Ctein and The Online Photographer "part ways"...

[Alan W]

First time I've heard of either of these blokes.Big enders and little enders.I'm off out to take a stroll with my spotmatic.

 

[DREW WILEY]

People like Uelsmann made prints which were conspicuously imaginary. That's a lot different than doctoring up some scene with a lot of honey and
jam and presenting it as something that actually exists. About the most abominable example of this is the overpriced decor Peter Lik makes - really
just giant little-old-lady postcard subjects slathered with kindergarten-crayon-color PS saturation. There are actually a lot of photographers who seem to think that if a little spice is good, a whole lot is even better. The basic problem I have with that is philosophical. They don't bother to really look at anything, or discover real beauty, so they pursue corny stereotypes, be those stereotypes either predictably gooey sugar and spice landscape subjects or pretentious concoctions aimed at the pseudo-creativity addiction of the so-called art world. Just do something real, that resonates inside you.
But don't call it art. That term is so ubiquitous it's meaningless. If everything is art, then nothing is specifically art.

 

[removed account4]

everyone doctors up photographs with honey and jam and claims they exist.
the folks i listed in my short list ( i have a longer list ) make photographs
and use a camera and darkroom and manipulate their images.
everyone manipulate negatives as soon as they set the camera up
and if they use color negative or chrome film they are again manipulating
the tones of the scene, and black and white manipulates a scene into B/w
and that doesn't even mention on camera or under enlarger filtration that creates
more non-reality.
the problem i see with "photoart" and "photography" is there is no such thing as
a photgraphic image, whether it is modern, or from 1839 that does not manipulate.

there is no such thing as pure photography, unless it is photographs seein by our internal cameras ( our eyes )

 

[DREW WILEY]

So what. Ultimately it boils down to whether your taste buds go for it, and for how long. Try eating a handful of salt at a time right out of the sack, or
handful after handful of sugar. If you want to be a gourmet chef it takes balance, nuance. If you just want to open a greasy sugary donut shop for slobs, that's your right too; but don't expect me to eat it!

 

[removed account4]

im not asking you to eat it or taste anything

but the thread is about the guy
on online photographer and how he
said manipulated photography( digital ) isn't photography
and unmanipulated photography is ... and he generated his
own word for the stuff that ISN"T photography ...

i was wondering where the line in the sand is to be drawn,
if there is a litmus test because pretty much all photography
is manipulated, some more than others ... its obvious many people here
are bias and dont' consider traditional photography to be manipulated at all
but it is just as heavily manipulated as its younger cousin ...
( even before the shutter button is depressed )

 

[Bob Carnie]

The prints I am making do not look like photographs , they are starting to look like a cross between a dye transfer and Fresson. I like them.

I could not care less if someone says manipulated photo prints isn't photography. To me all the manipulations that I do are based on 40 years working in a darkroom , and
making prints that I think can survive the test of time , is much more important these days to me than ever before.

 

[DREW WILEY]

We all draw our own line, make our own rules. Yeah, if you're working commercially, for a client, then maybe they make the rules instead. But for
personal work, I don't like the idea of anyone else dictating anything, not even the mat width or picture frame style. Otherwise, we can let the art
critics define the pigeonholes of genre, since that's their own specific game of bluff and illusionism.

 

[Richard S. (rich815)]

My biggest issue occurs when a photographer does manipulation in such a way that it makes the photo better, but in a way it supposedly makes the photographer look more talented when they conveniently forget or choose not to mention the changes or manipulation they did. That's disingenuous in my book. Manipulate or amend all you want just don't try to put it forth as if you didn't. Or that you're some magician with the camera rather than actually just really good with Photoshop.

 

[Ian Grant]

Some very early photography was highly manipulated, Peter Henry Emerson for instance - at the time noone realised (and many still don't).

I agree with Bob and surprisingly these days (the last 30 years) all my personal work is very straight minimal re-interpretation in the darkroom. However in the past it was different and printing from multiple negatives, processes even Bob's not tried (yet), it still can be for commercial work as you learn and keep techniques for potential future use.

Ian

 

[DREW WILEY]

Is that right? Where are you getting your information? PH Emerson despised any kind of manipulation. He even considered dodging or burning as downright unethical.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Is that right? Where are you getting your information? PH Emerson despised any kind of manipulation. He even considered dodging or burning as downright unethical.

