Re: digital and analogue photography -the essay
I dunno if this is the place or not, but I'm being nudged not so gently from within to speak in this thread about "art" (again). If we are after whatever we (individually) think of as art, and since we live in a viciously commercial world, how about remembering the story of the maintenance man who, after long years on the same job was let go in a downsizing sweep. Some time later a machine malfunctioned and the consensus was, that guy should be contracted to fix it. He did. With a knock of a hammer. Then he sent his bill: $10,000. Of course they screamed for an explanation, and got it. $100 for performing the job; $9,900 for knowing where to apply the knock. The process by which one achieves the image of their vision (art) is beside the point if the image is the goal. Process as process can be hated, loved, endured, enjoyed, and dinked with to the content of one's heart, but, it is still process. Assuming that art exists when a spectator looks at it, then at that moment, process is absent in the formula. We, as viewers are left with color or not, composition, light, subject, treatment, emphasis, originality, and probably more I can't come up with right now. A few viewers will very much care about the process, will prefer oil to acrylic or watercolor, will prefer film to digital, alt printing to commercial printing, bronze to aluminum-- but we all know the over-riding approach to art is the subject matter and how it is treated/presented. When I was doing letterpress work, I got great and deep pleasure out of the smell of the ink as I rolled it onto the plate, loved the soothing clank of the plate's teeth on the cog as I pulled the lever again and again to distribute that ink. But, the folks who saw and appreciated my work, appreciated it without the process. So, I think, process is a private thing that creates a public object. And, in the end, no one process is better than any other. A particular process by a particular artist will produce a particular result. The success of that combination of artist and process will succeed or fail based on the result. Clair |