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

[Theo Sulphate]

...
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/

For whatever it's worth, I actually agree with what you've said in your post above.

Sure, all of what you've stated is "manipulation". However, adding or removing things (trees, people, signs) is taking things further. For example, here's a fundamental difference between cropping a frame to exclude something and removing it entirely from near the center of the image.

I'm not saying that's bad or "impure" - but that's where I would make the distinction between photography and photoart.

 

[removed account4]

hi theo
i didn't realize that was the distinction ... between the two, and i agree,
there are some manipulations that seem heavy handed
( like turning a person into a shrub, adding removing things and things i mentioned already )
but just the same, retouching a black and white negative with leads or fluid for portrait or other type of work has been around since 1839 ...
isn't retouching ( whether heavy handed or light like a butterfly kiss ) part of photography ?
it is as much of photography as the other manipulations ( or so it seems ).

 

[ced]

Here is a link to what looks like a better copy from the V&A...
Note the one with the grey/colour wedges.
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O...ies-life-and-photograph-emerson-peter-henry/#

 

[Lachlan Young]

Here is a link to what looks like a better copy from the V&A...
Note the one with the grey/colour wedges.
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O...ies-life-and-photograph-emerson-peter-henry/#

From the description, that's a photogravure - "Photograph, 'Gathering Water-Lilies', by Peter Henry Emerson, photogravure, 1886. Later published as a platinotype in his pictorial book 'Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads', in 1887, plate 9." Note also, "The entry in the 1888 Accession Registry of Engravings describes it as ‘probably the first photogravure negative from nature ever published separately as a work of art’." Platinum & carbon tissue gravure have quite different tone curves.

The reproduction in the Getty Platinotype PDF - http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/pdf/atlas_platinotype.pdf is closer to how it seemed to me on the wall

 

[DREW WILEY]

Oversharpened, but whudduya expect from the web. Being the master printer he was, Emerson would have logically tweaked a gravure a bit differently than a platinum contact anyway. The only thing Emerson didn't consider a mortal sin was spotting out an annoying highlight or dust spot
here and there.

 

[ced]

Sorry about the gravure but this seems a better repro of the Platino.
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/286671

 

[pdeeh]

turning a person into a shrub

hmm there's a few people I wouldn't mind turning into shrubs ...

 

[Steve Smith]

and I think you probably mean that man ray couldn't care less ...

I see you are as pedantic as me!


Steve.

 

[mdarnton]

I see you are as pedantic as me!

. . . as "I [am]".

 

[pdeeh]

I am simply agin the unintelligible ...

 

[Maris]

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 ).......

Genuine thanks for your extended disquisition on the way you use the concept of "manipulation". From the examples you give it seems that you use manipulation to describe, in general, situations where a decision leads to an outcome. For example, the act of pointing a camera in one direction rather than another would constitute manipulation. Or using colour film instead of black and white is another instance of manipulation. From a philosophical point of view this is all legitimate if applied consistently.

But there is a potential difficulty. It lies in the parallel concept of "unmanipulated". If we can't find a single unmanipulated outcome in photography then the term manipulated is redundant. And in discussions about photography manipulated becomes no longer useful in distinguishing one thing from another. Saying "photography is manipulated" merely reduces to saying "photography is what it is".

 

[removed account4]

Genuine thanks for your extended disquisition on the way you use the concept of "manipulation". From the examples you give it seems that you use manipulation to describe, in general, situations where a decision leads to an outcome. For example, the act of pointing a camera in one direction rather than another would constitute manipulation. Or using colour film instead of black and white is another instance of manipulation. From a philosophical point of view this is all legitimate if applied consistently.

But there is a potential difficulty. It lies in the parallel concept of "unmanipulated". If we can't find a single unmanipulated outcome in photography then the term manipulated is redundant. And in discussions about photography manipulated becomes no longer useful in distinguishing one thing from another. Saying "photography is manipulated" merely reduces to saying "photography is what it is".

EXACTLY
it is what it is ...
and there really is no potential difficulty
in suggesting this ( at least to me ) because
i am OK with the fact that no matter what we do
with a camera, we are manipulating the heck out of a scene or portrait &c
which is why i typically find it annoying when people claim that
black and white photography where there is no retouching ( fluid or leads )
or even burning and dodging and it is just a time based contact print, is "unmanipulated photography"
because it ignores pretty much every single thing they did before the print was pulled out out of wash.
the format of camera
the choice of film
the choice of lens
the exposure ( choice of fstop and shutter speed )
the choice of developer
will the film based negative be selenium boosted, toned to enhance contrast or tonality &c
reduced wtih potassium ferricyanide
NOT fixed well
developed with a hard and soft developer, a warm or cold developer,
a paper that is rag
self coated paper
glossy, matte
developed "to completion"
solarization
chromodiasic
lith
halochrome
pulled
toned
agstab
wet, dry plate
calotype, daguerreotype ...
there are countless ways a "traditional" photographer
can manipulate the heck of a simple tradiional photograph
photography ... is photography

 

[Ozxplorer]

photography ... is photography

Agreed! Any other process or method of print making... Isn't!