I just googled to remind me of his images... Though I can agree with you Drew as it looks like there is no manipulation... Most of the images I see could be lith prints-yes I know he worked before lith printing was voque but they sure have the feel that I see hundreds here on APUG in the gallery emulating.

 

[DREW WILEY]

He was one of the finest, most subtle platinum printers who ever lived, Bob. No resemblance to lith prints - that misimpression would be an artifact of poor web presentation. He was also one of the most contentious persons in photographic history in terms of defining inflexible rules of right
and wrong, the one who more than anyone else pushed for photography as a fine art genre (though he recanted later in life). He would have burned most of us at the stake for any kind of darkroom manipulation. He expected a "perfect" negative that needed nothing more than the correct amount of contact print exposure overall.

 

[Bob Carnie]

He was one of the finest, most subtle platinum printers who ever lived, Bob. No resemblance to lith prints - that misimpression would be an artifact of poor web presentation. He was also one of the most contentious persons in photographic history in terms of defining inflexible rules of right
and wrong, the one who more than anyone else pushed for photography as a fine art genre (though he recanted later in life). He would have burned most of us at the stake for any kind of darkroom manipulation. He expected a "perfect" negative that needed nothing more than the correct amount of contact print exposure overall.

I don't doubt that Drew about him being a good Pt Pd but a quick search shows me a very strong artistic ( granular ) look with areas of softness that I can reiterate is very much like a current day lith print. His work does not look any thing like a clean , no dodge, no burn negative... and you can flap your arms against your chest all you want, I am not buying it.
Maybe he was using ultra thick watercolor papers for his work which would explain a lot to me.
Don't get me wrong I love his work .

Bob

 

[removed account4]

i hadn't really heard of emerson ( quick gooooooogle search changed that )
and never really knew much about his work or his rules to live by.
thanks ian, bob, richardS. and drew for your inputs, and ideas on this subject.
i must admit mr peach robinson's work was in the same boat as emerson's .. names
i had heard mentioned but no ideaa the depth of his combination printing ( 20 negatives ? ! )
talk about darkroom magic ( the both of them ! )

both ideas, mastery of darkroom work, and rules to live by resonate deeply with much of this site.
i've said it before and will say it again, the more i learn about photography, and people who make photographs ( historical and current ) ..
the more i realize the amount i know can fit on the head of a pin. i'm no purist by any stretch of the imagination
if someone wants to do their thing, and acknowledge what they did, i think tha is great, if they want to let it seem like magic
every time i see an image appear, its magical so i can relate.
its too bad the tent isnt' big enough for everyone .. divisions don't make anyone or anything any stronger, they just cause trouble.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

...
i was wondering where the line in the sand is to be drawn,
if there is a litmus test because pretty much all photography
is manipulated, some more than others ... its obvious many people here
are bias and dont' consider traditional photography to be manipulated at all
but it is just as heavily manipulated as its younger cousin ...
( even before the shutter button is depressed )

For me, the demarcation line is very easy to define. First, I agree that one's choice of film (panchromatic, orthochromatic, x-ray, infrared, whatever) affects the resulting image. Secondly, so does the choice of lens, how the subject is framed, when the shutter is tripped and so on. That is a certain type of manipulation and such choices exist not only in photography, but also in painting, sculpting, or even writing and music. I see this not so much as manipulation, but as an artist's presentation or style.

Where manipulation begins for me is after the image is made. To me, the physical image formed in the emulsion from the lens is a reality that obeys the laws of optics, physics, and chemistry. This is true even if it's an anamorphic lens, an infrared sensitive emulsion, or whatever. Given that, where manipulation begins is taking that image and changing it. Light-handed manipulation would be adjusting contrast or cropping. Heavy-handed manipulation would be adding or removing entire elements to the image.

 

[Vaughn]

Words...what a hassle!

AFAIAC, they are all photographs...just different kinds. How much manipulation was done to create the image and/or print can be useful as a way of cataloging photographs...but as Drew suggested, I'll leave that to the art historians -- whom I have little love for (at least in the university setting).

