> It is interesting to have the ink jet printing as the major topic for =
> discussion the very same day I joined the list.
In a way this discussion is like a bunch of photographers sitting around
in Bath, or London in, what would it be -- 1880? -- debating whether they
could express themselves adequately in dryplate, or whatever was the next
process bearing down on them.
No matter our personal desires, certain kinds of photography are going to
be as obsolete as wet plate collodion -- except, interestingly, wet plate
collodion is, I'm told, quite do-able today, for those who care to do it.
(Rae Adams is one photographer who seems to find it no big deal, or at
least that's the tone of her attempted explanations to me.)
In other words, we may not have factory film & paper, but we can probably
do whatever we *really* want to do, as long as an alternate technology is
kept alive. My objection -- so far -- to the family of digital printers,
at least judging by what I've seen, including this year at Viscomm, is
that the process has to be done through an intermediary, so that you don't
have the ready interaction, the improvisation, discovery, the benefit of
trial & error you get when you do it yourself with a few dollars worth of
paper (and as you do when you sketch or make working drawings for art on
paper or canvas).
That's printing I'm talking about, not the negative. Al Strauss points out
that your trial and error is on the monitor, and presumably after some
experience you gain the ability to visualize what will happen from what
you see on CRT. HOWEVER, my sense of the situation is that it tends to
push the medium toward the preconceived and the slick -- what might be
called the commercial -- as the photographers who know they can sell x
number of grand shots of favorite and/or sentimental scenes can/will shell
out the big bucks required, at least at this point. That leads to a lot of
Santa Fe art (sorry Dick). Who was it on this list said the printer
display at Viscomm a while back was like miles of placemats?
OK, so what? You can do whatever you want. But the nature of the process,
and the production requirements, will not only change "photography" but in
lots of ways control it. How many photographers in the past learned from a
book and $1 worth of paper in the cellar. That won't quite be any more.
Lots more social stratification, haves one side, have nots the other. Not
to mention the technically disfunctional.
Jack Fulton describes a setup that should be digitally enabling for $7000,
or the cost of two fancy refrigerators or one second-hand car. But what
about learning to operate it? I've just made a relatively minor change
from an old Mac to a late model Mac, and am still on "go." I would NEVER
have started up this particular mountain with the idea of making art
somewhere down the road. The learning curve alone makes a BIG push of
photography toward a certain style and context. (And Jack, I thought I'd
be Queen of the May with a machine I can lard with memory up to 125 mb of
ram. Now you tell me that's not enough!!!)
> He tells me he no longer feels like spending hours and hours
locked in a =
> dark room. (He probably spends a lot more sitting at his computer =
> terminal!)
Carlos, tell your friend that he can print gum, kallitype, platinum, etc.
etc. by ordinary room light. And with our big revival in "alt processes,"
odds are the necessary materials will be available. The *negative* may
have to be digital, but that, we are promised, will be fine and dandy, or
OK and tolerable. Soon. Probably.
> I am also preparing my next exhibit, which was commissioned by the =
> Portuguese Post Office for their Art Gallery. It will consist of =
> photographs of Sintra, the magical mountain Lord Byron wrote about.
> They will be presented as 16"x20" Kallitypes.
Sounds great -- for a minute there I thought it was "Sinatra." Whew!
Congratulations...
Judy