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.
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