print)
5) inkjet print (identical to 2)
6) photograph (identical to 3)
7) photograph (identical to 4)
8) photograph (positive slide exposed in-camera...doesn't get more photograph-y than that)
9) photograph (projection print onto photographic paper)


If someone using a digital camera is a digital artist, what is someone that uses (1) above called?
A "photographer". There is no exclusivity; one can work in multiple media; as radical as that idea seems to be on this board.


A photographic artist?
A much stickier assertion!

[Erik Larsen]

Lenny, thanks for sharing your disagreements with me. I'm not trying to be argumentative and define my own rules as you suggest. It's just an opinion I hold of what to me constitutes a photographic print vs say a gravure or Woodbury print. Of course I believe as I said previously that all of the various processes you cited are made by photographers and I never suggested they aren't photographers or should name themselves something else. My point is that some of the finished products produced by these photographers IMO are not photographic prints because light was not used to make them, that's all I'm saying. Platinum, carbon, dags, salt prints and any other process that uses light for exposure IMO ARE photographic prints - bromoil, woodburytype, inkjet etc are something different. They are derived from photographs (sensor, negative, etc) but are their own unique print type. I don't hold one process above the other as you imply, I just believe there are differences between them. Now At the risk repeating myself I shall bow out of this discussion, I understand and respect your point of view and I hope you understand and respect how I have formed my opinion.
Regards,
Erik

[Corran]

"Inkjet print" - that is a term that defines the medium in which the print is made
"Silver gelatin print" - that is also a term that defines the medium in which the print is made

"Photograph" - Any representation of the physical world through the capture of light - regardless of medium

Is it really that hard to understand?

"Photography" is a genre. "Inkjet" is a medium, as is "silver gelatin," "platinum," etc. Calling an inkjet not a photograph is like calling a watercolor not a painting. Sure, we call things "watercolors" and not just "painting" but what you are suggesting is greater than that - a complete divorce of the term "photograph" unless it just so happens to use light-sensitive chemicals for the final print. I defer to Lenny and Sandy with regard to the offensiveness of this belief.

[BetterSense]

I see your point about falsely pairing up "photograph" (a term describing many media) with "inkjet" (a specific medium). If I was at liberty, I would have called 1) a photograph and 2) a painting. But that could have started an entire thread about why an inkjet is or is not a painting.


"Photograph" - Any representation of the physical world through the capture of light - regardless of medium

That's a reasonable definition; I can respect that. I personally don't think it's satisfactory. I don't think that something has to "be a representation of the physical world" to be a photograph--I'm not even sure what that means; it's entirely up for interpretation. Again, we are back to "I know it when I see it...it's a photograph if it looks like a photograph" etc. And I don't know what you mean by "capture of light" either. When a painter looks at a scene and paints an interpretation of it, is he not capturing the light? I just don't know if it's a meaningful basis for any definition.

[Corran]

I won't take up the argument about inkjet being a painting, but I am reasonably sure a whole contingent of painters would. But come on, let's be reasonable - an inkjet clearly isn't a painting by any stretch of the imagination.

The specific definition of what a photograph is, is not for me to say. I put forth a simple idea that works for my purposes, but things are always in motion. But a "representation" allows room for manipulation (remember Uelsmann?), and "physical world" is anything we can point a camera or imaging device at. Where that line is drawn, who is to say? That is the point of the show referenced at the beginning of this thread, no? As for capturing light - that should be clear. A painter paints with whatever media, but while he might put down on the canvas a representation of the light, he doesn't physically capture photons as we do.

[BetterSense]

The inkjet print doesn't have any captured photons in it. It's just paint/ink on a surface.

In inkjet printing, which is sometimes (but not always*) used to reproduce photographic images, a digital sensor "physically captures" (I would say "detects") photons, which are then interpreted as an image, and that interpretation is painted onto paper. This is painting. The only difference between an inkjet print and and a manual painting is degree of automation. The inkjet print is not a photograph.

*cat /dev/urandom | head > lpr

[Corran]

When I said capturing photons, I was talking about the capture of the photograph. By your own definition, it is then a photograph. What medium it is printed with has no relevance at all. A photograph, suddenly is not a photograph? This is the crux of the problem. You are putting the medium above the genre. This makes no sense whatsoever.

