Re: digital and analogue photography -the essay
On Tue, 3 Jun 2008, david drake wrote: It's sorta fascinating how a new technology infiltrates a culture without any sort of decision making process: do we need this new technology, how will it change society and what are it's drawbacks. Of course, that's the job of the consumer. Most however are led blindly by the pied piper of 'progress'.David, This strikes me as "damned if you do and damned if you don't. "Alt" photographers are often accused of being ludites... Can we have luditry and blind following of "progress" in the same person or "movement"? Can you accuse "a new technology" of going in both directions? Speaking as a 35 mm photographer, who has recently reviewed her first 300 rolls for a new project, I realized how deadly having to give the whole roll the same development can be. You're walking in and out of shade, among other changes: grab shots are truly perilous. With digital on "auto," odds are you'll at least be in the ballpark. (Auto on my old Nikons was horrible.) I'm also thinking, a propos of Chris's comment about those big beautiful student prints via commercial printers: Odds are, in due course those "big and beautiful" prints will be devalued, as obvious, easy, garish, commonplace, slick, "mainstream," "commercial," ... or whatever -- tatty and "bad" will be the new cool. (In fact if you check out Artforum they already are.) J.
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