Re: Interactivity and process

Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Tue, 16 Jun 1998 23:32:50 -0400 (EDT)

On Tue, 16 Jun 1998 Bob_Maxey@mtn.3com.com wrote:

> >>"since the breakthrough of rule breaking in the 1970s, the term
> 'alternative processes' has included the toning, hand-coloring, (SNIP)
>
> OK, Judy.... I guess we will have to agree to disagree. From my perspective
> and way of thinking, one process you mentioned - Hand Coloring... I do not
> consider an ALT Process. This has been done since the very, very early days
> of photography. In the early days, it was almost expected to have portraits
> and landscapes hand colored. This is why I really do not consider some
> processes to be truly ALT, for they existed side by side with photography,
> not as an alternitive to them.

Bob, my take on the term is that it came into use in the '70s, the 1970s
that is, when there was a movement to overthrow the, um, let's call it
hegemony, of the F64, pure purer purest movement, which reigned over all
photography in midcentury, decreeing what was permissible and what wasn't.

I have a file of quotes from Weston and company, which I'm NOT going to
put on this list, because I have to keep something "new" for Post-Factory
-- well just one that comes to mind in this context: Weston saying in his
Day Books, that if people want to hand color they should get a paintbox
and become painters, because they weren't strong and worthy enough to be
photographers. I swear. You could look it up.

In mid-century, hand coloring was despised, tacky, verboten -- until the
rebels, or post modernists, or whatever you call them of the late 60s,
early 70s, came along -- defiantly revelling in gum printing, hand
coloring, and MARKING on photographs, which was the theme of several shows
in the early '80s that gave critics conniptions. Bea Nettles book, the
first of the many, was titled "Breaking the Rules."

That, as far as I know, was when the term "alternatives" came into use.
Of course nothing is PEFECTLY new, in fact Stieglitz used the term
"crooked photography" (predating me) in 1905. But I don't recall seeing
the term "alternative" used before the 1960s.

Certainly precious little of anything we would consider "alternative"
appeared in the photo press from about 1935 to 1975. In fact, for an
interesting footnote, the British Journal of Photography Annual, which
gave at least a paragraph in its notes at the back of the volume to gum
printing all through the 30s, finally dropped it in.... as I recall, it
was 1938.

So the term doesn't refer to all photo history, it comes out of the recent
past.... In 1982 (or thereabouts) photo critic Ben Lifson freaked out in
the New York Times because Emmett Gowin brown-toned two little prints in
his show of *straight* photographs at Light Gallery. Lifson wasn't ready
for "alternatives," but seems not to have permanently deterred Gowin,
since I read recently he was showing toned prints...

Meanwhile, one of the major points of the rebel movement, the *post*
modernists, was to revive the forbidden 19th century processes. If we
could only label "alternative" what was always marginal, we wouldn't have
many processes in our quiver at all, to mix metaphors...

Judy