Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Tue, 20 Apr 1999 01:43:30 -0400 (EDT)
On Mon, 19 Apr 1999, Michael Keller wrote:
> Right now there's a lot of bad digital because many of the folks doing digital
> are using it for the special effects, not for the quality available. But we
> forget about all the bad film photographs being made. What's it up to, 6 billion
> a year now? I'll bet people using digital cameras do more editing than those
> amateurs with their P&S! And let's face it, if film photography got yelled at
> for looking like painting (when it was useful to look like painting), why yell
> at digital photography if it _doesn't_ look like photographs?
>
> And yes, there are more than enough BORING large format photographers. Beautiful
> tones with nothing to say. Just as there are many wonderful and powerful images
Exactly.
Having just spent nearly a month of my remaining hours in this mortal coil
looking at photographs in photo magazines and annuals of the 1920s to the
1940s, I would like to ASSURE the world that no "digital" image could
possibly be as inane, fatuous, sappy, absurd, silly, dumb or
unintentionally comic as 9 out of 10 of the works shown. In fact I am
going to reproduce some 50 of them in the Post-Factory now in (slooooow)
work, because.... they deserve a salute, and tell us a great deal about
the REAL history of photography, not in Newhall... & because I feel
obliged to "share."
I have annuals from about 1898 to 1941, gorgeous gravures of SCHLOCK!
American Annual of Photography in the 30s showed a cross section of the
"best" work of the best salons, of which there were (by the 40s) literally
THOUSANDS world wide.
Folks, you would not BELIEVE. So let's not imagine any special artistic
virtue in silver gelatin. If you only saw those photo magazines, you
would be saying "photography isn't art."
It wasn't all Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, in fact they and the
photographers we admire today had virtually NO presence in the popular
photo press, which may be where some of the idea of bad digital now comes
from... or digital publications. If you want to lose your lunch, look
at the "art" in, say, the Photoshop manual.... But then go back and look
at some of the "art" in, say, OR Croy, technical books of the 30s & 40s.
Etc.
Judy
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