Thank you Struan,Originally Posted by Struan Gray
If I am always wrong and never dull I shall be quite content.
Kindest,
Thank you Struan,
If I am always wrong and never dull I shall be quite content.
Kindest,
Dominic Rouse
"Almost everything is art. Almost nothing is fine art."
Dominic,
I think it is one thing to argue about process, and on the other to evaluate final results. I am ultimately not interested in whether an image, or to what extent, was, so to speak, 'manually' manipulated. I am interested in the vision that manifests itself in the finished photograph. That the more 'manual' approach is more gratifying to you is in the end merely a question of preferred working methods, a personal choice. Whether or not it is superior is another, vaguer issue. It is in the hands of the practitioner, as others have said.
Much as I loathe categorical definitions of art, because I feel art should probably be nothing more than beautiful (in the deepest sense possible of the word), and shouldn't harm anyone, I find that what makes photography so compelling is the conveying of a sense of something having happened, having existed in time, whether it is a street scene, a pine needle, or whatever. Whether or not it actually did is irrelevant; it is the sensation that it either did occur, or could have happened that gives a photograph such strength as a "true" trace of reality and time. Dominic, your pictures conform to this ideological definition, and although the probability of some things believably happening may on a surface level seem slim to none, the image presents them as such, and challenges the viewer to accept this visual reality as existing. That it seems improbable is jarring, and this dynamic mechanism forces the viewer to ask what the relartionship is between good ol' seeing and believing. According to this notion of believability (which, again, is an ideological more than an aesthetic criterion), your work is strongest when it hides its own tools, in other words, when it asserts this believability most un-self consciously, because it appears to exist in its own right, free of the hands of its creator. (It generally does, from what I remember seeing.)
Does the computer give more tools to photographers to shape the reality they want to portray? Of course. Is it more, or better than what we currently have, in expressive terms? Not necessarily. That to me is like saying that Magritte is a better painter than Botticelli because he is more explicitly surreal and dreamlike. All images are manifestations of our inner dreams, for that matter. Are we entering an age in which this sort of constructive approach is more appropriate to our Zeitgeist, and therefore, feels more apt, relevant or true? Perhaps, but only time, as measured by all of our photographs, will tell.
To take a piece of paper, coat it with a million silver halides and then to arrange for light and chemicals to caress it in such a way that it leaves an impression of one's imagination is an unparalleled joy which no amount of criticism can dilute.
Tools and processes that afford us a greater degree of control over the subtleties of the final print should be welcomed by all except the most belligerent of Luddites.
As many respondents in this thread have correctly asserted all aesthetic arguments are won and lost in the final result and this itself is wholly subjective. Essentially this discussion is an exercise in dialectics and none the less enjoyable for that.
The argument that the camera's charms lie solely in its ability to capture a precise moment in time seems to me particularly specious and one that is largely responsible for what I (perhaps unkindly) referred to in my essay as "the mundane". The camera's true potential is as yet undiscovered and my conclusion that the digital domain can help us greatly in our explorations should not be seen as contentious.
Equally false is the claim that the magic that occurs within the digital realm is any less discovered or worthy than those that occur outside it or that the joy of seeing a digital composition slowly reveal itself on a monitor is any less ecstatic than that of seeing an image emerge onto a wet piece of paper in a darkened room. I know the joys of both and would be the last to claim that one is superior to the other. For what it is worth my prints are toned silver gelatins so I can enjoy the best of both worlds.
A few years ago I had the privilege of meeting and exhibiting with Jerry Uelsmann in Seattle. Although I would not wish to put words into his mouth I think I can safely say that we would be in broad agreement on our approach to photography. The principle difference between our working methods is that Jerry makes his compositions in a traditional darkroom and I make mine in a digital darkroom. I do maintain that the controls available in my darkroom are more subtle and varied than those afforded by enlargers and masks but I would not wish to go to war with those who disagree with me.
