One of Adams' major accomplishments was his insistence on producing the finest printed reproductions of photographs possible. He writes about this in one if his books. He worked with printers who used digital equipment to make great reproductions. He wrote that he was very interested in the possibilities of digital.
Perhaps Ansel Adams is the best authority on this question:
"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them."
From the Introduction to The Negative (1981).
It's interesting that a few of you have assumed that my reference to an 18 year old assistant pointed to a good looking female one. My comment was that only young folk seem to know how to work anything to do with computer software or digital imaging.
Edward might be the one to be with the 18 year old but she would be his model(and lover?), not his assistant! And he'd be using black and white film. Ansel over the road would be the one visiting with the digital images!
Jorge, it seems like you have a point here but you don’t :-)) See what the original question was;
“Does anyone doubt that Ansel Adams or Edward Weston would have embraced digital had they been alive today ? How would you speculate the flavour of their work to change ? ”
Ah, then perhaps it is another Geoffrey who wrote this in this thread:
digital tomorrow (B&W and Color).
everytime you post on this threads you say we all will be using PS in the future. BTW rather than buggies and cars I prefer to think some of us prefer fine wine as opposed to Gallo pink wine.
OTOH Adams would have no choice but to use digital at some point, I am sure all the makers of PS, digital backs, printers etc would be throwing stuff at his feet so he could try it and hopefully endorse it. Then again I can just see him at a workshop talking about proper exposure and people going "why bother, we can fix it in PS, we have so much more "control""....:-)
"Digitally produced . . . B&W prints do not come up to the high standards that they set with the prints that they [Adams & Weston] produced in their wet darkrooms." (From Eugene Singer.)
This is my belief as well. For my personal taste, nothing rivals a well made black and white silver print.
However, I imagine that digital b&w can be beautiful in its own way. I've seen some excellent art produced with quad-tone printing. After all, ink-based processes have a long history. What I find interesting is that, I don't believe digital necessarily has to rival silver-based images in order to replace them.
From looking at these posts and thinking back on reading, I think Adams would have loved to have had access to the newer technologies, but in their inception. He was, as already stated, deeply involved with the Polaroid process from the beginning. He found it to be a superb teaching tool, as it provided instant feedback to the beginner, with respect to exposure and subsequent print values. I think he would have been directly involved in its development and would have used his input to "push the limits" of its abilities for creative manipulation and output.
Weston on the other hand, would have been excluded to a large degree by financel considerations. He did not have the money to invest in newer technologies and untried processes. He knew what worked for him and would have used digital if 1) he could afford it and 2) it could be shown that the final product was superior to current results and methods.
Funny, but in some respects Weston was the conservative photographer (aside from somewhat bohemian tendencies) and Adams was a bit more of a maverick when it came to technology (albeit a bit more conservative with respect to family matters). Curious juxtaposition of two icons.
This was a much better question than I had thought when I first read it. Thanks, and more food for thought is always appreciated.
Well, I'll give this one a go too. What I've read of AA lends me to think he would embrace the digital workflow and in trying to think how it would affect his work would offer the following:
1) He might have gravitated towards digital medium format rather than LF digital capture. He had begun to use more MF later in his career and the advantages of digital MF in the field may have convinced him follow this route over LF. As much as it pains me to say this, the perspective corrections and depth of field controls that we all tout as LF advantages become somewhat moot when considering the greater depth of field of small formats and the perspective corrections available in Photoshop.
2) AA might have shot more images (!). From essays on his working habits its clear Adams shot a lot when he was in the field. The recent essay in view camera reinforces this and in some of his own writings he talks about running out of film. From discussions with other photographers who are making the transition to digital it is remarkable how many more images they shoot when the physical cost of film is no longer present. I could only imagine that when AA focused on a subject that he would have had a similar liberation to shoot more.
3) Outflow. My gut reaction is that AA would not have shot more color. In his writings he is pretty clear that the choice to shoot B&W was an artistic one. The method he would choose to produce these images is less clear. Given their impermanence, I don't think he would have used inkjet. I know that several manufacturers claim permanence for their products but I have a pile of supposedly "permanent" prints that tell me otherwise. Rather, for his fine art prints AA might have pursued the digital negative workflow ultimately producing a traditional contact printed silver print. With regard to mass production, an area that Adams dedicated considerable effort to improving, I imagine he might have followed a path similar to that of Lenswork with increased production values but on a mass scale.
As for Weston, my feeling is that method was part of his art and that he probably would not have embraced the digital workflow. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Take them FWIW. Great Discussion.
KK
Page 33 of the latest issue of Photo Techniques has an interesting article on exactly this topic. I would venture to guess that Ansel would have embraced the latest digital technology. In his autobiography (published near the end of his life) he wrote that if he were around in twenty years he would expect that many of his most expressive prints would be reproduced by some electronic means that would extract more information from his negatives than he ever could with the tools he had. His keen interest in the early development of the Polaroid process is also evidence of his forward-looking approach. I can't find it, but I remember he also wrote that he wished he could be around to witness the emerging technologies, or words to that effect. Check out http://www.phototechmag.com/current.htm
I dunno. Let me ask the group aasimilar Would Matthew Brady & Eugene Atget have embraced film over glass plates?
Thanks all for the thoughtful responses, I had hoped that the question was read in the spirit in which I had posed it i.e a question of embracing a particular medium and squeezing the best out of it - this is my interpretation of AA's philosophy, but I really wasn't sure about Edward Weston ...
Also, at what point would a particular medium be left behind to pursue another due better results and not ease of use.
It certainly wasn't meant to be a 'would AA or EW use film or digital' or put another way 'Nikon or Canon ....'
For me this folded in with the 'Chasing the Magic Bullet' article and my own personal philosophy, where photography helps me to find my own path to Nirvana ... anyways, whether it's digital/film, Nikon/Canon, each to his own.
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