Again, not going to argue inkjet as painting. Sure, start a thread, should be fun to watch.

[BetterSense]

When I said capturing photons, I was talking about the capture of the photograph.

Do you mean capture of the image, either with the eyes or with sensors? If so then we are really out in left field, and you would define every still-life or portrait, or other painting based on observation, ever painted to be a photograph. That's why it's not profitable to form your definition of a photograph on anything BUT the final medium, where the definition is fairly straightforward. What medium the image is printed on what creates the category/genre.

[Corran]

Of course not, obviously I was talking about the creation of the image on film or from a digital sensor.

I believe you are way out in left field. Yes the medium is straight-forward, as is the genre to most of us. Silver print, inkjet, platinum, gum, they are all photographs. Do you have a tenable argument to suggest otherwise?


What medium the image is printed on what creates the category/genre.

Since when?

[sanking]

The creators of the medium, Niepce and Talbot, themselves failed to describe the true character of photography, whatever it really is. Niépece called it "heliography," Talbot referred to it as "photogenic drawing."Photography is neither of those things in my opinion, and in fact we could probably agree more on its ambiguities than on what it really is.

Back to the beginning, I for one am pleased that MOMA is no longer the single authority on what is and is not the true path of photography, and is asking what it is rather than shoving the truth down our throats. If it took someone (the French curator) from outside the history of American photography to do that, so be it.

Sandy

[BetterSense]

Since when?
In the specific case of photography, I think the genre/category is formed on that basis. It's the only neat basis that I have found, and I don't have a problem defining a genre based on media that all have one thing in common...that of being used for their properties of having surfaces modifiable by light to create manipulated images.


Silver print, inkjet, platinum, gum, they are all photographs.

That's nice. Actually, outright defining a set of things to be "photographs" is one way to approach the problem. Set theory is a long and glorious tradition in mathematics.

[Corran]

Then by your definition, I could draw an image, scan it into my computer, colorize it with digital colors, and then send it off to be printed with RA-4 paper, and it would suddenly become a photograph.

I don't think anyone anywhere defines a photograph by the print media, only by the capture method. Just like painting is not defined by the media, but by the method in which it is made (which is why inkjet is of course not a painting...).

We certainly can go 'round and 'round with the tougher questions, but I think there is a fundamental disconnect about how a genre is defined, and you seem to have it backwards.

[jnantz]

Wow Lenny, that is kind of harsh! I hope your rant wasnt aimed at me. I must admit I haven't read the whole thread, but nowhere did I imply that one process is better than another, my only point was that words have meanings.

it might have been aimed at me...

[BetterSense]

Then by your definition, I could draw an image, scan it into my computer, colorize it with digital colors, and then send it off to be printed with RA-4 paper, and it would suddenly become a photograph.

Well, kind of. I don't know what you mean here by "it" when you say "it would become a photograph". A photograph is created when you print the RA-4 print. Nothing "becomes" a photograph in this scenario except a sheet of RA-4 paper. Certainly the image does not become a photograph; that would be a category error...images are abstract and photographs are concrete; an image connot be a photograph.

[Wayne Lambert]

Eric, and I, and others, are obviously arguing from the standpoint of the first-invented photographs. Recent years excepted, the vast majority of photographs that have been produced since the invention of photography were the direct result of the interaction of light with light-sensitive materials. Now that is not so. We have images that look just like earlier photographs, but instead the image is produced by ink sprayed on paper, and yet these are also called photographs, no qualifier. We now have a situation in which a term/word means two different things. For some of us that is bothersome. And it is certain that we are not going to set up a two-part classification system consisting of photographs and not-photographs, nor would it be desireable. It seems to me there is a way we can solve this problem, practically we almost already have. As Sandy noted above, photo historians, curators, and archivists prefer to make distinctions based primarily on materials. I would propose that we broaden the term photograph to include any image originally created by the interaction of light with light sensitive materials (chemical or electronic) and then classify the type of photograph (the physical object) based primarily on the materials of which it is composed. Thereby, we would have gelatin-silver photographs, pigment-ink photographs (ink-jet photographs), platinum/palladium photographs, albumen photographs, photogravures, etc....all photographs. This is nothing new; many of you are already doing this. You probably have every right to say to me why are you so late getting to the party? All I can say is I thought if we were going to use the word photograph, with no qualifier, we should restrict it as closely as possible to its original meaning. Interestingly, I opted for the system I am proposing here several years ago on my website. I refer to platinum/palladium photographs, gelatin-silver photographs, and pigment-ink photographs. I do think the qualifier is important.