Further back, in February of 2000, I attended the AIPAD Fair in New York and visited numerous galleries whose sole mission was to exhibit photography. I was astounded at their number (in the hundreds) because I was aware of only four galleries in London that were exclusively showing photographs. It may well be that the English preceded the Americans in accepting photography as a legitimate art form (I am not sufficiently conversant with photography's divergent transatlantic histories to argue otherwise) but it was a short-lived infatuation as comparisons today would surely prove.
Art is often referred to as the search for Truth and Beauty. Artists who set out to reveal the truth will quickly find themselves unemployed. The best we can hope for is to record our honest impressions of the lies which is the closest we humans have to a truth. Beauty is measured in degrees of deceit; the greater the beauty the greater the deceit.
Deceptively yours,
Dominic Rouse
"Almost everything is art. Almost nothing is fine art."
Just for the record, Luddites were not opposed to technology per se, but to its rapid introduction in such a way that granted more profit to the mill owners at the expense of the very social fabric of the mill workers by unemploying them and devaluing the need for their craft, turning them from skilled artisans into machine operators, ravaging the economic and social health of their families and communities. It was the dehumanizing rate of introduction, as well as the underlying profit motive, an overall class warfare, that angered them.
When in the early 90's camera companies started selling us "the future," already religiously asserting the power of digital technology, which for a long time was inferior to what analog did, photographers such as myself took one look at the quality, the rate of obsolescence, and the price tag, and said, no thanks. Film at the time still seemed unparalleled. Remember the $30,000 CD burners? We WERE asked to buy such stuff! The end result is that a lot of us got a bad taste in our mouths, and have taken a while to adapt.
Again, I think your classification of certain kinds of photography as 'mundane' is, more than unkind, specious in itself. What counts, as I said in my earlier thread, is the suggestion of a moment in time. Whether it actually happened, or whether it was assembled from various moments in time, and composited is irrelevant, or rather, is merely a choice in working methods. What counts is how believable the unified surface feels. Photographs ALWAYS ask us to experience something AS IF it has occurred as a moment in time. This is the medium's cognitive function, and its great appeal. As you imply in your last paragraph, whether it is the 'truth' or a 'lie' is not the main issue; it is what it appears to be, what it asks us to believe, that matters. As Errol Morris says in his blog piece that Tim linked, it is very hard to 'know' a photograph anyway in and of itself. We bring a whole apparatus of belief to the image, and that is what animates it.
Ultimately this remains a discussion of technique more than results, and on that level I heartily concur with you on the ways that digital adds to the toolbox, and allows us to intervene. I used to hate color printing, and now, with scanning and inkjet, I am very happy with the color I can get. I used to be surprised by how good someone's images looked published in ink, and how bad they looked as a print on the wall. I have not yet entered into the world of black and white, and hope to start with it soon. I think, in the end, that I would rather, for many reasons, especially a level of control, adjust a print on a monitor than in a dark, smelly room, much as I am attached to the darkroom.
All this to say that I would avoid rhetoric about those who are enlightened and those who dwell in the shadows. What is in question is an overall attitude to the medium, and I don't think that a choice of working methods automatically dictates a certain kind of result.
Last edited by claudiocambon; 19-Oct-2007 at 07:31. Reason: bad spelling and punctuation
time... there is 'painterly time' and 'photographic time'... to me Dominic's work is imbued with painterly time... not the Kandinsky musical time but a Rennaissance portrait time... it is eternally still.
The moment in time is incidental to the 'feeling of time' in photography... photographic time is something that to me has incredible creative possibilities... and I don't mean the extended shot of flowing water... I practically had to chew off my own leg to get out of that trap.
I never meant to imply that the magic of digital collage was somehow inferior... I just have a personal preference for the magic of the world outside myself... it has a different flavor (plus it's chewier)
must go... big storm yesterday and the rollers smashing the beach this morning are huge.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks