Erwin: "Photography does not exist anymore!"

[Spearhead]

Lots of nostalgia in that last post...there are thousands of weddings that were poorly shot in the past, I've seen plenty of them in family albums going back to the glory days of Time/Life. What was worse was that some are poorly exposed and/or focused, something that is much less common nowadays. Many photographers were hired simply to get a picture - with digital, that is much easier, and that is what people are paying for. They aren't paying for art, for composition, they are paying for mnemonics.

 

Cellphone cams are the next step in the increasing democratization of photography. For the last hundred plus years, photography has been about making it more available to more people. Most people just want to see what things look like (a very Winogrand view of things) and don't think of photography as art.

 

Of course there is the whole elitist movement that completely rejects the notion of photography as something for everybody, and that is the bleating we are hearing here.

[terry_rory]

<i>"In the past people knew what a good photo was because they got thier news form the likes of Time/Life/Look/Stern, etc."</i>

 

Yes, once some over contrasty and grainy B&W print (developed and printed in a hotel bedroom by some stringer) had been drum faxed 5000 miles on some ancient steam driven device from the local Reuters office, the images looked rather 'spiffy'! I have seen photographs in Picture Post from the 1940s and 1950s that looked appalling compared to the same (original prints) at an exhibition or even digitally scanned and printed in a modern book.

 

I doubt that many people would swap the photo-reproduction technologies of those mid 20th century publications for those in use today.

 

The technology is not in doubt. How can it be? Photographers currently enjoy the choice of the finest digital AND film technology and their photographs can be reproduced anywhere, in any publication in the world, with no loss of quality.

 

Maybe what is needed are fine photographers capable of making inspiring work?

 

Going back to over half a century ago only a relatively select few could afford the finest optics and cameras and the services of great printers. Most people (the public) could not even afford colour film or a half decent camera let alone the opportunity (or money) to travel. So the average magazine reader was more easily impressed by the gulf between the magazine photos and their own.

 

A competent and trained photographer was almost guaranteed a living and a great photographer was certain of publication. Now the world contains four or five times more people and a greater proportion of all those people can afford photographic technology equivalent to (and superior) that that existed only at a rarified 'level' a few generations ago.

 

Because of cheaper, better technology and differences in access to education and the explosion in the visual media industry over the last 60 years there is a glut of imagery and image makers and even the ordinary person can make photos that exceed the technical standards of what was printed in magazines of old. To stand out as a 'great' takes a lot more today than it ever did in such a crowded field.

 

Another important element of what makes the old photographer's work 'great' to our tastes is that it depicts a world now gone forever. This adds a romanticism and nostalgia that no modern photograph or photographer can achieve. (Not until their work is also 50 or 60 years old of course.) Some photography, like wine, has to age before it's greatness comes through.

[Brad_]

Hah! It's really funny watching those afraid of and threatened by cellphone cams. OMG,

everyone can take pix now... :=(

[michael_hassoun3]

The so called philosophy developed by Erwin lacks IMHO a rational approach, Digital is great but I still shoot film because I don't want to mess with constant multiple backups and I want the ability to cheaply print archival silver prints (go try to make an exhibition base on these digital printers without a mortage).

On the other hand, I invite all of those that say that the medium is nothing and only the Eye and the Vision count to have a look at the PN homepage. almost all the pictures presented here (while looking great for a lot of them) have that "perfect" look, super sharpness ans silky grades of color. You know what, I liked it for a while but I now found it distracting. The medium swift to digital, had, in my opinion an important impact on the way people see, post process, and present their pictures. And the result is a step back from the sense of reality these pictures give. Can be nice on occasion but at the end of the day, I found it boring.

[rick_campbell]

Yeah, I sure miss the good old days when I hand built my Altair 8800 computer and would enter the color dazzler program with the front panel switches. Now you just order a Dell and click on an icon. That's not real computing!

 

Hmmm. Maybe it's the difference between having a hobby or a tool useful to the average person. This is what I think when people beat the film vs digital horse. Sure, I love my Leica but the wife is tired of all those bags of prints laying around of the Grandkids. Why not buy a little digital then we can just print what we want and keep the rest or delete them, she says. Why not indeed? If the goal for the average person is some nice snaps of the grandkids instead of the so called fine art I've tried to make for years, why not indeed?

[tom_murray2]

+1 what Jeff Spirier said. I'm not doubting Mr. Todrick is speaking from his own scope of experience, but if someone today compares a pro's work to there cellphone, in the past the same person would've compared to there plastic-lensed Instamatic and developing from K-Mart.

