December 3, 2020

Once more we are being assailed by the Luddites of the photographic world.  

Photoshop was going to destroy photography.  Digital photography was going to destroy photography.  Photography was dead anyway - photography destroyed itself.

 

I started working professionally in 1975, when there was a good deal of grousing that “postage stamp sized negatives couldn’t possibly be sharp enough”.  Also, there were those that claimed you were not really a photographer if you did not use a rangefinder (Leica, of course).  Or a Nikon F.  Or a Hasselblad. 

There was a bunch of “you have to print your B&W negatives straight out of the camera on grade 2 paper without dodging, burning, cropping, or bleaching otherwise you were doing it WRONG!”

 

And never ever crop – which meant you were accepting camera makers proportions whether or not they worked for the image.

 

We are still experiencing more or less frantic arm waving any time a new technology emerges.

Never uses multicontrast paper. Only graded paper.  Never use grade paper, only multicontrast paper, never use resin coated paper.

 

Always tone your prints.  Never tone your prints.  Always use/never use gold toner, sepia toner, selenium toner…

 

Only black and white photography is art. 

 

Only large format photography is real photography, or - only medium format photography is real… I had a stock agency director yell at me for having the gall to show him Kodachrome slides since only 2 ¼ format and up was sharp enough.  To prove his point, he trotted out a bunch of out of focus 2 ¼ slides.

 

You should get a great image with one exposure.  You should shoot miles of film to get a great image. Or fill endless memory cards.

 

Autoexposure, autofocus, auto anything is wonderful/dreadful.

 

Photography is dead.  This one seems to be repeated every few years.

 

You must be using the latest and most expensive version of everything.

 

Digital photography will never replace film photography.  Digital prints will never be good enough.  You cannot make good digital black and white prints. 

 

If you do any more than remove dust from your images you are cheating.  Compositing, color enhancements, any and all esthetic changes to an image are good/bad.

 

If you have not published any work you are not a real photographer.

 

Let me propose a radical idea:  photography is about making an image. Without getting into the ethical issues of photographs that are faked for malicious purposes (which has been done for a long time) I believe that an image should stand on its own, independent of the method it was created.  An art professor at a distinguished art academy once responded to a discussion about the perfect brush to use said “for God’s sake, paint it with a mop!”

 

Gene Smith: Burned dodged bleached and cropped his images.

 

Walker Evans cut his negatives with scissors to crop his images.

Edward Weston used a cheap lens he found in Mexico.

 

I was once told that I should come to California to be with my fellow large format photographers.  Everything in the exhibit where this happened was shot on 35mm film.

 

Let us enter the thoroughly muddy waters of the realm of professionalism…

 

What makes a photographer professional?

 

Money? Fame? Expensive equipment? Clients? Published work? Shooting exotic locations? Shooting famous people?

Attitude.

 

A professional will make good images without relying on luck (a photograph is made, not taken) nor will they rely on their equipment or software to solve problems.  In my opinion, a professional makes the image about the image, not about themselves.  

 

We are also hearing from those with no education in art history at all.  Case in point:  Portrait retouching.  Portrait paintings were often done as idealized images to flatter the subject.  Society portrait painters were the prime practitioners of this “art”. 

 

Artists who painted honest portraits caused quite a stir.  Painters who presented the world honestly (e.g.: The Ashcan School) caused an uproar, Manet’s “Odalisque” almost started a riot.   

 

Tools and techniques are only paths to a result. 

 

I have never heard a group of painters arguing the merits of different brushes and stating that if you did not use such and so brand you were esthetic pond scum. 

 

One of my favorite remarks about equipment is “you’ll never get anywhere using (insert whatever you are currently using).

 

As far as I can tell Photography is the only art form where the image is secondary to the response to it. 

It does not matter whether I use an 8x10 Sinar with an obscenely expensive 90mm apo-whosiswhatsis lens or an Android phone to make the picture. 

 

I have been to too many photography exhibits where there was constant blather about what lens, film, camera, etc. was used to make the image. 

 

I once showed my mages of homelessness in New York to someone who’s response was “Did you use TriX?”.

 

When there is discussion about the most powerful and effective images – such as “Tomoko in her Bath” by Eugene Smith, Nick Ut’s “Napalm Girl”, Joe Rosenthal’s “Flag Raising at Iwo Jima”, Ansel Adams National Parks work, Eddie Adam’s “Saigon Execution” – the discussion is about the power of the image(s), and how they have affected the world.

 

Nick Ut’s and Eddie Adams work helped to end the war in Vietnam.  Ansel Adams work helped to further the cause of the National Park System…

 

When I create an image, I want people to see the image, and not the equipment used to make the image.

 

My opinion is that all of the obsession with equipment and processing technique devalues the image itself.

 

Yes, there is a lot to learn by asking “how did they do that?” in an effort to improve craft, and that can be said about any art form.