Wayne

[Corran]

Calling something a "silver gelatin photograph" or "inkjet photograph" is merely categorizing by both the media and the genre.


A photograph is created when you print the RA-4 print.

So by your definition a photograph is simply anything printed on light-sensitive paper. Why? Because you took the Latin roots to mean literally "writing with light" and nothing more? And yet, the image was "written" on the film/sensor first. So why is the final media relevant? I would argue that an image made with film or a sensor then used as the basis for an etching or any other random media is still a photograph. I don't understand why you are fixated on the media. It doesn't matter!


Certainly the image does not become a photograph; that would be a category error...images are abstract and photographs are concrete; an image connot be a photograph.

Category error? Feel free to explain because this whole sentence makes no sense.

[Tin Can]

So confused. I capture images and either print them or look at them electronically.

I also imagine them.

[djdister]

Certainly the image does not become a photograph; that would be a category error...images are abstract and photographs are concrete; an image connot be a photograph.

You couldn't be more wrong. Look up the definition of "photograph" on two or three dictionaries. Basically, they all say a photograph is an image recorded on film or a sensor, typically by a camera. Therefore, a photograph could be abstract or not, and a photograph is by definition an image created by light.

[BetterSense]

So by your definition a photograph is simply anything printed on light-sensitive paper

Well, kind of. I don't think the substrate has to be paper, but other than that, yeah.


And yet, the image was "written" on the film/sensor first.

Not really. There's no need for the existence of any previous step involving any film or sensors. "Photogram"-type images are photographs, as are 1st-generation slides, and blueprints.


So why is the final media relevant?

Maybe it's not, in the grand scheme of things. But that's what we (I) am talking about.


I don't understand why you are fixated on the media.

Having a discussion about media is not being "fixated on media".


I would argue that an image ... is ... a photograph

Well, there's the source of our confusion. You are discussing images, and I am discussing media, as in finished art objects. In general, I don't care to take part in any discussions classifying images into types or categories. It's limiting, and I leave that to the art critics. That's of course what people do every day...they sloppily classify images as photographic if they resemble photographs. If I have a fundamental problem with this reasoning, it's that it's circular without a definition of what a photograph is, not to mention that photographs don't inherently look like anything in particular.

I have a good definition of what a photograph is, one which agrees with a century or two of usage. Not at all unfortunately, unless you are emotionally invested in this sort of thing, this definition of photograph does not include inkjet prints, which objects were not produced until a few decades ago, and even so, which I maintain are more akin to paintings than photographs.

I don't think that photographs are better than any other media, and I don't think that the media used are relevant to the worth of the art, and I don't think photographic images are more real or more indexical than other types of images.

[Corran]

Fine, and I will simply say that I think you are all kinds of wrong, in multiple ways and multiple fashions. If you decide to categorize photographs in a certain way, and one in which totally disagrees with pretty much every standard definition by a large margin, and furthermore is divisive to the point of ridiculousness, I guess that is your mistake to make. I'm glad you don't get to decide these kinds of things on a larger scale.

[Merg Ross]

Defining "what is a photograph" was simple enough ninety years ago. Perhaps there were fewer curators to pose the question. However, I don't understand where the introduction of digital and ink makes the definition of a "photograph" so difficult.

Just call it what it is. A study of the history of photography will reveal an honesty in description: Photomontage, Superimposed Photograph, X-Ray Photograph, Solarized Photograph, Photogram. Man Ray called his prints, Rayograms; all of the categories were ''photographs".