[albert_smith]

<I>...but if someone today compares a pro's work to there cellphone,...</I><P>

 

Well here is one photogrpaher that has just had a one-woman show of photos shot with her cell phone. She was a regular SLR shooter that one day only had with her the phone and needed to capture something. It opened her eyes to that tiny phone camera that she dismissed as "not good enough", and she did a volume of work with it. So the prints are not huge. There is no selective focus. But working within the limitations of the cell phone camera, she made photos good enough (based on someone's opinion) to be shown and sold. Take a look:

 

<a href=" http://www.drkrm.com/urbanabstracts.html "> background story </a>,

 

<a href=" http://www.drkrm.com/abstracts.html

"> photos </a>

[lee_shively]

Photography flourishes today. We are oversaturated with it from every angle. Most of it sucks, just like it always has, and I suspect there is more sucking photography today than ever before because there are more people displaying their poorly made pictures than ever before. There are more places to display crappy pictures today, you know. We have dumbed down photography but it's not a recent phenomenon. It's been going on since George Eastman came up with the "you push the button and we'll do the rest". It used to be the Brownie, now it's Photoshop.

 

What I find amusing as well as distressing (and pretty sad, as well) is the number of people who portray themselves as photographers because they know Photoshop and computer use. I'm not surprised to hear the story of the new photographer who lacked basic photographic knowledge of depth-of-field. She probably knows a helluva lot about computers though. That and a digital camera makes you a photographer.

 

Today I'm waiting for the UPS guy to deliver a Canon EOS 30D. I realized sometime ago that there are advantages to digital but I hesitated to involve myself in digital photography mainly due to the massive amount of crappy, over-processed, over-manipulated, Photoshopped-to-death photos I see on Photonet and all other photo sites with galleries. But using a digital camera doesn't guarantee crappy pictures. It only enables their abundance.

[bobtodrick]

Okay here's my example.

Eugene Smith. Life. Minimata.

Show me one case of cell-phone photography...or anything in what passes for new magazines today to have the far ranging effects that one photo essay had.

 

 

Those of you who are so quick to point out the 'democratization' of photography...which I've actually said nothing about. What I'm talking about is the fact that there are few mass market venues that showcase good photography that eventually we will forget what GOOD photography looks like (I really don't give a whig whether bad imagery comes from a cell phone or an Instamatic). But in the past most people realized that there 'snaps' were 'snaps'...now they thing it's good photography.

 

Blather!!...And you can spout all you want how the good stuff is all there on facebook and utube...middle America doesn't care about that stuff boys (and girls), and as bitter a pill as it may be to swallow, though they may be the ones that cause a lot of the worlds problems...they're also the ones (cash and visibility) to maybe cure some of the worlds ills.

 

Sorry guys, you may tire of the 'luddite' views some express here...I'm just as tired of the 'it's new and tecky...it must be from god!'

[terry_rory]

What does 'middle America' have to do with this?

[bobtodrick]

Tevor...the stuff that is usually hauled out here is the proliferation (mostly in the hands of the young...under 30) of cellphone cameras, YourTube, Facebook...all the new technologies.

 

By 'middle america' I mean the majority of western culture...30-55 year old people who, whether you like to admit it or not are the real power brokers in our society...they have the money, the position and the visiblity. And the vast majority of them wouldn't know a YouTube from a T.V. tube.

 

Many here spout the wonders of the new media/medium/technology. Well it's 'new technology' that has given us the cold war (now seemingly 'in' again), global warming, and huge invasion of privacy issues.

 

I guess if all that is your idea of progress...have at 'er.

[terry_rory]

OK a few observations. William Eugene Smith photographed the 'Minimata' essay using a Minolta SRT-101 and lenses (especially a 16mm f/2.8) and not a Leica. Even his (Leitz) Enlarger used a Minolta lens.

 

These cameras (and many millions of others in the 1970s) used Mercury batteries which were banned for the very same reasons that you see illustrated so strikingly in his essay, namely Mercury poisoning working through the foodchain !

 

He also printed all his own work and especially liked to use ferricyanide to bleach his prints. Also harmful to aquatic organisms and especially fish if it makes it's way to the sea or the local river.

 

So there is some irony there that his 1970s Japanese camera technology depended upon mercury batteries and his workflow was also potentially hazardous to aquatic life.

[terry_rory]

"the wonders of the new media/medium/technology. Well it's 'new technology' that has given us the cold war"

 

Cold war technology has it's origins going back to the turn of the 20th century and even earlier. It was technology perfected by people born in the 19th century.

[Brad_]

>>> What I find amusing as well as distressing (and pretty sad, as well) is the number of

people who portray themselves as photographers because they know Photoshop and

computer use.

