LF Purity

[John Kasaian]

This is difficult to explain, but imagine you are making La Pietà today... You can make a digital model, then using 5-Axis machining, if the sculpture is not sound you can modify the digital file and "print" it again with a click.

Michelangelo Buonarroti did it in a different way, the sculpture was inside the boulder and he only had to remove the stone on it. Quite easy, just hitting the boulder with a hammer. This is a kind of purity.

I like this!

[faberryman]

Religion has nothing to do with it.

Religion has everything to do about it.

[Pere Casals]

Religion has everything to do about it.

Frank, this is not about religion, but about some poetry.

The image is in the light, it leaves a footprint in the medium. We can be respectful with that light and enjoy that authenticity.

Other people may prefer filling an SD card with many raw files, and be pushing buttons in the back of a camera, navigating in the menus to get a very good image.

YMMV.

[faberryman]

Frank, this is not about religion, but about some poetry.

The image is in the light, it leaves a footprint in the medium. We can be respectful with that light and enjoy that authenticity.

Other people may prefer filling an SD card with many raw files, and be pushing buttons in the back of a camera, navigating in the menus to get a very good image.

YMMV.

Like I said, it has everything to do with religion. Notice the mocking button pushing references.

[Heroique]

…This is not about religion, but about some poetry … YMMV.

A thoughtful post, plus I enjoyed your earlier comparison between Michelangelo's imagined figure inside the un-chiseled stone, and the LFer's visualized image before shutter snap. A purity of sorts in each case.

You've mentioned poetry – below is another take on the association between LF purity and poets…

???????????? Saint Ansel ??????????????

If AA were reading this thread, perhaps he'd reply with a variation of the following remark to a friend about purity:

"The significance of the objects of nature, the significance which concerns poets, dreamers, conservationists and citizens-at-large, relates to the 'presence of nature.' This is mood, the magic of personal experience, the awareness of a certain purity of condition." (Source: Letter to William Colby, the conservationist, 1952 – not William Colby, the 1970's Director of Central Intellgence!)

AA's role as LF photographer falls, I think, under each of the general groups he names.

[Michael Graves]

Royal Pan film in DK50.

[Pere Casals]

Like I said, it has everything to do with religion. Notice the mocking button pushing references.

Frank, that potential "moking" is because of my personal preferences, not because of a religion. Some may prefer the amazing power of digital technology, other simply don't need/want that at all, and other may like both ways. Not that difficult...

[Pere Casals]

the un-chiseled stone...

Please, let me post it:

[Mark Sawyer]

I take Large Format Purity very seriously. I only use distilled water for the developer...

[Doremus Scudder]

This is difficult to explain, but imagine you are making La Pietà today... You can make a digital model, then using 5-Axis machining, if the sculpture is not sound you can modify the digital file and "print" it again with a click.

Michelangelo Buonarroti did it in a different way, the sculpture was inside the boulder and he only had to remove the stone on it. Quite easy, just hitting the boulder with a hammer. This is a kind of purity.

The simplest tools require the greatest skill. But is that purity?

Purity implies a thing uncontaminated, undiluted, without extra ingredients. Pure steel is a contradiction in terms; it is an alloy.

Pure can also mean simple, reduced to only essential elements (in the Aristotelian sense).

One could, I suppose, think of a process reduced to its bare essentials as "pure." In this sense, Michelangelo's and Edward Weston's methods could be considered close to this ideal, but then, it's only the process that ends up being "pure," not necessarily the images themselves, since the subject matter can't be so easily reconciled with this concept of purity.

I wonder whether the word can even accurately be applied to image-making. Are there a lot of impure images out there with which we can contrast a pure one?

Expressing a concept or idea succinctly and with the greatest economy of means might be considered pure. But then, is that necessarily better? I don't think we can make that value judgment easily either.

I don't think much about "purity" when I photograph, rather expressiveness. I like economy of means and try to be direct and unmanipulative when image-making, but I don't think that makes me or my images pure in any sense I'm familiar with.

Best,

Doremus