wet darkroom vs. inkjet

[Jim collum]

+1


(it might be a good idea to save this thread from where it got off track.. when it happens again.. append it to the new thread and lock..

I heard this about "machine" analogue prints in the 80's.

It depends on whether you think that a great print is an accurate rendering of a file and the file an accurate rendering of a scene. I have no doubt that soft proofing, gamut etc. will improve in inkjet, BUT that is a far cry from an expressive print, which requires an understanding of the materials, skill and creative print making, now and in the future.

I have to laugh at the people who say printing digitally is easy. I am a very good silver printer-aside from my own exhibit record I was commissioned twice by the Smithsonian to print images from the Civil Rights Movement. But I spend far more time making a digital print than I ever did making the hardest and best of my silver prints. Easy? What a joke. This will not change as the media matures, because I will just always want more and more out of the prints and work just as hard to reach my vision.

[Kirk Gittings]

Never forget that a darkroom print is an actual photograph - the visual manifestation of a chemical response to light (in this case - the actual light projected through a negative). An inkjet print is an interpretation of light that has been transformed into digital data and then reinterpreted as a series of ink blots. The darkroom print is an actual thing, the inkjet print is a recreation.

You guys are trying to hold on to a 19th century definition of a photograph! Language evolves. The definition of a photograph has evolved and changed. The tent is bigger now. Digital images are photographs. The dust settled on that question years ago

"A photograph (often shortened to photo) is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip."

I have good friends who will say a digital print is not a photograph. Where are there heads at? Tell that to 99.999% of the people out there who regularly see digital photographs authoritatively referred to as photographs in their local museums, galleries, photolabs, Facebook, Flicker.........everywhere! It is totally accepted except by this minute handful of diehard analogue photographers who want to hold onto a 19th century definition.

[Paul Kierstead]

Absolutely no technology ever devised will be able to automate things on its own.

I agree totally. But even *if* I were to allow that magically digital printing will wipe out the skill requirement, as some say, then I say it makes no difference; great work will still based on great vision.

Many many very great photographers have had others do their printing (who were clearly great craftsman and likely contributed to the artistic vision as well). For that matter, painters have others paint their work, and sculptors sometimes employ others to do their sculpting. Some photographers have others do the photographing (they are closer to director).

[Preston]

Drew wrote: "...you can only get so far unless craft and vision are essentially married, regardless of the medium"

'Married' is a good term. If craft and vision are antagonistic then the result may be less than desirable. If craft and vision are synergistic and compatible then, regardless of medium, the result will likely be seen as artful.

Just my 0.0002.

--P

[paulr]

My point was that in a a hypothetical case of two identical images, one digitally produced and one analogue, even if the images themselves are identical the connessieur of fine art will go for the analogue specifically because of the technique/materials/process.

This may be true, for some collectors, in this hypothetical situation. The real world rarely offers this choice, however. The choice is almost always made by the artists, based on issues like material availability, working methods that they prefer, and, most importantly, on which materials and techniques allow them to get their work done efficiently and effectively.

Someone might think, "process A may have more esoteric appeal, but process B will let me put more energy into the vision and less into the nuts and bolts." So the decision really gets made that way, not by two identical prints from different processes hanging side by side.

As to the broader point: while today there may not be much difference btween analogue and digital in the galleries, in the future there will be, since digital will become so ubiquitous that, like I said, any 12-year old can produce gallery quality prints.

Well, I don't know what a "gallery-quality" print is. A lot of work in galleries isn't concerned with print quality at all. It's concerned with something else ... generally vision-related. No tool can supply that.

But your point that analog (by which I'm assuming you mean silver prints and analog c-prints) will become more special as they become less mainstream is probably dead on. We've seen this before ... platinum used to be mainstream, before silver became ubiquitous and turned the older materials into "alternative processes." When something is pushed to the fringes, it becomes ripe for fetishization. I'm sure that will happen to silver and c-prints. It's started to happen to die sublimation.

Keep in mind that this phenomenon only takes hold in certain niches of the market. There's a single gallery in NYC that deals only with "alternative process" prints. Some galleries don't deal with them at all; they're more interested in emblems of newness.

(Incidentally I find it really ironic that Photoshop has a filter to make images look like film!)

Well, photoshop includes a lot of cheesy tools for art directors / drunk kids to play with. There's also a filter that tries to make a photo look like an impressionist painting. This stuff is all fun to play with, but is generally useleless beyond the realm of facebook.

[Toyon]

You guys are trying to hold on to a 19th century definition of a photograph! Language evolves. The definition of a photograph has evolved and changed. The tent is bigger now. Digital images are photographs. The dust settled on that question years ago

"A photograph (often shortened to photo) is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip."

