RE: [Leica] Digital darkroom - when isn't it photography?

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

A great topic, Adam -
First, the image manipulation question:

Image manipulation has always been possible - the Russians were masters at
it - piss off Stalin and you disappear from the photo and from history. And
Russians aside, remember all the conspiracy theories about the photo of Lee
Harvey Oswald holding his rifle, with people claiming that the shadow was
wrong, and that the image had been manipulated?

Obviously, today's technology - Photoshop - makes the manipulation of images
much easier, and much harder to detect. Which means that we can't trust
photos to "tell the truth," as we once did. But then Susan Sontag would
argue that photos have never "told the truth."

Sontag aside, however - and please, shove Sontag aside ;-) - I would suggest
that we can trust the integrity of photos in those publications and places
whose general integrity we trust. If you trust the New York Times, for
instance - and let's skip the politics for the moment - then you can trust
the New York Times not to manipulate its photos. If you don't trust the New
York Times, then you can worry about whether it's images are manipulated.

What will be really interesting to see is what happens when photos are
introduced as evidence in criminal trials - can they be successful
challenged on the grounds that even your average computer literate
12-year-old can now "fake" evidence?

- ----

As to the question of what is or isn't photography, or when photography
becomes graphic arts. Here I would suggest that if you use Photoshop to do
what you can do - with much more time, pain, and effort, in the darkroom,
then we are simply talking about a technological shift, an improvement, if
you will: burn, dodge, darken, lighten, increase and decrease contrast, get
rid of dust spots and scratches, etc....It's all part of the photographic
process. Photography didn't become something other than photography with the
introduction of glass plates, or cut film, or color film. And so it is with
this - capture an image through a lens, reproduce that image, and it's
photography. Start changing that image by adding details to it, or taking
them from it, or moving them around- i.e., the pyramids, or your mother's
cousin, and your into graphic design and other forms of visual art that use
photographs as a starting point.

At least that's how I see it - which doesn't prove anything other than -
that's the way I see it. ;-)

B. D.

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Adam Bridge
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 1:11 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: [Leica] Digital darkroom - when isn't it photography?


I spend increasing time in the darkroom these days - but also time in front
of the computer in Photoshop. I'm not sure which I like better. In a way I
feel more like an artist in the darkroom than I do interacting with the
computer. Developing my own film, making prints, working to get the effect
I want -- it's all "analog".

In the digital world though -- sometimes I can't tell where the photography
stops and the graphic arts begins, if that makes any sense.

Hanging in the gallery of The Darkroom, where I print, there are a
collection of color works, some of which to me are no longer the work of a
photographer but instead are in some other medium that includes
photographic elements. It's definately ART and I admire it. But it doesn't
seem like photography to me. At some point the digital manipulation has
changed things so much that it has become a new field.

Thinking about this - it's as if many photographs were cut up and pasted
together to make a work of art - I wouldn't call it photography or I guess
a photograph. I guess this means that I see a photographer's work as
starting with an image and the result being, somehow, an expression of an
image.

I can see, as I read this, that I am unable to frame the issue adequately,
but I thought the group might find it worth discussing.

And let me add one other red herring to this and I'll aim it at BD. How, in
an age where all our news reportage is digital, do we know what is REAL? A
few minutes in Photoshop and National Geographic moved the pyramids. Are
our images now less trustworthy because of the ease in which they are
manipulated? How does an editor know that the images they are working with
are REAL? That a key piece of background hasn't been edited out to
transform the meaning of an image. I used to have more faith in TV footage
because it was so much more difficult to edit in this fashion - but now an
hour in Final Cut Pro or After Effects and you can COMPLETELY change the
nature of a video image.

Or maybe we should stick to single malt scotches. I like McCallen myself.

AB
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