Ken Rockwell and the popularity of film photography

[dngrhm]

enjoy it while you can

I'm overstating it a bit in my previous post, but that about sums up the attitude. File this under the one thing I would change about apug because there is really so much good. Many threads of people sharing their 10-20-30-40 years of experience, expertise in a variety of areas I haven't even considered. I never really considered the artistry that can happen between film and paper until I found the printing thread showing film scan and print. Sure there is real change in the industry but too much negative without much positive tends to scare away the noobs like myself. ...and I was starting in the direction of E6 Though I'm reconsidering toward MF B&W to get into developing.

On the OP, I don't have insight into film sales, but I think there is movement from digital to film by many who "grew up" with digital. There is an amazing amount of plugins and filters to get that "film look". There is a reason for that.

 

[blansky]

I'm overstating it a bit in my previous post, but that about sums up the attitude. File this under the one thing I would change about apug because there is really so much good. Many threads of people sharing their 10-20-30-40 years of experience, expertise in a variety of areas I haven't even considered. I never really considered the artistry that can happen between film and paper until I found the printing thread showing film scan and print. Sure there is real change in the industry but too much negative without much positive tends to scare away the noobs like myself. ...and I was starting in the direction of E6 Though I'm reconsidering toward MF B&W to get into developing.

On the OP, I don't have insight into film sales, but I think there is movement from digital to film by many who "grew up" with digital. There is an amazing amount of plugins and filters to get that "film look". There is a reason for that.

You have to remember that film had many many years to get it right. And did they ever get it right. The many looks and types of film produce incredible images especially black and white.

When processes changed to digital the natural progression was to still try and get that look we all loved. And digital had a slightly different look that many people didn't like as much. Don't forget a plug in is just essentially a short cut through photoshop to get a look. When I first converted over to digital that first thing I had to learn how to do was to duplicate the look of all the portraits on my wall that I had shot with medium format b&W film. The look I loved.

I think your idea of medium format black and white as a starting point is a great idea, in fact maybe the best idea, of a way to learn and get GREAT black and white pictures. And black and white film will be around for a very long time.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

And black and white film will be around for a very long time.

So just out of idle curiosity... do you still have any of your 30 years worth of film equipment? Was there ever any of your own darkroom equipment to go along with it? If so, any of that stuff left over as well?

Ever entertained any thoughts about picking up a film camera again? Not for business. That's a completely different set of requirements with expectations all its own. But maybe for personal use? And just for a little retro enjoyment?

I'm just a weekend hack without an ounce of talent. And amazingly Sean still lets me post photographs in the galleries. You presumably really know what you're doing. If your eye is anything like your posts, I'd love to see some photographs by you posted there as well...

Ken

 

[ntenny]

This thread actually got really interesting after I was afraid it was going to get stuck in the Argument Clinic. I agree with what Ken (N, not R) says about portraiture, by the way---that stuff is *hard* and I greatly admire people who can do it well. I sometimes hit it with people I'm personally close to, and there are few photographic results more satisfying.

Provenance is a complicated concept and can be important for several different reasons. I think a lot of people (especially at APUG, of course) feel like the wet darkroom creates a certain type of provenance that can't in principle be matched by a d*g*t*l workflow.

For the specific case of an in-camera b&w negative, I guess that's almost objectively true, in that the black stuff that forms the highlight areas comprises the VERY SAME silver atoms that were activated by actual photons reflected directly from the original subject at the moment of exposure; for a print, or for color film, there's an extra layer of indirection, so to speak, because there's another stage that derives some other form of the image from that original silver. On the other hand, a reasonable person could argue that it's not an important distinction, in that the image already is *not* the thing depicted and it doesn't matter how many additional processes you put it through, you already lost the identity of the thing when you allowed a bunch of reflected photons to represent the subject. I suppose that's an identity-based concept of provenance: it's understood as a kind of "chain of custody", which if broken represents a loss of authenticity. Ken---fair summary?

But you could also look at provenance in an accumulative way, which I think is more of a norm for hybrid photographers: Every stage of capture and processing leaves its "fingerprint" on the image in some way, and the identity of an image is sort of the sum of all those fingerprints. So that photo of my son that's in the hallway at home has some of the Sonnary goodness derived from the lens as part of its provenance, the association of my dad's old camera as another part (I took the shot in the first roll after the camera was handed down to me), whatever mystical signatures are imparted in E-6 processing, plus the digital provenance of the scan-and-print process, and so forth. The thinking here is that you can't remove provenance, you can only build on it.

Speaking just for myself, I find "provenance" to be quite an important concept, but as the years pass I see it more and more in that second way. Maybe this is a condition of middle age or maybe it's just me. Anyway, the whole subject has very little to do with how the final image looks, and I think Ken and I agree in feeling that its importance is independent of that---if you could produce the exact same image by two different routes, it would still matter (to us) which route you took.

There's a short story about this subject by Jorge Luis Borges: I believe it's called "Pierre Menard, Author Of The _Quixote_". As usual, I think Borges has anticipated all of our positions in this discussion and had more thoughts about them than any of us have...

-NT

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

This thread actually got really interesting after I was afraid it was going to get stuck in the Argument Clinic.

