is it the process or the final print that is important?

[mark]

Mel Stabin, in his book WATERCOLOR: SIMPLE, FAST, AND FOCUSED, says it is the process of painting that is important not the final product. (paraphrased of course) this got me thinking about my photography. At least the photography I did when I had the time to actually do it on a regular basis. I then looked at the number of unprocessed negs I have and realized that those final steps were not as important as the making of the photograph. Maybe I am screwed up but I really have very little desire to process and print those negs that are sitting there. I suppose I will get around to them but I am not in a rush. So for me it really is the process of taking that image that is important to me.

Now, I am in no way saying there is a right or wrong answer to this question and my way is definitely not the way of many others but I thought it was an interesting realisation.

So which is it for you?

 

[Jim Noel]

I believe that to some the final print is of primary importance and they care little about the process except as a mens to an end.

Also there are some, and I am one of them, who are extremely interested in the craft and the process. Of course we are as interested in the final image as anyone, it is just that we enjoy the journey of getting there. I also prefer the train over airplanes for the same reason.

 

[wfe]

I'm interested in all phases of the process. For me they all contribute to the photograph and I receive rewards, enjoyment and satisfaction from all phases.

Cheers,
Bill

 

[jovo]

Maybe because I'm a musician trained to translate notes on a page into sound, the performance truly transcends the score in the manner of AA's statement. As much as I enjoy finding a subject that's picture worthy, and making a good negative, only the final print truly fulfills the entire process. Even a good negative or print scan that looks good on a monitor doesn't come close to offering me the satisfaction that a fine print does.....and even that isn't complete until it's mounted and matted.

 

[Vaughn]

What is more important the air or the working lungs that take it in.

Without either you are screwed.

Vaughn

or put another way...what is more important. The Yin or the Yang?

 

[Dan Fromm]

This question has come up before. Happy users of high-end, they say, cameras such as Leicas have gone so far as to say that the final print has no importance at all.

I hang prints on my walls. I don't hang anything involved in making them, from seeing the subject through framing the print, on the wall. And I don't see how processes can be displayed.

That said, Mark, if you get great pleasure from pushing the button and don't feel the need to print anything, let alone hang your own work on the wall, I don't see what's wrong with that. I mean, you're using your time and other resources to please yourself.

 

[keithwms]

Ehmmm... both. Since we don't have to pick whether we'd rather have a hen or an egg, why not take both.

 

[haris]

Does goal justufy the means? I don't know, I would ask dr. Mengele, Stalin, Kissinger, missionaries, CEOs, generals...

For me, it's like Zen Busidm, it is jounrey too (or in first place), not only reaching the end of it.

 

[bruce terry]

...is it the process or the final print that is important?

The process of making, processing and printing the negative is what's important. A top-drawer, matted print is the pleasure.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I think the watercolor book example is specifically pertinent to that art and its practitioners.

To me as a photographer, because of the kind of work I do, the process (which is a horrendously vague term) is very important to me, because all the phases of the process I go through, from pre/visualization to finished framed print, are important. I wouldn't produce the kind of work I do if they weren't. To a potential customer, and even moreso to a casual, disinterested viewer of my work, all that is meaningless. They could care less about how I decided to shoot what I shot, what film I shot it with, how I developed the film, and what kind of paper I printed it on. Because I'm printing platinum/palladium, I do get a somewhat more interested audience, and they'll ask questions sometimes that do get in to the technical, but usually nothing more than what kind of print it is, and maybe why did I choose to print using that media.

 

[Ian Leake]

The final print is the finished work so at the end of the day that’s what counts. But having said that, the process is also important to me. I’m much more likely to be impressed by a splendid print which is part of a coherent body of work created by a photographer who’s mastered their chosen process, than by a splendid print created by serendipity or with a simple process. It’s the difference between, “That’s special and unique to that photographer,” and, “That’s nice, but anyone could do it.”

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

The process, in all its aspects is the work:

cf:
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Performance-New-Directions-Aesthetics/dp/1405116676

 

[Ian Leake]

Photography as a performance art? I'll read the book before taking a view on that...

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I can buy the notion of photography as performance art, especially if one is doing wet-plate collodion or such, where you can make the act of photographing into a performance. What gets me though, are the idiots who are performance artists who claim that their performance is photography - those who make photographs of their performances and insist that they are not photographers, and that what they are doing is not photography - they are 'artists who use cameras'. Where's the difference? To cite an extreme example, that Mapplethorpe photo of himself with a bullwhip up his ass... that's certainly an act of performance art, but it's also a photograph.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Thank you Scott, (I've not seen that one) what a lovely mental image that forms

In descending order of importance;

1) Looking for photographs. I love the way my senses become keener while out photographing, how I become so much more aware and more visually curious. There's also that race between a scene in nature unfolding before me, and being able to manage the gear, the metering, the choice of exposure, and what development to give that I love.