 

[Theo Sulphate]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/p12-schilling-godzilla-a-20160729.jpg

Fundamentally the same as Moonrise then...

 

[Steve Smith]

. . . as "I [am]".

I have been out-pedanticised!


Steve.

 

[removed account4]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/p12-schilling-godzilla-a-20160729.jpg

Fundamentally the same as Moonrise then...

maybe ...
from my perspective they are both the result of manipulation
every time we make a exposure and later a print
we are creating out own reality of how we interpreted what we saw,
what we wished we saw, or what we DIDN'T see, when we press the button.
photography is about interpretation ( the end result of manipulation ).

 

[Vaughn]

Manipulation starts as soon as we open our eyes, let alone pick up a camera.

 

[DREW WILEY]

There is a difference between interpreting what we see through a camera lens, then printing it in such a fashion that our own feelings about the scene
become accessible to others, and gross manipulations or composite scenes which have no actual relation to what we saw in the first place. Nowadays
there is something I call Lardassography, where people sit on their butt fetching imagery over the web, then reassemble it into something fictitious. Fine; but I'll never call it photography. It might be fine for Sat afternoon digitally-projected action matinees for teenager picking their noses while gobbling down overpriced buckets of popcorn; but it really a completely different kind of process than actually discovering something and intelligently
communicating it. As photographers, we do edit the world into discrete bits, and we do inherently alter it according to our own psychological and
technical abilities and tastes. But we discovered something we personally valued, recorded it for posterity, and hopefully, if it was deemed worthy
enough, made an articulate print of it. I feel what is on my groundglass. It's there. And it is an utterly different experience than the relative non-experience of someone doctoring something up in Fauxtoshop, or grossly colorizing a nominal shot that has no more significance itself than a slice
of raw eggplant.

 

[removed account4]

and gross manipulations

i guess it all depends on what one believes is gross manipulation.

 

[Wayne]

The notion that every image is manipulated operates on the assumption that the original scene exists in some absolute, distinct, unmalleable state. I'm not sure science or philosophy support that assumption. Every image is an interpretation of something that none of us knows the true absolute nature of. None (or few) claim it to be the thing itself, and the mere act of trying to represent 4+ dimensions in only 2 does not indicate manipulation has taken place. It only indicated representation has taken place. If 2 or more people describe the same scene differently but honestly in words, none will write the same words in the same order. Has manipulation taken place? Of course not, nonfiction writing has taken place.

 

[pdeeh]

What Wayne said.
To borrow a term from the philosophy of mind, no form of photography has "privileged access" to "reality" any more than painting or sculpture has (no less either, I think).
But, as recent political processes around the world demonstrate, rational thinking has very little to do with what people choose to believe and argue for, even if their arguments are grotesquely flawed.
And equally, what people choose to believe and argue for in relation to what's "real " or "authentic" in photography bears only the smallest relation to rationality.

 

[removed account4]

The notion that every image is manipulated operates on the assumption that the original scene exists in some absolute, distinct, unmalleable state. I'm not sure science or philosophy support that assumption. Every image is an interpretation of something that none of us knows the true absolute nature of. None (or few) claim it to be the thing itself, and the mere act of trying to represent 4+ dimensions in only 2 does not indicate manipulation has taken place. It only indicated representation has taken place. If 2 or more people describe the same scene differently but honestly in words, none will write the same words in the same order. Has manipulation taken place? Of course not, nonfiction writing has taken place.

hi wayne

i agree with what you have said, and it is part of the process of handling the equipment, the scene and interpreting it.
brian ( early riser ) just posted an image to the gallery today of a rugged mountain scene that glows and has star trails.
i am guessing he made a long exposure, and developed the film in magic soup to give it the smooth tones it has.
a less-gifted photographer would not know how to work with the camera, lighting, scene, and processing to get that image,
but brian was able ( is able ) to create these eerie, surreal photographs with a dreamlike, almost vision quest quality to them.
and it is all through skillful use of his camera, lenses, film, developer &c ... which is a type of manipulation. it is creating a reality
that can only exist through hyper the reality of mind altering drugs, or the reality bending actions of a skilled photographer.

i guess we are each saying tomato but with a differnt accent over the a.

 

[wiltw]

Textbook case of Thread Drift!

 

[removed account4]

Textbook case of Thread Drift!

how is that ?
the OP of the thread was that ctien was upset because the other guy
claimed his images were "too manipulated" to be considered "photography"
so he said that his work, and others that contain manipulation he considers "photoart"
my pov is that ALL photography is manipulated, even heavily manipulated it is what photography is ..
not sure how that is thread drift ...

 

[falotico]

I'm all for artistic freedom. But I believe that there is a difference between a photograph showing Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon and one showing Elvis Presley shaking hands with an alien from Mars.