[Leica] The negative as positive

[abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge)]

I'm going to disagree with you for, while there is a concrete reality
that underlies a photographic image, that reality might have to be
coaxed into existence.

Take Kyle's work that was posted here this week. That young lady
flying off with her umbrella happened because Kyle made it happen. He
made many decisions about who, where, how, what: all put together to
make an image, then processed (I'm assuming) in Photoshop or some
similiar program to be ultimately rendered for viewing.

If any of us were given access to Ansel's negatives (hahaha) we'd have
our chance to take his fundamental composition, now frozen into the
negative, and use our own skills to create a print which might or
might not look like anything Ansel produced. A year ago I saw a
"contact print" (I guess a contact slide) of Moonrise, Hernandez, NM
and it is very clear that the recipe to produce the final print is a
very complex document indeed!

At least that's how my more literal mind sees it.

Adam