Brooks Jensen's Questions

[Bruce Watson]

I'm pretty much stuck with silver or platinum or collodion because I truly do not have the geek gene.

I hate to break it to you Jim, but you have a huge and actively expressing geek gene. You my friend are at the very least a lens geek extraordinare. That you are not a computer geek also doesn't make you any less of a geek. Just about all of us who participate on this forum are geeks of some kind or other; predominately LF geeks of course. So don't go feeling left out.

[Toyon]

Does someone have a link to Brook's article? I often like what he writes, except for a fairly ludicrous piece a while back on print pricing.

[Ole Tjugen]

... I was joking with another photog the other day that in 15 years some one will pick up one of my prints and gasp. "Look at the dirt and mustache hairs! The tones are all wrong, like they used to do. This is a bonafide piece of shit. It's priceless. It's real!"

OK, it might take a lot more than 15 years for mine

I've seen an original print by Julia Margaret Cameron - replace "mustache hairs" with "chicken down", add some dust and a cobweb, and the description is pretty accurate.

"Pop music"? What's that?

Not only was a large part of what is now "classical music" the "pop music" of the day when it was first made, but there is also a large (and interesting) part of "pop music" directly influenced by classical music. No - I don't mean those who add "string sauce" to everything, but to the classically trained composers who write the music of bands like Kraftwerk and Rammstein.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Does someone have a link to Brook's article? I often like what he writes, except for a fairly ludicrous piece a while back on print pricing.

It's a great article along with a great magazine. You should pick it up at your local bookstore. Only $9.95...which imho, is too inexpensive for a magazine of this quality.

[Brian Ellis]

Unfortunately, since I have never bought, read much or subscribed to the magazine, I have to go on the paraphrased statements here.

In the previous thread Jim Galli provided an excellent summary of Brooks' basic point and of course Brooks himself summarized the article and explained his basic point. If you read those two messages you'll have an accurate understanding of the article. Just ignore most of the other responses if you want to know what the article really said. About 90% of the critical responses in that thread indicated that the person posting the response hadn't read the article and knew nothing about it but nevertheless felt free to criticize it. And of course there was the usual frothing at the mouth from the usual people over digital in general, which had nothing to do with the point of the article.

[Joe Lipka]

Well, it is possible to download a .pdf file summary of the current edition of LensWork from the LensWork site. The Editor's comments are always reproduced in full.

So you can read the article for free.

[Duane Polcou]

... but to the classically trained composers who write the music of bands like Kraftwerk and Rammstein.

Kraftwerk! Used to burn Cannabis Sativa to "Trans Europe Express". I didn't know I was being a classico-phile. I was just trying to get the German girl down the hall to sleep with me.

[janepaints]

One of the 1880's british masters of photography gave it up when his preferred materials became unavailable or too-expensive. Sorry--his name escapes me: middle aged memory syndrome. Was it Emerson? Anyway...

However, my memory does recall what he said about the situation: "The artist is beholding to their materials.".

Materials and technology change all the time. It's happened in music and my approach to musicmaking and recording have been altered, like it or not. Same with photography and writing and, well, plenty of other stuff.

I witnessed it up-close-and-personal in the fields of typography, reprographics and graphic design. I've never seen any typesetting more lovely than expertly-done hot type, handcast. But Hasta La Vista baby! Early (1980's) designed-for-commercial-use dedicated typesetting computers (such as the Varityper Epics systems) ran rings around anything I've ever seen come off a PC or Mac. It's like comparing a Rolls Royce to a Tinker Toy. They made Hot Type obsolete and they themselves were made obsolete, all within a roughly 30-year timespan.

Laser, inkjet and dye printers & copiers litter earth today, for both text and image applications. Yes, they are marvels compared to the Xerox machines of 20 and 30 years ago. How do they compare to the image quality of the stuff I made daily as a know-nothing lunkhead kid running process & stat cameras for a day job until I could figure out how to become a Rock N' Roll Starlet? They were Deardorffs to today's Dianas. Example: the shop which employed me had clients like Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. When reproducing blueprints or tooling patterns for such firms, dimensional accuracy of the copies was required to be within .0001" of the originals. Otherwise the customer would reject them.

Every light has an accompanying shadow and vice versa.

CAD, robotics and nano have revolutionized so many aspects of our world. Products are now manufactured at speeds, tolerances and quality-control standards previously unimaginable. However these same techno-advances create situations where the lack of hands-on human contact can allow SNAFU's to go more-easily undetected, with mega-disasterous results in worst-case scenarios.

And these processes are coming at us and evolving/morphing faster and faster. The faster they come, the faster-yet they WILL come. Modern Times ala Charlie Chaplin. Brazil ala Terry Gilliam. Everything is speeding up, including the speed of the speeding-up.

The painter Delacroix had a quick and nimble mind. Upon seeing his first photograph he understood the new paradigm quite clearly and said "From this moment on, painting is dead." He didn't mean 'painting as medium', he meant painting's previous functionary roles in society. Goodbye local oil portraitist. Hello Mr. Newcomer Daguerotype Maker in our village. Goodbye "this painting is so lifelike you can see every blade of grass", hello Large Blurry Paintings With Existentialist Titles.