I have good friends who will say a digital print is not a photograph. Where are there heads at? Tell that to 99.999% of the people out there who regularly see digital photographs authoritatively referred to as photographs in their local museums, galleries, photolabs, Facebook, Flicker.........everywhere! It is totally accepted except by this minute handful of diehard analogue photographers who want to hold onto a 19th century definition.

Kurt, you missed the point completely. Are you being obtuse or just addled? It is not about the definition of a photograph, but whether the thing is something actual and intrinsic, versus something that an interpreted replica. One can argue that the information in a chip is a "photograph", but the inkjet print is far removed from that.

You may be moderator, but you have no business arrogating who is backwards in their definition and who is forward thinking. You invoke the mob as proof of this, like the worst kind of panderer. I thought there was more substance to you.

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks for the snide remarks. They don't help your POV.

You said: "a darkroom print is an actual photograph" for that to have any meaning you have to define photograph, which you did "the visual manifestation of a chemical response to light". Plain and simple it is an outdated definition. Not in the future-but yesterday, last year, probably 5-10-15 years ago. I never said anything about being forward thinking. This point was long settled by the vast majority of photographers, manufacturers, curators, libraries, museums, general public etc. etc.

[Jim collum]

Kurt, you missed the point completely. Are you being obtuse or just addled? It is not about the definition of a photograph, but whether the thing is something actual and intrinsic, versus something that an interpreted replica. One can argue that the information in a chip is a "photograph", but the inkjet print is far removed from that.

You may be moderator, but you have no business arrogating who is backwards in their definition and who is forward thinking. You invoke the mob as proof of this, like the worst kind of panderer. I thought there was more substance to you.

It's not mob rule. The definition of what a photograph is considered has changed. *you* might not think so, but the rest of the world does . I'm not sure if one (or a very small percentage ) of the world believes that a computer is a person who adds, and has no relevance to what most use day in and out, makes everyone else addled and obtuse, and those who believe computers are what they are today are ruled by 'mob mentality'

An inkjet print is a tangible object. The fact that it was created with ink (a chemical) vs silver grain (another chemical) or dye transfer (yet another chemical) is irrelevant. they are all concrete objects.


Frankly, you can scream to the world in defiance that it's wrong.. an inkjet print has no value, it's not unique, it's only a copy. the decision as to it's worth has already been decided without you. if you get down to it, there's no way the ink drops can hit the paper the same way, every time. if you look at two inkjet prints, one printed a minute after the other.. they are *not* the same.. they're two separate objects.. and at some level, that difference can be determined. A *good* silver printer strives to do the same thing.. and the good ones can produce two prints that, to the eye, look identical. are these then, in fact, re-creations as well? You draw an arbitray line that's convenient to your way of doing things. The film and paper you use are machine made. Do you use an enlarger? did you make it? Have you mined your own silver, gathered your chemicals and combined them to make a developer & fixer for both your hand coated film made on glass you melted from sand?

In a generation, these conversation will be chuckled at.. just like the the rest, where photographs aren't art, mixed pigments will never produce a print that's equal to one with hand ground pigment, etc, etc.


I don't see where Kirk became insulting at all.. but it's usually obvious when a rational discussion becomes a 'religious' one.. and that's when one of the parties starts resorting to personal attacks and insults, rather than discussing.

[paulr]

Kurt, you missed the point completely. Are you being obtuse or just addled? It is not about the definition of a photograph, but whether the thing is something actual and intrinsic, versus something that an interpreted replica.

Ok, I'll bite. I'll be the obtuse and addled one. I'm very curious about the idea of a thing being "actual and intrinsic" vs. an "interpreted replica." Where did these terms come from? Are you quoting Hegel?

It's interesting to posit that photography, which was the most influential invention for making multiples (replicas?) since the advent of Guttenberg's press, is somehow outside the realm of the replica.

Or outside the realm of the interpreted. What interpretations are intrinsic to digital printing that aren't intrinsic to analog printing? I'm curious to know if you can even name a manipulation made possible by Photoshop that hadn't been done in the darkroom. In the 19th century.

[ret wisner]

what i would like to know is when did photography turn into a art form?

yeah sure there are necessary tweaks to manage overall dynamic range, after all our cameras do not have dynamic apertures, but i do not consider balancing a picture to be art, surely we should all become a little more faithful to our subject and stop desiring to play god over our subject matter

i certainly agree with true artists that photography (real photography that is) has no place amongst oil painters and sculptors

a camera can capture a artist at work but not take the place of a artist