Fauxtography

Nothing is real; nothing to write home about.

It seems to me that the issue is one of convention, not of veracity.

In times past, we might see an image such as would be found in Life magazine, and we'd know what it was. We would accept it as a document that had a certain relationship to something we could accept as true, even if it wasn't really true. We could place it in our mind. Likewise, we could see an ab-ex painting, say a Franz Kline, and we (well, some of us) could accept that as what it is. Each of these represents a convention and we see them within a framework that belongs to the convention that our mind places them within.

Work would appear that might require us to flounder a bit while we attempt to construct a new framework for something we hadn't seen. Remember the first time you saw one of Jerry Uelsmann's images?

Where we have difficulty and may feel a need to simplify these days is in the confusion of conventions; that we can't be sure that an image is this or is that. No longer can we take anything for granted. I think lots of people have big trouble with that. Certainty seems to be important; more important for some than for others. Some people really get mad about this, and find digital imaging absolutely immoral (I heard an interview with Elliott Erwitt where he expressed this) while others find it exciting because of the new possibilities that it offers. For someone like Erwitt, photography is photography as he does it, and there isn't any room for deviation beyond a certain point. For him, that horizon is pretty close.

The term "fauxtography" essentially reduces the vast multiplicity of possibilities we have in imaging today to a dualistic formula, true or false. It doesn't account for the fact that no image is "true" in that a picture of a hamburger is not a hamburger. Nor does it take into account the other side, that every image is real, a real image - real as just what it is.

It seems to me that attempting to draw a line at any point is simply to move the breaking point between black and white, like exposing a kodalith from a continuous tone negative more or less. It's a very limiting view, and one that probably tends to impoverish the spirit.

As long as an artist is upfront about the provenance of the work, there is no problem. In most cases "Fauxtography" is meant as demeaning, and is nothing more than a cheap shot at a particular process. Some things that are called photography are not, they are illustrations that use photographic elements. If the artist maintains that these illustrations are photographs, that is their ignorance to bear, as no serious patron or collector is fooled, assuming that they even care. Most would buy work they think is strong in spite of the artist's affectations. The flip side is that many working in digital media fervently maintain that a computer print is the same as a silver, platinum, iron, bromoil, carbon print, etc. when they are in fact utterly different media. They all can be arrived at through the process of photography, but the media isn't the same. Some, however, persist that it is, to the detriment of all the photographic arts.

I hate pretentious made up words that describe everyday processes like "giclee" to describe inkjet printing, but my irritation has lessened as I have learned that collectors and patrons are well aware of what things are. The 8 buck "giclee" crowd only fools the dilettante. The collectors buy what they like.

The biggest problem we face as analog photographic artists is the perceptual homogenization of our process as identical to digital processes in the mind of they lay person, however, I'm not sure they matter so much.

JBrunner said:

I hate pretentious made up words that describe everyday processes like "giclee" to describe inkjet printing...

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Yeah, me too. So I pronounce it Gick-Lee accenting the Gick.

I enjoy photoshop a lot - in addition and parallel to my work in analog photography. I use photographic elements along with graphics from other sources and my own drawing and "painting" using the various manipulations that are available. I find that when I show these, people seem to try to call them photographs. I take some pains to point out that they aren't. Just what to call them, I'm not sure, but I don't worry about it much.

The impulse that people show in calling these things "photographs" may come from their knowing me as a photographer, but I also think that it shows the need we humans seem to have to name things, to identify and categorize for the purpose of organizing the mind's filing system. I sort of enjoy the confusion, actually. There's a kind of discomfort where I can see someone struggling to force something that they have never encountered into an existing box. Finding that there is something wrong with the fit, they might try to find another box, but some actually then see the work on its own terms without trying to make it like something else to maintain their comfort.

My own feeling about the ink jet print is that it is a wonderful medium for digital art, but for my own kind of photography, it is a poor shadow of analog materials. I don't often find digital prints of straight photographs very convincing unless they have some very specific graphic qualities that do not depend upon the kind of scale I can achieve with silver, etc.

bowzart said:

My own feeling about the ink jet print is that it is a wonderful medium for digital art, but for my own kind of photography, it is a poor shadow of analog materials.

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It occurred to me that I'm leaving out a part of the story. I use the jet for color. Having spent about half of my working life in the dark printing custom color on type C, I very much appreciate digital color. What I say above is about what I'm mainly doing now, B&W.

bowzart said:

Yeah, me too. So I pronounce it Gick-Lee accenting the Gick.

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I like that. Can't wait to use it on some of my more snobbish artist friends. Or maybe I'll say, "Jickly"...

eddym said:

I like that. Can't wait to use it on some of my more snobbish artist friends. Or maybe I'll say, "Jickly"...

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Look up the French definition in porn context. It's hilarious. Means "money shot".

eddym said:

I like that. Can't wait to use it on some of my more snobbish artist friends. Or maybe I'll say, "Jickly"...

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An American mis-pronouncing French? Boy, that'll really show them!

cdholden said:

Wow. I'm glad the college I attended had students on campus with LSD and mushrooms. I can't imagine what my photos would be like without those experiences so many years ago. I don't think the vision would be quite the same. Who needs those time lapse photos of street traffic to remember trailing lights? Ah, the good ol' days.

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i agree, through "external stimulation"

velvia can be a reality ... just like salvador dali, jerry uelsmann, the peter gabriel ( melt ) and countless other surreal situations

but that is what i am saying ... "that stuff" is true, but in an altered state
so to speak, whether dreaming awake or asleep,
it is an altered state ... not in everyday reality.

A B&W picture is a departure from reality {?}.

Michel Hardy-Vallée said:

Realism in photography is dependent on conventions external to the photograph itself. A B&W picture is a departure from reality, but within certain norms and expectations, can also be considered a truthful rendition of reality.

Don't look at pictures for truth; look at humans.

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Some people have pure black and white eyesight; the above statement isn't universally true. Some people interpret the colour world as b&w.