For the users of any medium there are always choices. There is no sacred ground. Sands shift. Ozymandias. Images will still be made, sounds will still be made and recorded. 78 rpm records made of shellac were all staticy & teensy & shrill.
Then vinyl made things slicker. Then cassettes plus dolby made things smaller and still good-sounding. Then digital and CD's made things PERFECT. Then mp3's made everything staticy and teensy and shrill again but nobody cared because you could carry 2,4567,27,8748 songs around with you on your iPod until it got stolen so then you pasted a 'mean people suck' bumpersticker on your car.

Dwight Eisenhower: Things are more like they are right now then they've ever been before."

I like Ike.

Pick and choose. Pray to some icons, smash others. As long as you can do what you want to do, how you want to do it. Mix and match.

In a digital world of ones and zeros is PERVASIVE POLARIZED SYNDROME so surprising? Red state-blue state. Either-Or or else. Jihad or Waiting For The Rapture.

In my earlier Photo Obsession Years (1979-1989) I'd spend hours in the darkroom, trying to get that one Perfect Print. After I got it I was so worn-out I rarely made more than one. I did my best to understand Zone system and LV and the like. Studied page after page of formulae and arcana. Wandered the photo swap meets looking for that perfect (and cheap) magic lens. A new enlarger seemed to soon require a new easel which in turn required a better paper which in turn required a new film tank ad infinitum.

In 1990, for a variety of reasons, I left photography. I began to paint, daily. In the same amount of time it took me to make one (kinda but not really) Perfect Print, I might end up with one finished 3' x 5' painting, all kindsa colors and shapes and no rules, zones, data or diagrams in sight while making it.

Which is not to imply a superiority of painting over photography. Apples and oranges. I missed photography. Daydreamed of someday again doing simple contact prints, for fun.

I've spend hundreds (probably thousands) of hours lost in pleasure looking at the book Walker Evans--First And Last, as well as many other photographic monographs. Not once did I think 'Hmm these reproduction are okay, but they surely aren't any match for an original Evans print." It just didn't come to mind. I was seeing what Evans had said not how perfectly or imperfectly the transmission device had delivered Walker's ideas to me.

The medium is NOT the message. Unless you happen to be the guy who owns stock in the joint which manufactures the gizmos that everybody has to buy to use the medium.

The message is the message.

I listen to vinyl, CD, minidisc, cassette, 78's.

When i listen to Charlie Poole tunes recorded in 1927 I don't think 'Dang what crappy fidelity." I think "What amazing music. hot damn!" Same as I might think listening to some hi-end Audiophile digital recording just released.

Is the message any good? That's an key question to keep in mind in this, the Mess Age. Todays highest-end drum scanner is next decade's can't give it away at the rummage sale pile of carbon, plastic and silicone.

Pick and choose.

Inkjet B & W prints, seen online, made from scanned 4x5 negs, triggered my desire to make photos again. The gear used was 'prosumer' quality--nothing fancy or too pricey. I've seen high-end color all-digital prints that were amazing. And I've seen stuff done with the same gear that was "so-what?".

Everybody is right and everybody is wrong and it's all okay, bona-fide & valid--as long as truely human messages keep getting through to the human sensitory receivers.

Many years ago, poking through a box at a garage sale, I came across two photographs. Any item in the box cost 25 cents. I bought both photos. One was an original print by Arnold Genthe, one was an original print by J.K. Hillers.

I bought the Genthe print thinking "I can make some money offa this because this Genthe guy was famous." The photo was a bore. Genthe's bread-and-butter commercial portraiture. Soft-focus, some Wall Street Society Type being immortalized by his era's version of Richard Avedon. Arnie had signed it in silver-pigmented ink. Vanity and ego at work, money shaking hands. The message coming off that print was Gentleman's Swindle Agreement All Around. It was empty.

The Hillers print was breathtaking and I could hardly believe I owned such a treasure. Albumen or POP. 11 x 14" contact. One of the first photos ever taken of the Grand Canyon. Hillers was the snapshot guy on the expedition. I never dreamed of selling it. Stared at it for years. All kinda great messages coming offa it: "Holy Shit, LOOK AT THIS!"...."the handiwork of creation & nature & god or whatever the heck ya wanna call it is beauteous and awesome beyond compare"...."what's over the next ridge I wonder?"...."wow, does this look amazing on the ground glass"....I don't know how much Hillers was paid but that photo had no reek of money, ego or vanity to it. Nor any reek of Technology Worship. It was a profoundly human document in formal, spiritual, emotional and creative terms. That picture defined 'Agape' and communicated it about as good as good can be.

If the technology which Mr. Brooks describes can convey some of that which Mr. Hiller's print did--great! If a Polaroid does--great! A brownie snapshot or a Jim Galli Reading-Glasses-Taped-To-The-Lensboard image--great! Ansel--great!! Cindy Sherman wacked on drugs in her downtown beatnik loft--Great!! Elvis portrait done with crayons on black velvet--great! Just as long as the message is the message.

If that Genthe portrait had been a 600-foot wide hologram with fireworks and Surround Sound which whispered "Janey, you've made a wise, very wise investment", it still woulda stank.

I sold the Genthe a month later to some speculator for $10 and kept the Hillers for about a decade, until circumstances of No Dough forced me to sell it. I miss it still. That picture oozed soul.

[Kirk Gittings]

Jane, I like the way you think.

[Wayne Lambert]

Jane, I don't like the way you think.