Is a scanned bw neg really art

[Lachlan717]

Large Format Photography Australia is a special place for special photography. There are plenty of other sites to go for intellect-free picture sharing.

Let me get this right.

As I don't print via darkroom, you're saying that I'm intellect-free? And/or that my PHOTOGRAPHS are intellect-free?

I really need you to clarify this.

[Ray Heath]

Maris, I almost follow what you posted, and reluctantly agree to some of it, but your last sentence is just too confrontational.

How can you assert that any image not created and presented "in" a light sensitive surface is "intellect-free"?

Secondly;
By your definiton am I to assume that cyanotypes, Van Dyke brown prints, platinum prints, etc are somehow lacking because thay don't have a sensitive surface but rather a sensitive layer of paper fibres?

[Alastair Moore]

In an ideal world (that might be presenting itself sooner rather than later), I'd be printing my negatives on light sensitive paper. At the moment, given my living situation, the only option I have to enlarge my negatives is to use a light sensitive charge coupled device that converts light into binary values.

I use similar techniques to the traditional dodge and burn (albeit using a mouse), adjust contrast and sharpen negatives into a presentation that allows me to spray ink onto paper, giving an analog output. It is only the final output that is not a light sensitive process but it's still an analog process. I'm basically working within the available means and am (in my opinion) producing high quality, fine art prints as a result.

My goal is to use traditional methods from start to finish, as I believe that it would give the subjects I shoot a little more respect than processing and printing methods I'm currently using but I in no way believe what I'm producing isn't photography.

Maris very kindly sent my a print a few months ago, which I hold in very high regard and is hung proudly on one of the walls of my apartment. It's absolutely wonderful, and even more so knowing the effort that he went through to produce such a print. But I'm not sure I would agree that the digital prints (which are really analog prints) are intellect-free. It was a different process I went through to make a hard copy of my negatives but still an intellectual process all the same. It's just a "different" process.

I'm torn because I would rather print using traditional methods - I'd ideally be shooting wet plates or daguerreotypes if I could - but logistically I'm unable, at the moment, due to lack of facilities to set up an enlarger and everything that goes with it. I've basically got to deal with what I have.

Which is a scanner (an Epson V700) and an inkjet printer (a very good inkjet printer - Epson 3880). It's just different, rather than inferior.

I hope you (Maris) understand where I'm coming from because I do highly respect the work you do, but right now I'm unable to use traditional methods from start to finish but still believe some of the work, at least, is of some quality (not all of it!).

[Alastair Moore]

And just to add, I find the discussion very interesting and enjoy the difference of opinion!

[Andrew Nichols]

I would conclude that of course it is art
A rock is art
Why not high end computing.
Silly to even mention it
I guess I am a glutton for punishment and am stuck in the romantic notion
Of chemistry. Alchemy etc
But I think it is offensive to suggest it is not art. Art cant be defined by medium
Art is infinite after all.

[RoganJosh]

Visual arts are visual and they should never be more than that. As long as the quality is discernible on a fine level and it is an artist original, who gives a shib how it was made?

[Maris]

Large Format Photography Australia is a special place for special photography. There are plenty of other sites to go for intellect-free picture sharing.

Let me get this right.

As I don't print via darkroom, you're saying that I'm intellect-free? And/or that my PHOTOGRAPHS are intellect-free?

I really need you to clarify this.

The majority of picture sharing sites are intellect-free in terms of photographic awareness. With few exceptions they work on the inclusive but undiscerning basis (Cockney accent, please) "Leave it out guv'ner. It's all just pitchers innit?" And the pictures, if they are remotely realistic looking, are inevitably dubbed "photographs" rather than being called as they actually are. Learning about the various kinds of pictures requires mildly effortful study and is predictably unpopular. Rather it is the easy and intellect-free road that is taken and the signposts along this road read: "different" is "the same", "looks like" means "same as", and "saying so makes it so".

