I have seen a lot of photographs over the last year or so. So I thought it time to provide a few of my thoughts. Most of the prints I’ve seen are large. I’ve discussed my thinking on this in previous postings. The majority of prints I come in contact with are in color. The rest are mostly black and white. I say mostly because some black and white prints are not completely black and white; some contain color parts and others are heavily toned in one way or another. Of course, most are digitally produced.
But here is what really gets me about much of what I see these days … rampant and blatant image manipulation! Call me whatever you wish as long as you’re civil. But I swear if I see another image dominated by a hyper exaggerated blue sky with white clouds (color) and/or a black sky with white clouds (black and white) I may have to drink my developer! Just not Xtol since it’s made of acerbic acid (Vitamin C) for low toxicity.
Perhaps even more irritating are prints that are completely manipulated. In other words … Photoshop unchained! I’ve seen prints that didn’t look like photographs at all. Instead, they looked sort of painterly. Perhaps this is the ultimate example of photo-realism gone mad. Instead of a paintings looking like photographs, we have photographs that vaguely look like paintings.
So is kitsch the new normal? Are we headed towards the equivalent of Elvis paintings on black velvet I’ve seen for sale in bus stations?
Am I being unfair? Am I a photographic curmudgeon, a stubborn wet blanket, or just an artistic Luddite living in the new photo art age?
Maybe I’m over reacting. Or maybe I shouldn’t sweat it too much.
Some will surely point out that many film users work with filters, and that everyone who prints incorporates burning, dodging and other techniques as necessary to express their final vision. Well to me the best analog work is that where manipulation is not apparent and filtration is not overdone.
Ok, so I’m a big fan of Adams and not afraid to admit it. Does that make me a hypocrite? He certainly used filters to enhance his images, but in my humble opinion he just knew how to do it right. To me his prints are heroic and there’s unlikely to be another like him. And yes his prints were large, but they included real content!
Then there is Jerry Uelsmann, who has been using multiple negatives to make dreamy silver gelatin prints since I was a boy. I think he was an exception, a wildcard and not the norm … perhaps the forerunner of the Photoshop movement.
So where are we headed, as cameras and software will enable more and more manipulation at the touch of a button or tap of a keystroke? You know what? It doesn’t matter at all. What really matters is that you and I do the work that has real meaning to us and says something we believe to be important. Not what matters to galleries, jurors, or anyone else! For me, I intend to continue to make straight black and white film-based prints that hopefully stand on the merit of their content and quality of their production.
So perhaps I’m a dinosaur headed for extinction and the above is a bad case of sour grapes. I hope not. I think as with other experiments in questionable taste, this too shall pass.