Seems like Peter Henry Emerson would have approved of my way of working. My manipulation restricted to 1) scene, format, and lens selection, 2) film selection, exposure (including filters occasionally) and development of the negative, and 3) choices of process, paper, exposure and contrast control in the printing (no cropping or enlargement of the negative).

But it is just the way I prefer to work. PS -- I have also done some post-development manipulation of the negative (bleaching and/or selenium toning). And once or twice I have selectively toned a negative (toned just the top half, for example.)

 

[ced]

This is another storm in a tea cup.
This subject of "is it art" is strewn across the web, I think while you have 2 individuals debating this it always terminates with "we don't agree to disagree" then both individuals storm off in a huff.
Just do your thing if that makes you happy and if it is for sale and you manage well with it others will probably only be jealous of your success.
The sooner this ridiculous debate comes to an end the better for all on this tiny planet.
Improvise & listen to more jazz... Now is that manipulation or not or is it just glorious freedom?

 

[Maris]

im not asking you to eat it or taste anything...
i was wondering where the line in the sand is to be drawn,
if there is a litmus test because pretty much all photography
is manipulated, some more than others ... its obvious many people here
are bias and dont' consider traditional photography to be manipulated at all
but it is just as heavily manipulated as its younger cousin ...
( even before the shutter button is depressed )

jnanian, after reading your posts I really haven't a clue what you mean by "manipulated". Surely you can't mean that because a photograph of a tree (say) isn't a tree it's manipulated. Or because a photograph offers a cropped view of the universe, not all of it, then the photograph is manipulated. Philosophical inquiry is both fostered and obstructed by words like manipulated that may have a special meaning within an argument. The jnanian line of thought on photography and photo-art is too intriguing to be clouded by an ill-defined term.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Bob - scratching your head about the printing skill of PH Emerson is like questioning the success of Napoleon in military history. He was the primary
mentor of Stieglitz and the inspiration of many others. Don't assess him by those horrifically bad web reproductions, which do seem to look like lith prints. It's hard enough to replicate the look of sensitive platinum prints even in expensive tritone or quad-tone offset printing. We're talking NUANCE. PH Emerson was the PhD of delicate tonality. His stated goal was to replicate the opalescent image he saw on the groundglass, and to the
degree he actually achieved this in his prints, he remains the envy of platinum printers to this day.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I don't doubt that Drew about him being a good Pt Pd but a quick search shows me a very strong artistic ( granular ) look with areas of softness that I can reiterate is very much like a current day lith print. His work does not look any thing like a clean , no dodge, no burn negative... and you can flap your arms against your chest all you want, I am not buying it.
Maybe he was using ultra thick watercolor papers for his work which would explain a lot to me.
Don't get me wrong I love his work .

Bob

I saw an Emerson print a few months ago - specifically this one https://artblart.files.wordpress.co...er-lilies-by-peter-harry-emerson-1886-web.jpg (and that repro looks cleaner/ whiter/ more opened up that what I recall seeing on the wall) at the National Museum of Scotland - He was almost certainly using a manufactured paper - virtually no-one was coating their own until the revival era of the mid-20th century. There were a lot of surface finishes available, but even those don't seem to tend towards texture - at least on examples I've seen. If anything, false vellum/ impersonations of 'Japanese paper' were popular. I'd agree with you that there are a range of possible interventions he might have used & I do suspect him of not being above compositing & combining negatives when needed. Or a bit of graphite, ink, gouache etc when needed. On that matter, there is a fascinating chapter on Bill Brandt's approaches to retouching in the book 'Bill Brandt: Shadow & Light' & the fairly radical approaches he took.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Looks more like a scan of a water-damaged, foxed (mildew-spotted) print to me, characteristic of the vintage, and not necessarily characteristic of
the original platinum image itself. In other cases, what people are seeing is poor web presentation of otherwise good gravure reproductions of Emerson's work, something Stieglitz did. He was founder of a club where manipulation was verbotten, a fanatic and tyrant in this respect. You guys need to do your homework, visit his shrine, and then comment, and not shoot from the hip. If you're going to rewrite history, fine, but do your homework first.

