What is lost in the digital age ?

[Drew Wiley]

Why would anyone want to eat out if every restaurant served the same thing? I'm not against big prints, but the ease of
wide-format digital printing has certainly contributed to the mediocrity of a number of current installations, as has image
selection over the web. I can enjoy a well-printed large image as much as a small one, but it better have more going for it
than big for the sake of big. That's what outdoor advertising companies are for. Believe me, I'm not the only one around here
getting fed up. Was having dinner the other nite with some friends of mine who are from NYC and are very well-heeled in the
sense of being serious philanthropists in this area too, and they are getting pretty bored with seeing just about the same
thing in both venues. Both MMA's are getting scratched off their list of things to either see or support. Up the street there's
a giant hole in the ground where the new UC Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is going. Hard to understand student's of
taxpaying parents being unable to afford an education there anymore and who knows how many tens of millions going into
that hole in the ground, but maybe they'll do something different. Maybe not. I do like the option of the Oakland Museum.
Worth crossing the bridge for, if anyone mistakenly thinks all the cultural stuff is going on in SF.

[Lenny Eiger]

I won't speak to the technical issues about whether or not you can create a wonderful looking print (by my standards) with a digital back or not. My guess is that if its not there today, it will be, certainly with the new b&w systems. One might just have to wait for the cost of high end gear to come down for it to be reasonable. (That is, if it ever does come down.)

I think what we have lost is in two areas. Both are related to fine art. The first is the influence of post modernism and the second is that now everyone has a camera, all the time. Personally, I am interested in images that are deep. I like the sleeper ones, where somehow by looking at an image you find that you have changed. If it hasn't happened to you, go look at some more original work. I have a copy of Clarence White's "Morning", from 1908, and when I first saw it I was stunned. I think I forgot to breathe for a couple of minutes. It took 22 years to acquire a copy and its one of my favorite things. It's still a "source" photograph for me. There are plenty of other photographs that have moved me over the years, from Watkins and O'Sullivan to Paul Caponigro, and well, too many to mention.

Today, the world seems to be all about commodity. Post modernism frowns upon any emotional content in an image. It's "tainted", according to the pundits of this philosophy, but to me its cold and there's nothing for me to be moved by. I want to grow as a human being, be more kind, compassionate. I don't find anything there to interest me or to show me what's important in life.

With everyone having a phone camera, and everything on Facebook being a "photo" it seems to make everyone a "Photographer". At least they seem to think so. In 2005, Getty sold about 1.5 million stock images. That's a big dent in commercial photography. Today, that number is over 20 million. Except for some niches here and there, that has to suggest that commercial photography as a potential career for some young person is over. I can't recommend that anyone go to Photography school these days. Now we have Instagram, and some of those things are interesting, of course. However, it moves Photography to the snapshot aesthetic. The other possibility seems to be journalism, more and more intense. Even some landscape photography seems to have a journalistic aspect in some practitioners, who want to engender a sense of awe for the people viewing their images. Personally, I'll take understanding over shock and awe any day.

Galleries and Museums are less and less showing the work that is deeper, and more and more show work that is either journalistic or snapshot. These are both important genres within the field and I won't denigrate them. However, what's missing is the photographer who sees the underlying magic of life at work. whether it be portrait still life or landscape. I think much of it is still going on, certainly by many members of this forum. However, it isn't being shown, isn't being discussed, has been dismissed from museums and galleries. The public does not appear to know the difference between a landscape that is a very commercial look and something more compelling, done by someone who has studied Photography (and life) seriously.

I think we have lost a lot.

Lenny

[paulr]

Lenny, I'll take an opposing view on both counts. Regarding postmodernism, no label has been less fashionable over the last ten years. We've been in a cultural era marked by artists strongly influenced by questions raised in the postmodern era (1960s through 1990s or so) but that have been summarily rejecting most of the answers. The results have been eclectic, with many of them embracing emotion, others going down different paths.

And while there are always downsides to democratization, I think overall nothing is healthier. I love that everyone has a camera. Why should a medium only be available to the wealthy? Why should it only be available to the "serious?" Or the indoctrinated? The signal to noise ratio goes down along with the price of entry, but that's a problem for curators and editors, not for me. The increase in variety and the possibilities for previously excluded perspectives makes it all worthwhile. I'd only be concerned about if I believed my work was distinguished only by an expensive camera, or by an arcane set of technical skills.

