Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/10/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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