Bob, I think you're missing John's point. He was being metaphorical, not
literal, at least that's how I took it -- and I found the notion an
engaging one.
I'd like also to point out that there are many "alternative" processes
within silver gelatin materials that occur post-factory: To quote myself,
"since the breakthrough of rule breaking in the 1970s, the term
'alternative processes' has included the toning, hand-coloring, Sabatier
effect, etch-bleach, reversal and other manipulations of factory paper.
These [are applied] *after the paper leaves the factory* and often
contrary to factory intentions..."
However, photographers have exploited such "alternatives" since Christian
Schaad and Man Ray, if not earlier. Silver gelatin in a bottle (Liquid
Light, Cachet, Silverprint, etc.) on non-traditional supports is
increasingly popular, while some photographers have made and will make
their own emulsions, alternatively. Let me also suggest that the attempt
to forbid any thought or mention of "straight" factory photography on this
list is ... oh,let's call it excessive. We do not exist in a vacuum.
Sometimes reflections are richer when broad-spectrum.
> ....As far as a division between painting and photography, I
> think that exists already. By the way, why do you believe that painters and
> photographers want to be joined, anyway?
Some do, some don't [want to be joined]... there's a great deal of
crossover both ways, and has been at least since Photo Realism hit
painting in the '70s. Many of us resist rigid definitions, categories,
rules. The camera is a *mark-making tool*, period -- although the history
of photography is full of folks laying down the law about what is
permissible, which kinds of *manipulations* are permissible, "the nature
of photography", the *task* of photography, and so forth.
Let me also point out that for much of the history of photography, the
*good* manipulations were the ones you weren't supposed to detect. The
*bad* ones were the kind you were supposed to detect. (The Victorians
called it Jiggery Pokery, vide Aaron Scharf.) The attitude had several
determinants, all of them more from the urge to lay down the law than
anything intrinsic in "the nature" of photography.
Did you know by the way that an early Hill and Adamson had a waterfall
scratched into the emulsion??? Perhaps the first "alternative" photograph.
Judy