Jim Chinn said:
I agree that we may have no input into what a pixelographer may call himself, but as a large and vocal group we do have the ability to influence how critics, collectors and gallery owners refer to various imaging methods.
One thing I am concerned about is how digital will effect the market for traditional photography. I would pose this scenario to those who disagree or marginalize my idea:
You have spent years refining your skill in the darkroom and with the camera to produce exquisite platinum prints or silver chloride contacts or any other traditional process. You go to a gallery with your portfolio. You show it to the gallery owner who tells you I already have some very nice digital platinum images from another photographer. You look at the portfolio and realize they are simply toned via filtering and photoshop, not true platinum or palladium.
But what is a person to do? I mean a photograph is a photograph regardless or the process, right? Both portfolios consist of platinum images. Your effort and experience are worth no more then some paper getting shoved through an inkjet printer.
Well of course the answer is wrong! There is a greater intrinsic value to your work and craftsmanship. But we already see this all the time on the internet with the blatently false and misleading claims and labeling of images on various web sites. People making totally unprovable claims as to longevity of prints, calling them carbon process, or digital platinum and always calling everything photographs when by definition they are not.
By pointing out the difference between the two mediums using seperate titles or labels will help to keep photography as a unique and valuable tool for artistic expression.
Jim Chinn raises an issue that in fact this community can address, albeit with significant work.
Other industries have faced similar issues, and to address them, form industry organizations which define and set standards for products or processes they wish to protect. Some real estate brokers are called Realtors(TM) for that very reason. It is marketing, but also sets recogniseable standards of performance. It increases customer awareness and trust.
The analog photographic industry could come together formally to define accepted standards for processes - for example, it could define a Certified Handmade Platinum Print as being derived from a film-based negative or positive image, contact printed using wet Platinum/Palladium emulsions hand applied to an arbitrary support. A formal organization would further specify the requirements for certification, but if carefully done would not constrain the traditional craftsman.
Similarly, definitions could be created for image capture processes and other elements of production.
This industry organization could trademark its certifications, offer certification to photographers that join the organization and apply (perhaps through a process involving endorsement by existing members and production of sample results of the photographer's product). Further, the organization would market its practices to galleries and lobby or incent them to formally recognise and identify certified artists and products.
The presence of cheap digital imitations of classic processes is more than enough justification for such an organization. Done well, traditional photographers would be able to operate with full freedom of expression, while receiving support from the organization and participating galleries to insure their efforts are properly recognized and not devalued by imitators.
Many art buyers would not spend the additional money for a certified product, but it is likely such a certificate would assure the buyer of the real value of the object and the likelyhood that an investment would be worthwhile. Buyers of non-certified products would at least know that the item they are buying may not conform to accepted standards for specified processes.
Sounds bureaucratic, but it is how many industries work, and it could work for this community. Any volunteers to put together such an organization?
-chuck