Re: alt exhibit
Nice to have some dialogue going; are we the only ones here?
I'm here Katharine ;)
My personal definition of alternative processes is the production of a
photographic image using non factory made media for the end result. At the
risk of being anal I also define historical and alternative as being subtly
different, for example the Ware cyanotype or the temperaprint are alt but
not historical.
Just my tuppence worth.
John
www.johnbrewerphotography.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Katharine Thayer" <kthayer@pacifier.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 8:35 PM
Subject: Re: alt exhibit
I don't disagree; it's kind of like glass half full or glass half empty.
I suppose, if truth be told, I look at it from where I stand with both
feet planted well inside alternative processes, and see everything else as
"outside." :--)
I didn't mean positive and negative definitions in terms of value
judgment, assigning good and bad connotations to the definitions; I only
meant positive and negative in the sense of positive space vs. negative
space. ...the difference between identifying "alternative processes" as
a thing in and of itself, vs identifying "alternative processes" as
everything that's not mainstream, as the negative space around
mainstream photography. All I was saying is that I identify alternative
processes the first way rather than the second way, but that's not to say
my way of looking at it is the only way or even a majority way of
looking at it; I suspect the other way, of seeing it as whatever's
non-mainstream, is more widespread.
I do agree that inkjet prints don't really belong under "alternative
processes." I only meant that once I understood the definition of
"alternative" for the purpose of the show, it made more sense to me that
there would be inkjet prints in the show, because the call for work
identified images made with a holga camera or a pinhole camera as
examples of "alternative processes" with no requirement that these images
be printed in some non-mainstream or traditionally alternative process.
Nice to have some dialogue going; are we the only ones here?
Katharine
On Sep 6, 2007, at 10:39 AM, Diana Bloomfield wrote:
Agree that the confusion, in part, is with the title they chose to use
for the exhibit. "Alternative Works" would have been more accurate.
That said, the term "alternative," as in "alternative processes," does
imply, in part, that which is not firmly entrenched in the mainstream--
to my way of thinking. (Again, digital printing is-- at least from what
I've seen.) I don't view that as a negative definition, nor as having a
negative connotation. "Anything outside the mainstream," given where
the mainstream has been lately, seems positive to me. ;)
Diana
On Sep 6, 2007, at 1:11 PM, Katharine Thayer wrote:
On Sep 6, 2007, at 7:57 AM, permadocument wrote:
On visiting the on-line alt exhibit I was impressed by the overall
quality
of the retained works. A question arises: would it not be the moment
to
define what we really mean when we speak of "alternative works".
I think "alternative works" could be defined any way a person or
institution would care to define it, because "alternative works"
doesn't mean anything to me particularly. Now that I understand that
the call for work for this particular show defined "alternative" as
such things as images from plastic cameras, pinhole images, photograms
and the like, I'm not surprised to find such images, printed
digitally, as part of the show.
For me, the confusion arose from their use of the phrase "alternative
processes" as the title of the show. "Alternative processes" has come
to mean, for me at least, and I suspect for some others as well, a
specific set of handcoated processes. If they had named the show
"alternative works" rather than "alternative processes," I wouldn't
have had any expectation that the show would consist mostly if not
wholly of works made by one or more of these handcoated "alternative
processes," because as I said, "alternative works" could be anything at
all as far as I'm concerned. Anthotypes, holga pictures,
crossprocessed images, whatever, including the set of processes I
know as "alternative processes."
And maybe "alternative processes" isn't a good name, because it does
seem to denote "alternative to" x, and then you have to define what x
is and accept everything outside x as "alternative." But I've never
defined "alternative processes" as being whatever's left outside the
boundaries of some x, to me it does have a positive definition as this
particular group of processes, rather than a negative definition as
"anything outside the mainstream." So maybe something else, like
"handcoated processes" or "historical processes" would be a better name
than "alternative processes."
I'm not yet ready to accept gelatin silver as an alternative process
unless it's handcoated, and then I do think it belongs. But it's not
surprising that we don't all agree precisely on where the boundaries
lie that demark "alternative processes."
katharine
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