There's nothing remotely intellect-free about making ink-jet prints. The process is in truth a wonderful mechanisation of painting and drawing with the same challenges and opportunities. These older forms have, over the last 800 years, generated the treasures of Western Art and I think ink-jet printing will surely dazzle the world in the next 800. Even beyond the printing of material pictures the fabrication of electronic files for display screens may become the dominant form of picture-making. And it will require real genius to be outstanding. Imagine competing against a billion talented, energetic, and inspired artists all cooking files in Photoshop.

Photography is not ink-jet printing, monitor displays, or picture-making done any-which-way, "different" is not "the same". Photographs come into existence via the light sensitivity of the materials of which they are made and as a consequence they claim a unique relationship to subject matter and offer a unique relationship to the discerning viewer.

[Maris]

Maris, I almost follow what you posted, and reluctantly agree to some of it, but your last sentence is just too confrontational.

How can you assert that any image not created and presented "in" a light sensitive surface is "intellect-free"?

Secondly;
By your definiton am I to assume that cyanotypes, Van Dyke brown prints, platinum prints, etc are somehow lacking because thay don't have a sensitive surface but rather a sensitive layer of paper fibres?

Well, right down at the microscopic level cyanotypes, Van Dykes, platinotypes, gum bichromates, etc do emerge from the sensitised surfaces of individual substrate fibres. The sensitiser may be adsorbed or held by electrostatic or hydrogen bonds or (more Likely) Van de Waals' forces. The substrate fibres (often alpha-cellulose) are a convenient but inert support for the actual photo-chemical reactions.

I'm willing to assert that any image created out of non-light-sensitive materials is intellect-free to the extent that it is deemed a photograph.

[Maris]

Visual arts are visual and they should never be more than that. As long as the quality is discernible on a fine level and it is an artist original, who gives a shib how it was made?

It is possible to mount a case in the visual arts that the "arts process" takes place in the mind rather than in the eye. One important ingredient in fully appreciating a work of art is an awareness of the medium used.

Artists, photographers even, choose particular media for their expressive potential. Someone choosing to do a cyanotype rather than a Fujichrome has something in mind. And I think it enhances the viewers experience to ponder on that choice.

A photographer in pursuit of singular images will choose to do direct positives, tintypes, or Daguerreotypes and communicate the inherent rarity of these things to the aware viewer. Or someone else will do multiple gelatin-silvers to celebrate their ubiquity.

Making a photograph is to some extent a performance art. The work-flow in wet-plate work is very different to Polaroid instant snaps and the final picture encodes the creative journey the photographer traversed. A sensitive viewer may be well repaid by making a parallel journey; in their mind at least.

A photograph sometimes accrues particular value on the technicalities of its making. The large format camera permits direct inspection of the real optical image furnished by the lens. The very structure of this image, soft focus, tilted focal plane, image circle vignetting, and so on becomes an expressive device. The miniature camera can capture spontaneous subject matter and what it captures becomes the expressive device. Ignorance of the photographic medium shuts off all those insights.

To view pictures without awareness of the medium (and its implications) risks passive incuriosity, an idle suspension of disbelief, and a shallow impression that the first thing seen is all there is. Give me the photographer's biography, full details of the medium and the subject matter, and the aesthetic circumstances of the creative act. Merely acknowledging content is not enough.

[Lachlan717]

Photography is not ink-jet printing, monitor displays, or picture-making done any-which-way, "different" is not "the same". Photographs come into existence via the light sensitivity of the materials of which they are made and as a consequence they claim a unique relationship to subject matter and offer a unique relationship to the discerning viewer.

Obviously, I think that our opinions differ, as I think this is bullshit.

I also take umbrage at your assertion about "discerning viewers". What a pompous claim.

Your theory falls apart when digital negatives are considered. Captured on "light sensitive" film, processed via Photoshop, ink-jet printed onto clear base and then contact printed onto "light sensitive" media. You would have no way of knowing that a contact print was from a good digital negative, no matter how "descerning" you believe you are.