what isnt photography?

[Wayne]

I've heard it said many times that digital is "just another tool" for photographers, and that there is (or should be) no distinction between images created using digital means, and those created by what has come to be known as "traditional photography". These are all photographs, I'm told. Many people feel that differences in process are unimportant, because " the image is all that matters". I have seen these quotes used many times.

This has caused me to wonder, is this true? Is there really no distinction whatsoever?

To take an extreme example, consider an image that someone creates an image on their computer by taking various images (of scanned "traditional" photos) off the web and merging them together in Photoshop, and printing it.

1) Is this a photograph?
2) is this process photography?
3) Is the person a photographer?

If not, why not? What elements of process, tools, or materials are missing that distinguish it from a photograph made through photography by a photographer?

[tim atherton]

While it is an interesting and potentially valuable question, I don't think that is a particularly good example Wayne because it has existing analogue (if you like) corollaries - such as David Hockney's "joiners" - are they photography? Some would say yes, some would say no. Or the long tradition of photo-montage, be it by the surrealists, bauhaus, in soviet political propaganda or any undergraduate art course. Again, some might say it's photography, others not.

So it's not really an extreme example, nor one which hasn't already been questioned for several generations.

[Mark Sawyer]

Photography, of course, means "writing with light," meaning a graphic image recorded by light. Pretty widely inclusive.

Long before Niepce, Talbot, and Daguerre, a parlor curiousity was a solution of silver salts in a bottle thick enough to coat the sides. Put a light-blocking "stencil" around it, set it in the sun, and you could have an image inside the bottle. Shake it up and do it again...

One could tape a high-contrast negative to his stomach, lie in the sun a while, and let the tan turn him into human printing-out paper. The tan-lines of a "farmer's tan" is just a photogram of the t-shirt recorded in three dimensions. Heck, those girls with the bikini tan-lines in Playboy are sporting some of the finest photograms ever made, at least in my mind.

Thank God Kodak can't discontinue that...

[tribby]

motorcycling is not photography...

nor is doily tatting,

me

[Mark Sawyer]

Oops, sorry, I wandered off from the original query; sometimes my typing takes on a mind of its own...

"To take an extreme example, consider an image that someone creates an image on their computer by taking various images (of scanned "traditional" photos) off the web and merging them together in Photoshop, and printing it.

1) Is this a photograph? 2) is this process photography? 3) Is the person a photographer?"

The person has not made a first generation photograph, but has used the photography of others to create an entirely new (and hopefully original) image. The process is not photographic, but uses photographs as a source, so I'd consider the person (presuming some artistic merit in the output) an artist. Newspapers and magazines are actually dealing with this issue today, and using the terms "photo-illustration" and "photo-illustrator."

Reconsidering my first post, Ive realized my favorite photographer may be Heather Locklear. Though I've never seen one of her photographs, I'm sure the highlight details are just... amazing!

Sorry. I'll shut up now...

[Brian Vuillemenot]

We often hear that the final image is all that matters, and that cameras are just tools to get that final image. However, think about how much the choice of tools shapes that final image. Obviously, a carefully composed and executed large format photograph is a little different than a snapshot made using the latest digital point and shoot...

[Scott Davis]

I'd refer to the artist in question in your example as either a montage-ist or collage-ist (spelling, anyone?), because the it is merely incidental that they chose photographs as a source material.
I would still call someone who shoots photographs with a digital camera and displays them as photographs to be a photographer.

I would offer up several definitions to help clarify categories of artists working with photographic materials. I think in the light of what has been happening to the medium, we need a definition of photograph to work from.

Photograph - a relatively realistic visual representation intended for display and/or publication, for the purpose of conveying information or emotion relating to the subject, executed via a photographic method (patterns of light recorded with an optical device).

Photographer - someone who takes photographs as currently understood, for the purpose of displaying and/or using them in a traditional method (as standalone illustrations or artworks, presented singly or in series).

Photomanipulator - someone who takes single photos, either from film-based or digital source, and alters them in part or in whole, but retains the majority of the original format (cropping, overall composition, subject matter, etc).

These are just a few terms we need to define. I think once you get beyond the realm of photomaniupulator, you are heading into other areas of "traditional" artform, like collage or montage, where the source material for the collage or montage comes from mixed media, be it digital, photographic, print media, video, painting or drawing, etc. I don't know if you can have a sharp line drawn with these things though - would you call a sculptor who applies polaroid image transfers to their stonecarvings a photographer because they use image transfers? I would still call them a sculptor, because the end result of their artwork is intended to be stonecarving, which happens to incorporate photographs. I don't know that I would call that same artist a collage-ist if they also stuck bits of newsprint, magazine clippings, and/or cutouts from photos downloaded off the internet on to the same stonecarving (I might call them crazy, but that's another discussion altogether).

[Wayne]

I probably didnt choose a good example. What I was trying to find was an example that most of us would agree was a digital image, but definitely not a photograph, and not photography. Does such a thing exist?

[QT Luong]

Wayne, there are images that are 100% computer generated, without reusing any photographic materials. Those things are called "digital art", that nobody confuses them with photography. A good example can be found at digitalblasphemy.com
Other examples are the CGI work in the recent Star Wars movies.

[JohanHB]

i'm with tribby...