Ender100@aol.com
Date: 10/06/03-02:16:40 PM Z
Shannon, Clay, et al,
It is true that Photoshop makes it easy to modify an image and create things
that never were. This is becoming common practice in films, etc....remember
the movie Forrest Gump? I think there have already been cases where people
have made modifications to images and then presented them in newspapers as
"reality" and caught hell for it—in some cases losing their jobs.
There is also the case of the kids from some junior high school that were
using the school lab to scan $20 bills then print them on Epson printers and use
the results to pay for their lunches in the school cafeteria—until they got
caught.
In the Art World, I don't think fraud is necessarily a new thing—perhaps a
bit easier with digital around.
Yes, all these things can be done. I think it is important that people be
honest about it when they do them. I would even suggest that you include that
in your description when hanging such a piece in a gallery. If you put a
gorilla on the Empire State Building, you should be clear that you are not
documenting an actual case of a giant gorilla terrorizing Judy's back yard—
especially if you are placing Judy in the role of Faye Ray.
On the other hand, Photoshop can be used in a way where you do nothing more
than what you would normally do in your wet darkroom. Some could argue with
this scenario, that you are able to remove specks of dirt that are embedded in
the film that would be impossible to do in a wet darkroom—or that you are
burning/dodging at the pixel level, which would be impossible in the wet
darkroom.....and on and on and on and on....
I am sure people will probably be having these discussions years from now and
there will probably be newer technologies that will cause concern and foment
new arguments.
In the end, they are just tools and I can choose to use them or not use them.
I tend to think of my work as making images that mean something to me and
hopefull to a few other people. The freedom I get by scanning my black and
white images, is that I now have many choices as to how I output them, be it
digitally on fine art papers or through alt photo processes with digital
negatives. That is a wonderful feeling to know that you can take your image and match
it to a process that you feel presents it best. I think it is a very
exciting time to live in—perhaps a new paradigm. Maybe one outcome will be that
with all the images that are produced, only the best will find their way to fine
processes and fine papers—thus saving a lot of trees and chemical pollution.
After all, there is a lot of work that really shouldn't be done in an
archival process—biodegradable processes would be more fitting. hehehehehe
Mark Nelson
In a message dated 10/6/03 2:31:33 PM, sstoney@pdq.net writes:
> I think the thing about photoshop is that it makes "lying," as Clay
> put it, SO much easier. Jerry Uelsmann is a master of the
> manipulated image, but he has been at it for thirty years. Any fool
> can learn to "lie" with photoshop in an hour or so, and lie very
> convincingly in a few days.
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 11/05/03-09:22:17 AM Z CST