This harkens back to the days when desktop computers became available to the masses and the media jumped on desktop publishing. That's when we found the phrase, "garbage in, garbage out".
And, the digital revolution is over. The evolution phase will weed them all out.
"I meant what I said, not what you heard"--Jflavell
John Cook "Can you imagine a sensitive French wine connoisseur designing a down-and-dirty beer commercial which would appeal to Texans in pick-ups? "
Ironically, that might be a great script idea for a comical Budweiser commercial.
Computers and word processors are changing everthing to do with journalism. It alters the way we write stories and the way we look at them. It changes how we...manipulate them (note some NY Times retractions). The Newspaper industry is, ...now struggling to stay afloat.
Ptty the poor fellow who typed this, he possibly didn't know how to use a pen.
It's a bit bizarre to suggest that newspapers are struggling because of the word processor.
I think the word processor is actually an excellent example, though. It has radically changed the process of writing for a lot of people, but it has had no influence on the standards of good writing. People still read the same way, regardless of the tool used to edit the words.
I don’t think that it is coincidence or a matter of aesthetic merit that the work of Weston, Adams and Karsh is “aeons” away from the young. Which category of work requires discipline and hard work and which favors ease and accessibility?
"Computers and word processors are changing everthing to do with journalism."
No they're not. They've been standard equipment in newsrooms now for decades. It's the advent of cyberspace that is changing everything to do with journalism.
What has changed is the speed of imagery, speed in acquisition and in publishing and thus of course, of disposal. Who has time to study an image and is one on a screen or in a magazine worth the contemplation? Who can count the number of images we process in a single day?
The gift in photography, especially large format photography, is in taking the time to DO the work, to look hard at things and maybe later in sharing the results. I find very few like-minded people with whom I can share the details of what moves me in an image. If I find a woman who shares that I might propose! It is going to be a very select few who don’t flow with the now faster moving traffic. Who has faith that the point is the journey and not in collecting the greatest number of mile markers?
Cheers,
"I don’t think that it is coincidence or a matter of aesthetic merit that the work of Weston, Adams and Karsh is “aeons” away from the young. Which category of work requires discipline and hard work and which favors ease and accessibility?"
I'm not sure how the point I think you're implying would account for the thousands of photographers from Weston's and Adams' era that history has forgotten because their work wasn't any good (in spite of the discipline and hard work required to make it). Or the thousands of young photographers working today whose work we simply don't know yet, or don't even know how to look at yet.
And by the way, among the young photographers I know, there are ones working in just about every imaginable process, from odd digital concoctions to daguerrotypes. Be careful how you generalize a whole generation.
Anyone is able to make a great picture. Plenty of people who were no where near to calling themselves 'artists' have made arresting, interesting, beautiful pictures. The idea that digital cameras democrotize the art world for everyone is pretty ludicrous in my mind...the most important thing an artist does (especially ones who use photography) is use the medium to make a relevant, cohesive statement or transmit an interesting concept. Being able to make a beautiful picture does not make you a good artist in the contemporary sense. The bulk of the work must be done with the brain and not with the camera. Didnt harry callahan or minor white or one of those guys say theres nothing worse than a sharp picture with a fuzzy concept?
I believe it wa A.A., that said there is nothing worse than a technically perfect fuzzy concept.
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