Re: digital and analogue photography -the essay
Catherine Rogers wrote: technology. As Chris suggests, her students don't have to get involved in the production of the print shop's print process, nor do they need to 'learn' anything here either, the bad file is invisibly fixed up, made big, colourful and glossy and the student is none the wiser. Viola! instant print, next, move on....I wonder if they've even considered how much printmaking is a part of the photographic process compared to how much of the artistry is achieved before printing. Is printing even necessary to photography at all? Obviously in alt processes, printmaking plays a big role in the final product. At the other extreme, a camera obscura eliminates the printmaking process altogether by projecting a live image directly onto a wall eliminating both the negative and the positive print. Today, you can display digital images on the web without ever fixing them to paper, and much manipulation to the image can be applied without printing. When I first started working with digital photography, I was dismayed to see how flat my printed images looked compared to the juicy, backlit images on the computer screen. Perhaps if big, glossy and cheap printing was available then, I would have stopped there! But it wasn't and I was forced into considering the printmaking process. I think it's not so much that the student's are "cheating" because they didn't have to "work" to produce the images, but they need to be aware that the final look is a conscious decision they were going for. Laura
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