Time spent debating this might be better spent producing a personal vision by whatever process or by whatever description. Make it easy, call the results "photographs". Ink jet prints would qualify. Personal preferences must be put aside.

[rbultman]

+1.

[Lenny Eiger]

it might have been aimed at me...

No again.

Look, I have no problem, from a curatorial point of view, with qualifying what type of photographic print something is. Everyone looking and/or buying something has a right to know. Sandy made this point initially here and its correct.

But that is very different from saying that what someone creates is not a photograph.

This isn't about gravure, this is about the fact that some folks are happy about darkroom prints, don't want to spend their lives on a computer or can't afford one, and are angry that things have changed. It's an attempt to say to a large group of people: your work isn't valid.

This is what is offensive to me. I grew up in the 60's, having way too much idealism for my own good. I wasn't prepared for the eye-scratching I encountered in educational institutions and I left. It seems that the less money is on the table the worse the back-stabbing gets. The world can be a tough place.

However, when I go out with the local Large Format Meetup group we don't complete with each other. Everyone is excited to see what one camera or another actually looks like, or check out a lens, or even take a shot with it. Everyone is welcome, whether they are a beginner or experienced pro. It has been so here as well. This sentiment of "you aren't good enough because yoiu don't do x" doesn't belong. If you draw those kinds of lines, you end up drawing more of them. What about people who don't use lenses, and only have pinhole cameras? And so on...

In this forum, we have a wide variety of mostly nice folks. Unlike crotchety APUG, its clearly stated that discussions about digital processing are welcome. It's a community. We can all have different opinions, to be sure, and sometimes there are strong opinions and disagreements. But you have to ask yourselves if you want to take your frustrations out here, and create a lot of contention vs celebrating (within reason) what everyone is doing. If you devalue peoples' efforts in their artwork two things will happen, 1) it will destroy any sense of community there is here and 2) you will lose people who are actually good at these things and could be resources for you.

I won't say that in my past here I haven't made the same mistake, and really upset someone. I have, more than once. But thankfully, there were a couple of folks who pulled me aside and asked me who I wanted to be, and whether that's the effect I wanted to have in the world, in my community. I don't have a problem with someone who has an opinion that an inkjet print is not a photograph. Just keep it to yourself. You have to separate your personal feelings about what you like and what is or is not photography, fine art, whatever. And, when you get a chance, you actually ought to go educate yourself, and go look at some good inkjet prints, or any other process other than a darkroom print. I have a little gallery here, and there is lots to look at including a lot of things I have done for others. Jon Cone has a whole room filled with exquisite prints he's made over the years. There are plenty of others here who are top printers and can point you to a lot of good work.

Words have meaning. You can be all surgical about your analysis, about photons vs electrical impulses, etc. ad nauseum. But the underlying message is still there. We are the people who are doing the "real" thing, and you are not.

Invalidating people's efforts is just plain foolish. Worse, its just bullying.

Lenny

[rdenney]

This is something that people fail to recognize: A photograph is not merely a print. When Adams was looking at Strand's negatives, he was not looking at a print, not even at an image as Strand would ultimately want it displayed. He was looking at an intermediate form of the image. And what makes that image photographic? It's not that it was a sheet of plastic with silver grains on it. There have been other technologies used. It's that the shape of what he saw represented by those grains was made by light from the subject itself, as influenced (at best) by Strand's use of the lens and process in projecting and recording that light.

So, I'm with Paul. The only feature of "photograph" that distinguishes it from "painting" or "drawing" is that the shape one sees was caused by the subject itself, not by the artist's hand.

Oxford's definition of photograph is: "a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally." Personally, I think the first phrase captures all that is necessary: A picture made using a camera. Oxford, like most dictionaries, takes its definitions from expert usage examples, not just from those who first coined the term. We use different words to describe the storage medium: Print, file, negative, slide, film, plate, and so on. The word "photograph" thus applies to the picture, and thus is equally applicable to all media through which that picture might be displayed.

