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Thread: The potential of analog

  1. #1
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    The potential of analog

    In this thread http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ad.php?t=21338 Struan talks about some of the unique capabilities introduced by digital technology.

    I've become interested in the other side of the coin: the unique capabilities of traditional photographic processes ... ones that I might not have noticed if they weren't set in relief against the newer technology.

    The situation reminds me of the relationship between painting and phtogography in the early nineteenth century. Photography shook up the painting and illustration world, because because it was so much better at depicting the world naturalistically. This disenfranchised most of the traditional artists whose stock in trade was naturalistic description. But it liberated everyone else. People started thinking, "if photography does that better, then what can painting do bettter?"

    This likely accelerated the development of abstraction in painting ... and all the variants that are as much about paint as about what things look like. The blow from photography encouraged painting's rebirth.

    There's a whole range of alchemy possible with traditional photographic materials that has barely been tapped. My friend Anne McDonald paints on photo mural paper with bleach and developer, and every vial of liquid from her victorian medicine cabinet to create her installations. She collaborates with the materials, the chemistry, the sun, and with sheer chance, and in the process is inventing a new language. Some of her pieces are reproduced here: http://www.anneardenmcdonald.com/nof...ns/page_1.html although you can really only appreciate them fully in person.

    You could mimic something like this with other processes (including digital ones), but you wouldn't be able to create it for real, the way she does. Her process is a dialog with the materials, and because of this, the materials play a part in her inspiration and also in guiding the process. Their mysterious and unpredictable qualities are as important as her intent.

    Her work with this medium isn't photography, but it's as pure a celebration of the beauty of photographic materials as I've seen. She seems to be returning to some of the roots of the medium--obsessed visionaries working into the night with these strange materials, with no instructions, no rule book, and no idea what's possible.

  2. #2

    Re: The potential of analog

    Polaroid manipulations might be an extreme example of what you describe. The process could be mimicked in software, but the randomness would disappear, as would the hand-made one-off nature of the final results.

    Another off the top of my head is long time exposures. The results are not what you can see with your eyes at a location, hence the unique aspect of the results. Sometimes the colour shift of certain films can give a unique look to the final images. Again, a similar look might be possible with enough time in software, though the idea of creating an image in-camera still holds some merit amongst viewers of the results.

    Ciao!

    Gordon Moat
    A G Studio

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    Re: The potential of analog

    Photography in the 19th Century was a catalyst for change among artists who had been attempting to portray reality thru painting, etc.. Photography could do it so much better, which is one of its strengths. Digital imaging software has its strengths too; and, at some point, its practitioners will concentrate on those strengths. The work of Jerry Uelsmann, for example, is easily created digitally; so photographers who wish to create a fantasy world can do it more efficiently digitally. Traditional photography needs to explore its strengths, which include alt photo processes; and not worry about mimics.

  4. #4

    Re: The potential of analog

    Quote, Paulr: [I] ... Struan talks about some of the unique capabilities introduced by digital technology. I've become interested in the other side of the coin: the unique capabilities of traditional photographic processes ... ones that I might not have noticed if they weren't set in relief against the newer technology.
    ___________________________________________________________________________

    Paul, you have truly hit the nail smack on the head! The more I use my cousin's instantly-gratifying and instantly-manipulatable digital imager the more I love the whole, slow, soulful process of making a PHOTO-GRAPH. This kind of Ying-Yang should help analog photo-graphy get 'rediscovered' and eventually settle into well-organized niche market for those looking for ... soul.

    Bruce

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    Maris Rusis's Avatar
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    Re: The potential of analog

    The potential of analog photography does not lie in how the pictures look.

    Electronically controlled picture making machines, even at this early stage of their development, can replicate the physical appearance of visual art executed in just about any medium. Grain, sharpness, resolution, tonal range are already under superb control.

    The crucial advantage of analog will continue to be that certain classes of subject matter cannot be depicted. Dreams, fantasies, and imaginings, provided they can be described in sufficient detail to generate an electronic file, can be easily printed as pictures. Not so for analog. An actual photograph is as good a certificate of the reality of something as the thing itself. The reason is of course that a photograph is generated by the physical arrival on the light-sensitive surface of something that was once part of the subject matter.

    The thesis that all images are equivalent if they look exactly the same cannot hold. An ultra-detailed digital picture of a dinosaur or an angel may be worth an admiring chuckle if it is well done. After all the mere existence of the picture guarantees nothing more certain than a computer operation happened. But a genuine Kodachrome of either dino or angel guarantees existence and that would deservedly have, in one hit, a stunning world-wide intellectual impact.

    In the world of the mid to far future digital will be seen as a medium of fiction; never existed, didn't happen, never looked like that. Analog, because of its irreducible dependence on a physical link between picture and subject, will be seen as the medium of fact.
    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,..".

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    tim atherton's Avatar
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    Re: The potential of analog

    I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that? -David Hockney
    You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn

    www.photo-muse.blogspot.com blog

  7. #7
    tim atherton's Avatar
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    Re: The potential of analog

    Dreams, fantasies, and imaginings, provided they can be described in sufficient detail to generate an electronic file, can be easily printed as pictures. Not so for analog.

    Duane Michaels has been doing a pretty good job of just that with analogue for most of his career.
    You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn

    www.photo-muse.blogspot.com blog

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    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: The potential of analog

    Quote Originally Posted by tim atherton View Post
    Dreams, fantasies, and imaginings, provided they can be described in sufficient detail to generate an electronic file, can be easily printed as pictures. Not so for analog.

    Duane Michaels has been doing a pretty good job of just that with analogue for most of his career.
    I can't think of a subject or theme that wouldn't be equally approachable with silver or pixels.

    The most profound distinctions are likely to lie where something innate about the process steers the work, or shows up in the finished product. Like in Anne's murals, where the silver paper reacts unprdictably, or in the ideas Struan describes, where digital tools encourage manipulations of time that would probably never occur to you in a darkroom.

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    Re: The potential of analog

    Quote Originally Posted by Doug Howk View Post
    The work of Jerry Uelsmann, for example, is easily created digitally; so photographers who wish to create a fantasy world can do it more efficiently digitally.
    But then who would buy it if every 14-year old could do it on his mom's computer?

  10. #10
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: The potential of analog

    Quote Originally Posted by cyrus View Post
    But then who would buy it if every 14-year old could do it on his mom's computer?
    This is the old "my kid could do that" protest of modern art. Yeah, maybe your kid could copy a Mondrian painting, too, but that was never the point. It's not valuable because it was hard to make (like a ship in a bottle, or 10-layer wedding cake) but because of the unique vision it represents.

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