 

[DREW WILEY]

... as far as that specific water-lily image is concerned, it's basically the Mona Lisa of pictorial photography, and you probably would need to drop a
million bucks to acquire a clean original. It's been studied, studied, studied for generations. And people were hand coating their own paper prior to any commercially supplier. Otherwise the potential commercial market wouldn't have been there to begin with. Ever see Cameron's platinums, coated
in a chicken coop even before Emerson? They're about as good as it gets, and basically straight prints too, though of highly choreographed or posed and content.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

jnanian, after reading your posts I really haven't a clue what you mean by "manipulated". Surely you can't mean that because a photograph of a tree (say) isn't a tree it's manipulated. Or because a photograph offers a cropped view of the universe, not all of it, then the photograph is manipulated. Philosophical inquiry is both fostered and obstructed by words like manipulated that may have a special meaning within an argument. The jnanian line of thought on photography and photo-art is too intriguing to be clouded by an ill-defined term.

Well, blinkers off then, and here is the clue.
Traditional wet darkroom work involves manipulation, no different to digital work (it's nicely termed "younger cousin"). Cropping, resizing, dodging, burning, contrast control, toning...etcetera all qualify as manipulation, even if the purists consider it a filthy term and try to defend it to the hilt.

 

[Lachlan Young]

... as far as that specific water-lily image is concerned, it's basically the Mona Lisa of pictorial photography, and you probably would need to drop a
million bucks to acquire a clean original. It's been studied, studied, studied for generations. And people were hand coating their own paper prior to any commercially supplier. Otherwise the potential commercial market wouldn't have been there to begin with. Ever see Cameron's platinums, coated
in a chicken coop even before Emerson? They're about as good as it gets, and basically straight prints too, though of highly choreographed or posed and content.

The Willis Platinotype process was commercialised in 1879-80, with the first patents issued earlier in the 1870s.

Unless you're talking about the Alvin Langdon Coburn platinums made from copy negs, Cameron used Albumen & Carbon as far as I know. I've seen & handled Thomas Annan prints from the dawn of the Carbon process & they are astonishing in their agelessness - unlike the similar vintage albumens.

 

[removed account4]

jnanian, after reading your posts I really haven't a clue what you mean by "manipulated". Surely you can't mean that because a photograph of a tree (say) isn't a tree it's manipulated. Or because a photograph offers a cropped view of the universe, not all of it, then the photograph is manipulated. Philosophical inquiry is both fostered and obstructed by words like manipulated that may have a special meaning within an argument. The jnanian line of thought on photography and photo-art is too intriguing to be clouded by an ill-defined term.

hi maris

a camera by design manipulates time, depth of field and view.
that is what i was refering to ( and have said countless times in the last IDK 12+ years )
no, a black and white photograph of a tree is not just a tree, it is a photograph of a tree made by person ( or computer [ survelience robot ] )
that judges the light, determines a shutter speed which manipulates time into fractions of a second or seconds / minutes
(if there isnt' enough light for the film/paper's "speed" ), iris/fstop of the lens determining what is in focus / not in focus, and framing
( all determined before the shutter is depressed ) and then afterwards, what developer will be used to convert the latent image into a negative
( grainy negative, no grain ? ) and then the print will contrast be enhanced ? will the image be burned and dodged ? will it be split developed?
soft tone developer? and afterwards will it be toned ? hand colored?
it isn't anything out of the ordinary, the black and white photographic process, but at the same time,
manipulating chemical rays of light into a finalized silver gelatin print uses manipulation that the regular practitioner might not
realize, or might not want to admit is part of the whole photographic process. the human eye or brain does ont see the world in fractions of seconds or seconds
unless our perception is enhanced by drugs which might change the way we see the world. we do not see the world in black and white but in color
unless we are living in a world described by calvin's dad ( http://calvin-and-hobbes-comic-strips.blogspot.com/2011/11/calvin-asks-dad-about-old-black-and.html ) ...

maybe i am in a minority, but the idea that a black and white or color or just a plain old " film /paper" based photograph os not manipulated, i find to be bordering absurd/ ...
even a sunny 16 negative in a box camera on plain vanilla black and white film, processed in plain vanilla developer
normal temp/time contact printed in dektol on plain vanilla photo paper with no on camera filtration
and no burning and dodging, and no elarger manipulation. as straight forward as it gets, it is manipulated