So, a museum display is a "silver gelatin print" that appears in a showing of the "photography" of (whoever it was that operated the camera). My Special Edition "print" of Dogwoods and Tenaya Creek was made by Alan Ross, but nobody thinks of it as an Alan Ross print--they think of it as a photograph made by Ansel Adams and printed by Alan Ross. The distinction between the photograph and the print is profound, and in this case, legal. Precision in communication requires detailed words, not redefining general words to only mean what the redefiner wants them to mean. The same picture in Yosemite and the Range of Light is a duotone reproduction of a photograph made by Ansel Adams. (I'm not even sure that Adams made the prints used for making the plates for that publication, which themselves require an additional process.) It's not hard to be precise, if our intent is to communicate. But if our intent is to define processes we don't like out of the activity, then communication (among other things) will suffer.

The reason these threads blow up is simple: By attempting to redefine the word that describes what people make, one invalidates those who use unapproved processes. How could that NOT be taken as an attack by those who are thus invalidated? Do people think even amateurs don't take their work seriously? I've been a serious photographer for 40 years (and an amateur for longer than that). I've used every technology available in that time. I've lately been digitizing some color slides of trips I made to the Utah deserts 25-30 years ago. These were made using Kodachrome (never printed at all, and thus unworded by the usage of some here). I'm digitizing them in a Bowens Illumitran, with my Canon 5D camera mounted on it. So, I'm making a digital photograph of a color slide. But the result is not just a photograph of a slide, it's also a photograph of the Utah desert. What else could it be?

So, in a couple of threads, I saw things like "inkjet print, inkjet print, photograph, photograph, inkjet print" to describe a series of examples. Of course that excludes those who made the inkjet print from the activity of making photographs. The list should read: "photograph, photograph, photograph, photograph, photograph" (because they are all pictures made using a camera), or "inkjet print, silver gelatin print, platinum-palladium print, cyanotype print, Polaroid print" or whatever. (I am not referencing the actual examples in that list, of course--I don't really care.) Mixing the word used to describe the pictures with the words used to describe how the pictures are represented seems to me confusing and non-communicative, and in some cases intentionally so.

This is not a discussion about what is good art, so those grinding that ax are hereby invited to stop. It is not even a discussion about what is bad art, or art at all. It is merely a discussion about what is a photograph.

Most of that was Rick the Large Format Photographer. Now, here's Rick the Moderator: It's a fine line between debating a hot topic about which people feel strongly and being disrespectful. But those who want to narrow the definition to their traditional notion of what they want it to mean are at a disadvantage, because their definition is insulting to those who use methods not included in that definition (some of which, as it happens, predate those definitions). If the thread descends into ad hominem, we'll close it. And it's already a good way along that path.

Rick "trying to participate and moderate at the same time" Denney

[Darin Boville]

>>I'm digitizing them in a Bowens Illumitran, with my Canon 5D camera mounted on it. So, I'm making a digital photograph of a color slide. But the result is not just a photograph of a slide, it's also a photograph of the Utah desert.<<

And as a side question--how's that working out?

And as an attempt to restart this thread, which i started, I point out that the exhibit at the ICP was NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT about the old, boring, pointless, film vs digital debate.

Look again, try to discern what the exhibit was trying to ask--and maybe start the debate again?

--Darin

[paulr]

Worth keeping in mind that we're talking about a definition. A definition is not a fact of nature, it is not permanent or immutable, and it is under no obligation to be logical. It's subset of language. It's a communicative tool that's subject to broad, vague, changing consensus. You can disagree with a trend in language all you want, but you'll probably succeed less in changing it than you will in making yourself harder to understand.

I think taxonomic discussions can be interesting, and even sometimes useful. But not if they're dogmatic, or blindly tied to historical definitions ("If it's not a daguerrotype it's not photograph! Now get out of the way of my horse!") I think it's interesting to look at photography as something that is always evolving and expanding, and to try to find the core qualities that make something more or less photographic. This has some practical benefit if you're a curator, and need to decide where to draw a line. And it's philosophically interesting for practitioners, who can benefit from challenges and provocations to our recieved ideas.

[jnantz]

No again.

... ...

Invalidating people's efforts is just plain foolish. Worse, its just bullying.

