Is Photography "Prints on Paper?"

[Richard Raymond]

This idea came to me from another thread in the forum discussing photography book publishing. While the use of the web is becoming more accepted for many it is not clear how electronic publishing of images is viewed. More to my point, if a museum or gallery used high definition screens around the walls to display photographic images rather than using mounted prints should it still be considered a "Photo Gallery"?

[Vaughn]

There are many ways to display a photograph.

A photograph on paper, or some other type of substrate, is a photographic print. It can get on the substrate in many different ways...directly in the camera (transparencies, some of the alt processes, etc), or printed on the subtrate (contacted or enlarged onto silver gelatin or color paper), or transfrerred onto the substrate (polaroids, carbon prints, etc), or inked on (bromoil, photogravear), or spurted onto paper by an inkjet printer, or several other methods

A photograph on a monitor is a digital or a video photographic display.

So if a Photo Gallery displays photographs using a wall full of monitors, it qualifies as a Photo Gallery...it just does not exhibit photographic prints.

Vaughn

[tim atherton]

Is a projected transparency not a photograph?

[Maris Rusis]

A photograph is the thing that bears marks (hopefully accumulating to a recognisable representation of something) as a consequence of being struck by light. Everything else is a picture, image, print, display, or depiction of one sort or another.

Only a gallery that shows light-struck objects truly qualifies as a photo-gallery. As a sometime (long retired) director of a actual commercial photo-gallery it was always a point of tension in balancing the buying impulses of the well-heeled public against their misidentification of ink-jets (say) or off-set printed posters as genuine photographs.

I never compromised and the gallery did well, except financially. Had I been more venal I would have espoused the attitude that I don't care what it is. If you call it a photograph and I get your retail dollar then it's a deal!

[Richard Raymond]

Vaughn,
OK, so now I am using photoshop or some other software and after processing go to print the image. One of my printer options in my installed printer list is adobe acrobat creating a .pdf file. So the verb "to print" seems to include electronic capture as well as some form of physical output. From your description the noun "print" means image on some physical surface. Why can't we say that the electrons are the "ink" and the display is the physical surface and that we are therefore creating a new kind of "Print". Are we caught in a vocabulary transition here as the new digital elements to photography move into what has been considered "traditional" photography? Is the vocabulary problem creating problems in how we think about displaying images in new ways?
Ric

[Vaughn]

Is a projected transparency not a photograph?

Forgot that one! How about a photograph of a projected photograph projected onto a photograph...that is then projected onto a photograph?

I guess I should have but in a disclaimer that my list is probably incomplete.

Vaughn

[paulr]

Only a gallery that shows light-struck objects truly qualifies as a photo-gallery.

that might be your definition, but it's not a definition i see being used by galleries, curators, critics, historians, etc. etc...

i've never seen it suggested, for example that a photogravure is not a photograph.

on the other hand, i know a few people who use photo materials, light, and chemistry to make work that is distinctly unphotographic. they paint with light and chemistry on photo paper. these are objects that bear images from being "struck with light," but the images were not formed optically. this work would more likely be curated as 'works on paper,' while every major collection i know of calls a gravure, a carbon print, a gum bichromate print, or an inkjet print a photograph ... even though the print medium itself was not "struck by light."

[stehei]

For me, prints behind museum glass add a dimension to photography displays can give,
no matter what definition one uses, it does that for me.

In the pro world a digital workflow is standard, I recently sat at an editors desk with prints, and he was surprised on how sharp and vivid the prints were. It has become a monitor to monitor to cmyk press process!

one funny thing on chemical photograhpy, I see a lot of colleages returning to film, missing depth in their digital files. I did too!

stefan

[Mark Sawyer]

In fine art photography, the traditional "original print" has the value of being the object produced by the artist's own hand. That gives it an artifact value which is quite important, especially in the gallery/museum/collector venues. Also, it is usually a step (or more) in quality above all other reproductions of it.

But with so many options for how to show images, the traditional standards might be shifting...

[tim atherton]

In fine art photography, the traditional "original print" has the value of being the object produced by the artist's own hand. That gives it an artifact value which is quite important, especially in the gallery/museum/collector venues. Also, it is usually a step (or more) in quality above all other reproductions of it.

But with so many options for how to show images, the traditional standards might be shifting...

many "fine art" photographers (that is, photographers whose work is/was exhibited as fine art) often displayed prints that weren't produced by their own hand.