2) Developing the negatives. After developing negatives in a tray in total darkness there's that building anticipation for the moment you can turn on the light, and see them for the first time. Magic.

3) Printing. This ones last because there are so many negatives that'll never make it onto paper that it can't be the reason I photograph. Only the 'keepers' get to be reborn as positives. There have been times while printing that the hairs on my arm have stood on end so there's excitement in printing, but compared to the act of finding photographs while meandering through the rain forest, wandering up a creek, or discovering some new hidden gem, printing is a distant third.

Murray

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

The term "performance" as it is used in the book I referred to is not identical to the term "performance art" à la Laurie Anderson.

Think of it this way: "work" in English means both an action and an object. "I work" vs. "I have a work hanging on my wall." In French, we use "travail" for an action and "oeuvre" or "ouvrage" for an object being the result of the latter.

The point of "Art as Performance" is that when you are appreciating a work of art, you are appreciating "travail" not just "oeuvre." In other words, a painting as a physical object is a gateway to the process of its making, both physical and intellectual. There are many people in aesthetics who reduce an artwork to the sense-data it provides to the viewer, but we all know that there is no such thing as an innocent eye: there is no masterpiece without prior appreciation of where it comes from, even if said appreciation of context is not done in full awareness.

Stephen Shore nowadays refers to photographs as "solving a problem," which is somewhat similar to this view: a full appreciation of a work involves understanding what kind of work-travail was necessary to get there. It's not about intention per se, it's about what was done to get to the result. When we are blown away by a photograph, it's also because we understand the value of what was done to create it.

You can thus account for the value of originality, the technical mastery, but also the thematic strength and the depth of reflection behind a work of art.

So the "process" part of appreciating a photograph is not limited to appreciating the quality of the silver gelatin paper or of the film's fine-grain: it's appreciating as well the intelligence of its maker in producing it, in "solving its problem" to reuse Shore's words. In Ansel Adams's terminology, it would amount to appreciating not only the surface of the finished print, not only the darkroom work, but also the process of (pre)visualization.

Look at the way we criticize photos: "a good idea but poorly executed," "a cliché," "a profound work of daring originality," etc. All these comments do not point to a physical object: they point to the actions that somebody did!

 

[MattKing]

I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of those who care about the process, are those who have struggled with and enjoyed the process.

The others who care about the process are either those who have learned from others that the process matters, or those who, being impressed with the print, have expended the effort to learn how it was done, and to appreciate how it was done.

The process imbues a character and quality into the print (or transparency, or motion picture). Other characteristics and qualities are imbued by the steps taken in framing, focusing, exposing, editing, and possibly manipulating the intermediate physical or electronic media.

I think back to something my father said on more than one occasion. He worked for Kodak for more than 1/3 of a century, and the labs he worked in (in the customer service and marketing divisions) processed millions of miles of movie film.

On the west coast of Canada, we were probably near the outer edges of the North American commercial movie distribution system. If we went to a movie as a family, he would be absolutely irritated by a scratch or other defects in the "print". As I became more and more involved in the photographic world, more and more I'd share the same response. I am confident, however, that most of the audience barely noticed those scratches and defects, because their mind set would allow them to see past them.

That doesn't mean that the same audiences would be oblivious to a pristine print that revealed wonderful cinematography. It just means that they weren't so attuned to it.

This thread is very much a question about perception. Perception is one of those things that is most influenced by experience and education.

When it comes to prints, I probably get too close, and look too carefully at the details. I think it comes with the territory, but I need to reduce the tendency.

Matt

 

[removed account4]

hi mark

it depends on the day and the year ..
alot of the time i find myself exposing film
and maybe processing it, and never making prints.
sometimes i don't even put film in my camera,
and i find shooting with no film at all
to be as (or more) important than making prints.

john

 

[Sean]

Ehmmm... both. Since we don't have to pick whether we'd rather have a hen or an egg, why not take both.

