Chris,
You got it. It was like the vultures circled, then flew down to first batter their prey, and then pick at the carcas. I was attacked personally, asked to justify myself (by someone I had never heard of outside that list anyway), patronized - first because I'm not American (or European), and, secondly, as a woman I clearly had no business speculating about technological matters, and, like you said you copped, I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about, and so on and on. I didn't even finish reading the second long post from one argumentative bloke who disagreed with everything, and he clearly hadn't bothered to read the essay anyway. Apart from one respondent with a background working for the big three printers, who well understood what I was saying, I don't think the others quite understood what I was on about at all, let alone thought that the shift from analogue to digital deserves analysis. Obviously, I think an analysis is important, relevant and timely. They seemed to think I was arguing for a return to horse and cart days - which is NOT my argument at all. Oh yes, I was also accused of being academic! Well, if if you can't have a scholarly discussion on a list called photo history..... Not that I haven't been treated similarly on one or two other photo lists I'm on - lists to do with high-end digital printing and scanning.
When I first posted a link to my essay to the photohistory list last week, I prefaced it with a very condensed summary - it was my response to a question about the history of digital printing in photography. Oooooops. As I said, I thought that the question was both interesting and serious, and that my essay - based to some extent on exchanges and the activities of this list - could make a contribution. The photo-history list certainly has had its good moments, and there have been some fine exchanges, but that is well in the past (apart from a very interesting discussion about a print that went up for auction recently, and was subsequently withdrawn, a print originally thought to have been made by T. Wedgwood, but now it seems to have been made much later). And no, I dont think that the slowness of this list has anything to do with the posts on the photo-history list - if it does, be pleased that some of whatever it is that passes for discussion there, is there, and not here.
Hence my very clean and tidy house. However briefly it will stay that way. And thanks for your response, Chris - I totally agree that notions of perfection are an important part of such a discussion (They argued with that there too) - and your response too, Clair. I look forward to more.
I feel a little bit better after all that :-) The sky will probably fall in now that I have openly expressed my disgust with the behaviour of persons on another list.
Thanks again one and all
best
Catherine
Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
Ohhh Catherine,
You were the subject of a controversy on a list? How novel :) Dish the dirt--do tell what was the main crit!! A lot of us aren't on the history list--for me, one more list would be undoable but I do wonder if the reason this list is so DEAD is people are on all sorts of other lists like APUG and Photo History. Heck, for some reason, I will send this letter today and I am not getting my own mail back from alt, AGAIN. This has happened before. The letters are showing up on the web mirror, tho.
Seriously, if I could only list the things people have told me on lists, it would be helpful to you to feel you have company. My favorite came from a person on another list who said something to the effect of with how little I know how could I be teaching?
Let me make one brief comment as I am reading through the paper, as I could comment LOTS. I totally agree with your point about people sending off their work to be printed digitally now. Our students send their work to a place called Whitehouse Custom Color and get these big-ass digiprints back for really very cheap. This has been since we dismantled, sadly, our huge color processor last May. I still cannot get used to this. I used to labor to get my prints perfect, free of dust, in focus, color balanced within 1/2 point of magenta, etc. etc. and they do none of that. It seems so...unfair, almost like cheating.
But the prints are gorgeous, and the excellent students use their extra free time to produce really good work. My biggest complaint is those who take crappy images and print large uncolorbalanced crappy digiprints as if bigger were going to make a bad image or badly printed image good. Quality still stands, whether analog or digital. And I would say I see this issue on a weekly basis in my classes.
And the digital revolution has completely made alt easier and better IMHO.
More later after I read the whole paper.
Chris
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