Is Photography "Prints on Paper?"

[redrockcoulee]

What about photo etchings, photo serigraphs etc? Are they photographs or are they from the printmaking tradition. Lumpers and splitters as the taxonomists would say. A projected image may also be part of new media or installation so maybe it is more than the materials used to capture or present the image but also the context. I have no answers. My wife is trained as a printmaker and would consider photogravres as part of printmaking but then she is also a photographer and as she is starting to use LF she may change her mind

Any system of classification is artifical and thus can be argued.

[Louie Powell]

Many years ago, there was a debate in a local camera club over the issue of whether photograms could be entered into club competitions.

The main opponent of photograms objected to them on the basis that a camera-made negative was not required to make them, therefore they didn't qualify as photographs and shouldn't be allowed in competition.

Frankly, a discussion about whether only 'prints on paper' qualify as photographs strikes me as just as ludicrous as that camera club argument.

The only outcome of this kind of argument is to trivialize photography. .

[Ash]

I considering a Photograph a printed, hard copy, something tangible.

I considering a Photo as any form if non-printed or non-tangible. So it's a "Digital Photo" as opposed to a "Photographic Print".

[Marko]

Would Shakespeare be any less valuable had he written his works on a computer and saved them on a disk instead of using a quill to permanently (?) imprint his handiwork on a piece of paper?

Does the use of a computer make a written word somehow less valuable, less "written", less of a "word" or all of the above just because there is no "permanent" record?

And how is it a record that can be replicated exactly, effortlessly and ad nauseam less permanent than an imprint on a veritably degradable medium using chemically unstable inks, pigments or other stain-producing materials?

[Marko]

Reading this recent thread, I cannot but wonder how could that not be photography at its finest?

I don't really see how could the act of shooting them on film and printing them on a piece of paper make them any more powerful or emotional nor can I see why would they be less of an art simply because of the choice of material.

Any takers?

[Kirk Gittings]

"I don't really see how could the act of shooting them on film and printing them on a piece of paper make them any more powerful or emotional nor can I see why would they be less of an art simply because of the choice of material."

Any takers?"

Or simply more valid as photography in the finest traditions aesthetically of the medium.

[Clay Turtle]

The image is the photograph. The image is the image no matter what substrate it's on. Colloid on, silver bromide, ink or plasma screen. If we start considering the substrate our art, we will be like the guy in the Dire Straits song who hangs an empty canvas on the wall and calls it art.

Well, that is your thoughts but it would tend to see the blank canvas as the personification of a museum containing monitors ( hi-def or not) without any any art.

[Oren Grad]

Reading this recent thread, I cannot but wonder how could that not be photography at its finest?

I don't really see how could the act of shooting them on film and printing them on a piece of paper make them any more powerful or emotional nor can I see why would they be less of an art simply because of the choice of material.

Any takers?

I think this is something of a straw man. People make photographs, and view photographs, for many different reasons and with many different purposes. Some of these reasons and purposes don't depend on the particulars of capture and presentation, while some of them do.

[Marko]

I think this is something of a straw man. People make photographs, and view photographs, for many different reasons and with many different purposes. Some of these reasons and purposes don't depend on the particulars of capture and presentation, while some of them do.

Precisely.

Some among us, however, seem to claim that only images captured on film and wet-printed on paper represent "real" photography while dismissing everything else.

My long-standing view is that photography is primarily a method or a medium for conveying information by visual means, be it factual information or photographer's emotion at the time of capture, and that the actual materials and/or technology used is much less important, as long as it was captured by using a camera with lens on one end and light-sensitive material on the other.

There will be more and more photographers like Mr. Katz who use entirely modern technology for both capturing and displaying their work as we go forward and I would like to hear an intelligent explanation of why their work should not be considered photography.

[Ralph Barker]

I think it is perfectly OK, and probably to be expected, for creators of images to have differing opinions on the matter. The ultimate arbiter, however, is probably the person who signs the check.