other forms of photography
Is there a form of photography that does not result in something material, since you need to be looking at something in order to see something. Unless it's a hallucination, that is. But I don't think they quite count as photos. How do you uncouple a photo from its mode of viewing? Being on a screen is not immaterial.
It's not locked because we're an agreeable club.
Is there a form of photography that does not result in something material, since you need to be looking at something in order to see something. Unless it's a hallucination, that is. But I don't think they quite count as photos. How do you uncouple a photo from its mode of viewing? Being on a screen is not immaterial.
That’s a misconstrual of my point (intended or not).
My point is that these different ideas of photography have always co-existed and actually feed off each other. They are not in dialectic opposition.
That's very much true. And it's true of all forms of human endeavour. Nothing really exists in isolation.
My response has been to use Japanese papers proven to last over 1000 years with photographic processes from the 19th century, toned in platinum and/or palladium, which are made primarily as art objects to be held in the hand rather than framed on a wall behind glass or acrylic.
I was at the McMichael Art Gallery a few months ago and there was an installation that was a ~30 year old tv and vcr playing a video over and over. I imagine they don't break it out very often. But it's a single complete work and how it looks is part of what it is. So, Alan's tv had to go with the digital photos, along with whatever is feeding the photos to the tv. Then, ideologically, it's not much different from one of Jeff Wall's lightboxes.
You could pull the transparencies out of Wall's lightbox and shove in a KFC poster. It has a practical application that is similar to Alan's tv.
Photography is interesting because it has the appearance of unlimited instances of the same photo. The reality is more often that there are few genuine instances of a particular photo and many copies. When you look up Pepper 30 you find this:
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which I just copied from the Wikipedia page. That is itself a digitization of print that was made by Brett Weston and sold at Sotheby's (next to Alan's tv). So, negative shot by Edward, printed by Brett (following the instructions Edward left behind). You can say that the print was authenticated (sort of) but what about the digitization of the print? What about my copy of that copy? We see way way way more copies than originals. Photo books may or may not be approved by the photographer. Scans that end up online are almost certainly not. Anyway, it's interesting. Well, I have a personal interest in copying, anyway.
These digital copies will likely float around long after the paper in the original prints has turned to dust. Well, in some form or other. The likelihood is that, ultimately, there will be no original of any of these things, anymore. Just copies. But who decides when a copy is as good as an original? In Jeff Wall's instance, Jeff Wall does. In Cindy Sherman's instance, Cindy Sherman does. But Edward Weston is dead.
True to form, the first 6 Google image results:
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Lik's pictures in his galleries are often back-lit displays of chromes. There are many ways to present photos that are art forms that you can buy and hang on your own walls. .
Will in a bit. Wandered down Argyrotype Road for a while, but am going to pick up salt prints again...something about using an 1830's process with 21st century tools on Japanese Washi resonates. Pretty sure 21gsm handmade Gampi is my go-to paper but have a few more to try, just to be sure. Also haven't settled on a heavier handmade Kozo for the backing/support paper.I'd love to see them. Maybe post a few?
Yeah, Alan, but back then the Colorama backlighting was early generation cool white fluorescents with rather miserable ghoulish color casts, plus high UV output - so the big transparencies themselves had to be replaced at high cost every two years or even more often. But they did tend to select images from serious photographers like Ernst Haas. And way up high, it didn't matter so much that the originals were just 35mm in size, although to reproduce them that big necessarily involved large format film duplicates. It was quite a publicity stunt for Kodak, and required a special Kodak technical facility to pull it off.
Nearby in the same big display venue, a different company was contracted to make huge dye transfer prints (not display transparencies), which fared better in permanence, being replaced after about 20 years, which is exceptional even for DT under those kinds of conditions. Special non-Kodak dye blends were said to be involved.
Since retirement, I lost track of the big picture framing enterprises in this area. You could pretty much factor about a thousand dollars a linear foot for such a service - in other words, a 40 foot wide print would require a $40,000 custom frame job, including the print mounting. That would be for high quality custom workmanship of course, like welded and polished steel framework, overlaid with a nice hardwood veneer. Their building now looks vacant, probably due to a combination of the Covid financial crisis and having moved to the bad side of the tracks where commercial space leases are low, but crime intolerably high.
Bill board style productions have largely transitioned to reprogrammable big digital arrays instead.
What Arthurwg mentioned about images being directly transmitted to the brain reminds me of those 1950's b&w B-rated horror movies, with a disembodied brain floating inside a big saline jar tethered to some tubes and wires for sake of perpetual life. Not a particularly tactile experience, that's for sure.
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