Re: "alternative"

Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Fri, 20 Sep 1996 09:40:58 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 20 Sep 1996, shalom goldberg wrote:
>
> I'd like to hear from Judy and others how you feel the future will view
> the activities that we're involved in, if say 20 years from now photo
> supply houses will cease carrying these fine glossy, warm tone, or
> matt... off the shelf sheets in these fancy boxes, and we'll be told,
> well you know... everyone's doing "digi...whooie" so we just stopped
> selling that "stuff, I guess you'll just have to mix your own!"

Shalom Shalom (so sorry, how could I resist?)

It happens now, which is why some people do prepare to mix their
own. Certainly sheet film has begun to disappear, and the pace probably
accelerates. No doubt a self-fulfilling prophecy in part -- the word is
out that the world is going digital so people get with the program.

That's one of the (many) reasons this list is so important -- aside from
the sheer joy of getting scolded in the medium of your choice, you are
directed to and advised about materials available, which must surely
strengthen the market, in fact shows that there *is* a market.

> Will be be called the Classists, the "Keepers of the Light 21st
> Century," the Neo-clasisicts, the what...???

We may be too diverse for any name.... but "classic" is certainly another
category could be applied to *some* of the processes at issue (to "x"
degree overlapping with "hand-coated").

As for the future -- the future is purely wilfull, like a precocious
8-year old. Who could even guess? Who could have imagined, for instance,
that Julia Margaret Cameron would be scorned & sneered at by midcentury
(all those cherubs and halos!), now sainted. I'm amused recently reading
the essays of Sakakichi Hartman to see the names he dropped as if they
were household words, *entirely* off the view screen now. Which is of
course another topic (for the alt-fame list?).

(Although that's how I keep sanity looking at contemporary PC art -- in my
fantasy it is already in dusty archive limbo, like the bottom of a
copper mine in Utah).

> I believe that alt-processes must be fostered and continued despite the
> difficulty,

Which is the nice thing about several of the *hand-coated processes*....
not a problem. The chemicals are easily gotten. Even the redoubtable
carbon printing uses plain easy-to-get materials! (Assuming they don't
remove our dichromates entirely.)

> > On Fri, 20 Sep 1996, Richard Wheeler wrote:
> =20
> > At the same time, it is entirely legitimate, indeed necessary and
> > *scientific* to look for categories within categories. In fact there a=
> re
>
>
> BTW The dates are going north on me; what's happening here....

You may be using some punctuation marks that are transmitted by code. Take
off your "smart quotes" , etc. The "=20" tends to be code for a line
break. Are you saving as "text only"? If not, try it.

Cheers, shalom,

Judy