I'm not convinced that the work getting canonized today is shallower than the work of earlier eras. Pop Art emerged in the 1950s; Szarkowski started collecting actual snapshots in the 1960s, the height of po-mo snark and appropriation was in the 1980s. Much of the photography from the 19th century is more labor intensive, but doesn't strike me as more profound than this work. Staging a sodden, gauzy scene from mythology isn't necessarily more thoughtful than Piss Christ.

[patrickjames]

What I think is lost in the digital age is the personal physical involvement in the finished artifact itself, the print. With digital images everything is done in the netherworld and the photographer doesn't touch the print until it is finished. It is akin to a cnc sculpture vs. one done by a chisel.

[Drew Wiley]

Well... I completely resonate with what Lenny said. Amen. So does that makes him a devil's advocate too?

[Brian C. Miller]

With everyone having a phone camera, and everything on Facebook being a "photo" it seems to make everyone a "Photographer".

What I think is lost in the digital age is the personal physical involvement in the finished artifact itself, the print.

I'll come at this from a different point.

What has the Brownie lost to the cell phone?

Size? Both are relatively small in size, compared to contemporary equipment.
Convenience? Both are relatively convenient.
Spontaneity? Nope, that's still there.
100 exposures? Still got that.
Convenience? Still there.
Sharing? Can still do that.
Prints? Yep, that, too.

From the context of the Brownie, everything is just fine. All of this is the context of the average person.

Is the average person worried about archiving the past? I worked with a woman who threw away the negatives when she got her prints.

Now what is lost to the professional or fine-art photographer? That's a different question, because it comes from a different view point.

[Drew Wiley]

As large format photographers, I think all this is a priori phrased around some kind of quality context. I understand the distinction between this and amateur photography. In fact, after work tonite I'll probably be shopping for a new point n shoot
for my wife's purse. But what I am referring to in the impact of digital on this machine-manufactured mentality. Even the new
commercial gallery down the road is selling big so-so inkjets. Nobody would have tried that stunt in the past. Photographers
care about "their" prints. Now it's the concept that counts - write a symphony, then have it performed by the local Junior
High marching band.

[Brian C. Miller]

With everyone having a phone camera, and everything on Facebook being a "photo" it seems to make everyone a "Photographer".

What I think is lost in the digital age is the personal physical involvement in the finished artifact itself, the print.

I'll come at this from a different point.

What has the Brownie lost to the cell phone?

Size? Both are relatively small in size, compared to contemporary equipment.
Convenience? Both are relatively convenient.
Spontaneity? Nope, that's still there.
100 exposures? Still got that.
Convenience? Still there.
Sharing? Can still do that.
Prints? Yep, that, too.

From the context of the Brownie, everything is just fine. All of this is the context of the average person.

Is the average person worried about archiving the past? I worked with a woman who threw away the negatives when she got her prints.

Now what is lost to the professional or fine-art photographer? That's a different question, because it comes from a different view point.

[paulr]

In terms of working with your hands, photography has always been the runt of the art litter. No other historical medium requires less of it. Even with older processes, the hand work is incidental ... coating papers, agitating trays, spotting dust. I suppose burning and dodging is a hand process, but you're not even touching anything! The fundamental image creation process is hands-off. That's part of the wonder of it.

Guys like Edward Steichen totured themselves making hand-colored gum over platinum prints, just to prove to the world they were artists. But the farther they went toward pandering to Classicist definitions of art, the less of their energy went into anything photographic.

[Jody_S]

What is lost in the digital age? Nothing. In fact we have made gains in leaps and bounds.

We have gained the ability to edit our photos far better than traditional processes ever allowed. We have gained the ability to make perfect copies of that final photo, in several sizes, with no visible degradation. We have gained the ability to experiment with lighting, lenses, techniques, without being bound by a hard cost/sheet calculation. This has freed us to enjoy experimentation without worrying about 'waste'.

And best of all, we have gained an entire generation of youthful photographers who aren't the nerds hanging out in the high-school darkroom as I was, but who are vibrant, creative, social people pushing the boundaries of what is a 'photograph'. If that process leads to billions of worthless images as well, I would rather have a billion bad 'lomography' photos than a billion bad Brownie snapshots of the disembodied heads of someone's family standing in front of the Grand Canyon. It's not like anyone forces me to look at them (I do that to myself).