Re: Why Process (was: wet plate)
Claude Seymour (cseymour@cap.gwu.edu)
Sat, 30 Apr 1994 10:25:42 -0400 (EDT)
Carson's post and this thread has brought this question to my attention:
If you could, with any other process, digital or otherwise, faithfully
duplicate another process, indistinguishabily from the original, would it
be the same thing? So, if I "rephotographed" a well known photograph, at
the scene and reproduced the entire photograph with another process as to
make the entire thing identical and indistinguishable from the original,
would it be the same thing as the original? I don't think so. My point is
that there is something intangible in art, separate from the final
product, the image-on-a-support. The procedure, on the way to that image-
on-a-support, is part of the artistic process and contributes to the
artistic integrity of the final product. Choice of process is part of that
procedure along with a lot of other choices, at least one rooted in a
single irreproducible moment in time. Whew!
Claude Seymour