Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/10/30

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Digital is not photography (long)
From: ARTHURWG@aol.com
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 09:19:24 EST

While it's true that digital process has taken over the real world of imaging 
(product, photography, advertising, daily news), it is also true that it is 
misplaced to call it "photography." Eventually, so-called "digital 
photography" will be renamed.  We don't call "video tape"  film anymore, do 
we? And we don't call automobiles "buggies". "Photography" is a 
chemical/mechanical craft-process that uses 150-year-old  technology. 
   All "photography," as we have come to know it,  is now retro. It is 
virtually an antiquarian pursuit. This is why I say that the "future of 
photography" is in its past; it will include  the use of hand-made papers and 
film, alternative and "obsolete" printing methods, the pinhole camera, wet 
plates, even the Leica "O."  It will continue to be great fun and a worthy 
enterprise.
    But the digital manipulation of photographic prints and negatives is a 
"crime against photography." The worst crime is the digital montage of 
photographic images, which at best is some kind of "illustration"  and at 
worst (and most commonly) simply the latest form of visual and intellectual 
pollution, IMHO.  Arthur

Replies: Reply from "clive sanbrook" <clive.sanbrook@virgin.net> (Re: [Leica] Digital is not photography (was long - shorter but still off topic))
Reply from Jean Marc Becker <jean-marc.becker@wanadoo.fr> (Re: [Leica] Digital is not photography (long))
Reply from "Mark Rutledge" <markrut@ticnet.com> (Re: [Leica] Digital is not photography (long))