Lenny
thAts good
im wrong a lot
and i couldnt agree more ... the more the merrier

im not sure what it is that i make .. it starts or ends photographic .. and in the end it doesnt matter

[rdenney]

>>I'm digitizing them in a Bowens Illumitran, with my Canon 5D camera mounted on it. So, I'm making a digital photograph of a color slide. But the result is not just a photograph of a slide, it's also a photograph of the Utah desert.<<

And as a side question--how's that working out?

And as an attempt to restart this thread, which i started, I point out that the exhibit at the ICP was NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT about the old, boring, pointless, film vs digital debate.

Look again, try to discern what the exhibit was trying to ask--and maybe start the debate again?

--Darin

No, but people made it about that. But, still, the indexical link helps identify what in the works that article describes is photographic. The collage of magazine cutouts is not photographic. The clippings themsleves may be photographic. The scan is photographic. (And I resist the notion of a scanner not being a camera. That's like saying the multi-lensed sight organ of an insect is not an eye.) A photogram is an old question, but in a sense it still maintains the indexical link between subject and picture.

The picture of the guy pinned to the wall strikes me as a contrivance to attach it to the issue of the definition of "photograph"--of course it is a photograph, and a very traditional one at that, unless I'm really missing something in my quick read. It's the subject that makes its (apparently) modern point. If the notion that work done in a studio is fundamentally different than prior work that was done in the field, then I don't see how that difference has anything to do with the question, "What is a photograph?" It's like two articles about different subjects were attached at the middle--I don't see what the article says about the new curator of the photography department at MoMA as being related to the first discussion describing scanned collages.

The Illumitran is working well. I need to get some neutral-density gels. Even at its lowest setting, and with my camera set to ISO 50, I have to stop down to f/11 or f/16, and I'd rather be between f/8 and f/11. The contrast control unit also works, but it works too well. I need a ND gel for it, too. It takes a histogram that overfulls a ProPhoto gamut just slightly and turns it into one that only fills about half the gamut, requiring more stretching than I really want to do. The stretching is making some images grainy. I think a one-stop ND gel for the main flash and a 3 or 4-stop ND gel for the contrast unit would be about right.

The lens on the Bowens is quite sharp and able to resolve the grain down to finer than my Canon 5D can resolve. At first, I thought it was soft, but then I looked at the slide in question with a microscope and determined that the slide was a bit soft and the copy image had all the detail of the original.

But I'm still at the experimental stage.

I sure do like being able to apply much different interpretations on the images than what Kodachrome imposed on me.

Rick "wanting to make a blurb book on the best photos made in the desert southwest, because that subject has received such little coverage in the past (sigh)" Denney

[paulr]

Looks like at MoMA for the next few years, the drive will be toward breaking down boundaries rather than defining them.

Quentin Bajac, moma’s new chief curator of photography, is shaking things up. “I’m a bit tired of the predictable history from the daguerreotype to the digital print,” says the Paris-born Bajac, who comes to moma from stints at the Musée d’Orsay and the Centre Pompidou, where he was the head of the photography department from 2007 to 2013. Bajac is known for breaking down departmental boundaries and displaying photography alongside other mediums. His brilliant 2009 exhibition at the Pompidou, “La Subversion des Images: Surréalisme, Photographie, Film,” was as audacious as it was entertaining. He says, “I’m most interested in the connection between photography, painting, and film, setting up a dialogue and seeing that they have more in common.”

At moma, which has had a photography department since 1940, Bajac sees a need “to focus more on integrating photography with the collection as a whole.” Discussing his first show for the museum, “A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio,” he says, “I thought we could work with the collection and write a history that would be a little different,” shifting the focus away from moma’s usual crew of Americans (Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand) and what he calls “that descriptive, documentary photography” that has dominated the museum’s collection-based shows in recent years.


http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/2014/02/17/140217goli_GOAT_art_aletti

[Darin Boville]

Another review, this one in an arts publication. Some sort of vague disapproval of the show. Hard to make out.

http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/what_is_a_photograph?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Master&utm_campaign=February_23_2014_Editorial_Weekly

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

Review in LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-whats-a-photo-20140223,0,1962612.story?page=1#axzz2uPqoJ8eE

--Darin

[Drew Wiley]

Ho hum. Corneeee