Of course there are people who still believe in such, or this list
wouldn't exist. As one who has worked digitally for years but who after
taking up the computer also went back to the darkroom and then farther
back to gum printing, I feel qualified to say that the different
processes satisfy different aesthetic and kinesthetic needs. I still do
digital work for my commercial clients, but for my own artistic work,
nothing will do but gum. It's a personal choice, and I'm not sure why
you should need to defend it. I'm tempted to say, "Run for your life,
son, get out of that graduate program before they ruin you!" but then
you'd be an outsider like me, and you have to decide whether that's what
you want. For me, it was a conscious choice and I'm happy with it, but
then all I want is to do work that satisfies me and to make enough money
to live a marginal existence; I've long ago relinquished any ambition of
being rich and famous and beloved by critics.
Judy Siegel (I must have deleted the post) said, to the best of my
recall, that the best of all worlds would be to combine digital and
alternative processes. This is what I do: I generate my contact
negatives digitally, a la Burkholder, except I print them myself rather
than to trust them to a service bureau. I'm thereby limited to 12x18 but
sometimes I put two together to make a larger picture. (Actually I don't
follow Burkholder exactly but used him as a jumping off point. It's the
same way I cook; I read a bunch of recipes and then do something that
takes them all into account but is different from any of them.)
Katharine
P.S. Thanks to all who welcomed me privately to the list.