 

What I find amusing as well as distressing (and pretty sad, as well) is the number of people

who portray themselves as photographers because they purchased a leica.

[tom_murray2]

"But in the past most people realized that there 'snaps' were 'snaps'...now they thing it's good photography."

 

I don't know what "most people" (how many people are there all told, more than a trillion?) realize, but most people I meet know the difference between a fine photograph (regardless of the subject matter)and a 'snap'. They can't always describe why they think so, but they know.

[bobtodrick]

Trevor...please don't trot out the mercury battery, chemisty crap...I'm sure you've read the stats on how much lead is being dumped into the ecosystem due to the 'need' to upgrade your monitor/computer every two years.

 

Guess what...just as most states/provinces require you to recycle your monitor...the same holds true for batteries.

 

Geeez.

[bobtodrick]

Tom...let me guess...you hang around a bunch of artsy/college types (and I admit I am quessing here)

 

I remember a conversation I had with a female aquaintence of mine a couple of years ago. I made the assertion that most men were pretty decent types these days and believed in equality of the sexes and all that. Her response ran along the lines 'you believe it Bob, and you your friends believe it...but go to your local meatmarket bar any Fri/Sat night and watch all the jerks trying to pick up women'.

 

Touche!

 

I'm going by my experiences...I deal with, on average probably 20-30 people every day requiring photo assistance. Some are pros, many are not. You'd be surprised how many people come to me, who, other than a well paying job have no reason to own a DSLR show me some mighty crappy images that in there opinion are magazine quality.

 

I've been doing this over 20 years (hell, sold my first camera in 1974)...the percentage of people who think there stuff is 'art' has vastly increased.

 

The amount of real 'art' has pretty much remained the same.

[peteradownunder]

Well I am happy doing <i>digiography</i> and printing <i>digiographs</i> after a few vodkas everything looks like art to me.

[ron_breeze2]

Does anyone really care what EP thinks?

[scott_hayden3]

Whew! All these zealots. The last time I contributed to a thread along the same lines I got chewed up. I'm glad to see all the natives have gotten a hold on themselves and tempers don't run as hot as they did then.

 

Keep the faith...buy film..lots of it. Let them know you don't want them to go away (the manufactures).

[nesrani]

What I find amusing (but not distressing or sad) is the number of people who take themselves so damn seriously.

[funkag]

It's the same old generational battle that goes along with any major change. Some people still swear by their LPs as somehow more authentic than CDs, others swear by film over digital (although I've never heard anyone lament the good old days of vhs...). Today's movies are crap compared to the good old "studio" days, today's kids are out of control, etc... People who saw Babe Ruth play HATED *Roger Maris and Hank Aaron; those who played with Aaron would be screaming about Barry Bonds even if his head wasn't the size of a Macy's parade balloon's. I'm sure there were people who just couldn't stand the printed word over the written word, or the written word over the chiseled word. EP isn't the first, and he won't be the last...

[larry_kincaid1]

Okay, Brad, what exactly is that number . . . that distresses you so much? 3? 22? 134? 1,456? The number of non-photographers who have expensive SLRs and DSLRs is much larger simply because Nikon and Canon have sold so many more cameras. Why does Leica always get singled out for this sin?

 

I was beginning to think that no one was paying any attention to the Leica forum anymore. Next thing you know a Puts thread on digital versus film slips in and everyone seems to come out of the woodwork. That's kinda like magic too.<div></div>

[Brad_]

>>> Okay, Brad, what exactly is that number . . . that distresses you so much?

 

That noise you just heard, Larry, was the whoosh over your head. Was merely pointing out

the absurdity of the quote I responded to - in like kind. Try and get that pulsating artery

looked at sometime...

[jtdnyc]

Erwin is, by his own admission, a provocateur who overstated his case, perhaps to inspire discussions like this one. However, isn't there at least a grain of truth in what he seems to be saying?

 

To put his point in a less confrontational way, might it not be true that image capture is the essence of film photography while image manipulation is the essence of digital?

 

I realize all the qualifications that need to be made before such a statement might be absolutely true. I recognize that image manipulation has been part of photography since its earliest days, and digital photojournalists do try to document what they see in a truthful manner. But, allowing these and other qualifications, isn't there a small truth in Erwin's broad statement?

 

If I am right in my interpretation of Erwin and he is right in the basic point he's making, then I think Kodak was right a decade ago when it said that the optimal workflow for the foreseeable future would be film capture and digital post-processing, perhaps with final output on traditional photographic paper.

 

Others may differ. ;-)