Exactly. Unfortunately the attitude out there that it can not be "both" and anyone using traditional methods for any art form must only care about process :rolleyes:

 

[sun of sand]

put too much emphasis on being perfect and nothing is ever truly finished
1 week on 1 thing gets you nowhere if you constantly remake everything

Work on something till you feel it's done ..not perfect, just done
and you will have a vast amount of good work ..which you can then choose from to spend even more time on perfecting if you so choose
1 week on 10 things and you may end up with -on average- 4 or 5 that really say something and that also refine your decision making/boost your creativity by seeing what can come of something eventhough may not be perfect from the onset

Its the "putting pen to paper" approach

 

[Katharine Thayer]

I'm still back trying to imagine what Mel Stabin actually meant by the idea attributed to him that began this thread, and how it relates to photography. Stabin produces paintings which he offers for sale, and it seems probable that the people who buy his books and who attend his workshops expect to use the skills and knowledge gained thereby to produce paintings. So I doubt he really means that it's the process that matters, not the product. I'd be inclined to take the statement as rhetorical flourish, not as meaningful information.

If process really mattered more than product, he would be recommending painting on glass, so it could be washed off after enjoying the process, or on old newspapers, so it could be thrown away after; why waste good watercolor paper, if the goal isn't to produce a painting but just to enjoy the "process"? Or (to carry the analogy to the point where it matches the idea of photographing without film in the camera) paint without using paint. Just move the brush around; if the goal isn't to create a painting, why bother with materials at all? (And even when such exercises--moving the brush without using paint-- are employed when learning the process, as in learning how to wield the brush for sumi painting, the ultimate goal is to eventually make paintings that are supposedly improved by the discipline of the exercise). I can't speak for Stabin, of course, but I think most painters would say that process is important only as a means to an end: the creation of a painting, not as an end in itself.

In photography of course, there are two parts to the process: the making of the negative and the making of the print. The OP seems to be suggesting that for him, the making of the negative is the important part of the process; he's satisfied when he's done that and doesn't feel any great urgency to go to the second step. I have no argument with that point of view, though I can't identify with it. For me, making the print is the important part of the process, and in fact it doesn't matter much to me how the negative is made.*

The print matters to me, but the process of making the print is essential to the print. You can't have one without the other. It's that thing about the air and lungs Vaughn mentioned.

* cliche-verre (photographic print from painted negative)

Katharine

 

[Ian Leake]

Well said Katherine, and thank you for taking the time to write and helping me to think more clearly about this.

It should go without saying that a meaningful image is an essential pre-requisite to a meaningful print. But a meaningful print is so much more than just an image. A print is also a physical thing which has a specific size, texture, and colour. Often these physical attributes can only be achieved by using a specific process. So the process and the print are inextricably linked in my mind.

If I used a different process then I expect I'd make different images, because I believe that the physicality of the print (which is influenced by the process) effects how a viewer reacts to the image. For example, many people who've seen my Pt/Pd prints have said that they feel "gentle". (And then they go into raptures when they notice the three dimensional effect of Pt/Pd.) I don't believe that silver, or gum, or inkjet, or any other printing process would communicate the same feeling in the same way (OK, maybe in the hands of a different printer they could, but then they wouldn't be my prints, they'd be someone else's prints). So for me, image and process are also linked.

It's often said that “most people” only care about the image itself, and that this proves that the process is irrelevant. Well, to be frank, I don't care what “most people” think. I care about creating photographs that are meaningful to me and which connect emotionally to other people. I use a specific process which, when coupled with a meaningful image, achieves the first part of that goal. And so long as there are sufficient people who appreciate what I create then I’ve achieved the second part of that goal too.

To paraphrase and extend what I said on another thread, a perfect print without a meaningful image is an empty vessel. But an image which lacks the appropriate physical medium has no soul.

 

[DanielOB]

Orig. post:"Mel Stabin, in his book WATERCOLOR: SIMPLE, FAST, AND FOCUSED, says it is the process of painting that is important not the final product. (paraphrased of course)"

Water color are around with its own roles. Water painting is mainly for children and guys in retirement to kill the time. It is rare case to use it for making artwork. So somehow it is correct you found in the book. Anyway, do not mix it with photography which has own and different roles, especially today when many commercial branches of photography are separated from photography...

"... So for me it really is the process of taking that image that is important to me."

But what else you have in photography?

Daniel OB

 

[Chuck_P]

Process matters, I think, but not to the exclusion of the final print. IMO, they are inherenly tied to each other and I think it is the aim of a well crafted process in photography that leads to the final print, but I would insert....... that it leads to the successful final print. But I'm sure we all probably have different ideas of what a successful final print is.

Chuck

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

To add a further detail to my previous explanation: the physical print can be considered as the focus of appreciation, i.e. the epistemological window into the actual process of its making. In other words, the print shows you a trace of its making, and that is why good quality prints/reproduction are important up to a certain point.