While it might have looked like 'blanksy' came out of the blue on this, he didn't. He and I have been discussing these themes for quite a while now, both on and offline. We just happened to pick it up again here in public this time in a way that might have appeared abrupt.

I cannot disagree with anything you wrote, Nathan. That is, in fact, pretty much a perfect summary of my views on photographic provenance.

It may be worth noting as well that my personal definition of a "photograph" is not the final silver print, or inkjet print, or negative scan, or monitor display, or even one's retrospective coffee table book. Those are all reproductions . It's the negative itself. And only the negative itself. The thing that originally, and spontaneously without any assistance from the photographer, received, registered and preserved the pattern of light that originally reflected from the subject.

That original negative (or positive, in positive-only processes such a transparencies, instant film, and daguerreotypes) is therefore the singular first generation object of indirection. Before it there are no photographs, only the original subject. And after it there are only reproductions. It is the one-off, unique evidence that the scene which spontaneously rendered itself upon it truly once existed directly in front of it.

In an example that 'blanksy' and I have toiled over several times, the reason that Alexander Gardner's glass plate negatives of the Hanging of the Lincoln Conspirators are so breathtaking is not that they tell us those four souls died at the end of four ropes. We already knew that from the history books before ever visiting the Library of Congess, donning white cotton gloves, and being handed the actual glass plates to hold up to the light and gaze at.

No, the reason they are breathtaking is that while looking at them we suddenly come to realize that those fragile plates in our hands were, at the moment those four souls finally hung, physically present inside of Mr. Gardner's wet-plate camera, situated on the second floor of that building overlooking the gallows, only about twenty yards from the doomed prisoners, on that long ago March afternoon. And now we are holding those exact same glass plates in our hands 148 years later thus affirming, via these singular first generation objects, that those events did, in fact, really take place.

It's that epiphany that creates the stunning credibility that takes our breath away.

The negative bears silent witness to the reality of the original events rendered upon it. That's what photographic provenance means to me, and why it is so crucially important to me that a real photograph needs to possess it.

Ken

 

[blansky]

So just out of idle curiosity... do you still have any of your 30 years worth of film equipment? Was there ever any of your own darkroom equipment to go along with it? If so, any of that stuff left over as well?

Ever entertained any thoughts about picking up a film camera again? Not for business. That's a completely different set of requirements with expectations all its own. But maybe for personal use? And just for a little retro enjoyment?

I'm just a weekend hack without an ounce of talent. And amazingly Sean still lets me post photographs in the galleries. You presumably really know what you're doing. If your eye is anything like your posts, I'd love to see some photographs by you posted there as well...

Ken

I still have two of the Hasselblads I originally bought in 1976. CM and ELM. with 50, 80, 150.

I have a gorgeous Linhof 4x5. circa 1968

I have a Nikon F4.

But I sold my three enlargers a 6x6 a 4x5 and a 5x7 as well as all my trays, print washers vacuum easel , 10-24x24 trays etc and since I don't have a darkroom I'd never shoot analog again or anything else that I can't print myself. Sold it about 7-8 years ago.

With what I do now it's almost impossible except for a really good printer to tell, if my analog b&w and my digital b&w 20x24 are one or the other under glass from 4 feet away.

 

[Maris]

With what I do now it's almost impossible except for a really good printer to tell, if my analog b&w and my digital b&w 20x24 are one or the other under glass from 4 feet away.

I always feel uneasy when offered pictures where one medium is exquisitely contrived to resemble another. Unwelcome words like counterfeit and forgery come to mind. Most people, I guess, don't see it that way. Forgive me but I have a (possibly unique) personal anxiety about engaging in an art where success is equated with successful deception.

 

[ntenny]

While it might have looked like 'blanksy' came out of the blue on this, he didn't. He and I have been discussing these themes for quite a while now, both on and offline. We just happened to pick it up again here in public this time in a way that might have appeared abrupt.

I hope you don't mind my jumping in. I find this topic to be interesting and a nice diversion from all the gear-and-chemistry discussions.

In an example that 'blanksy' and I have toiled over several times, the reason that Alexander Gardner's glass plate negatives of the Hanging of the Lincoln Conspirators are so breathtaking is not that they tell us those four souls died at the end of four ropes. We already knew that from the history books before ever visiting the Library of Congess, donning white cotton gloves, and being handed the actual glass plates to hold up to the light and gaze at.

No, the reason they are breathtaking is that while looking at them we suddenly come to realize that those fragile plates in our hands were, at the moment those four souls finally hung, physically present inside of Mr. Gardner's wet-plate camera, situated on the second floor of that building overlooking the gallows, only about twenty yards from the doomed prisoners, on that long ago March afternoon. And now we are holding those exact same glass plates in our hands 148 years later thus affirming, via these singular first generation objects, that those events did, in fact, really take place.

Hmm. I'm partially playing the devil's avocado here, but I think to me the element of "the exact same glass plates" isn't as big a factor as it is to you. After all, the image you linked (lank? lunk?) to is at least one generation removed, but my eye takes it as a kind of "authentic proxy" for the plate, and I'm comfortable with taking for granted that the scan represents the plate (maybe through the intermediary of a print, I don't know) in much the same way that you and I are both comfortable accepting that the plate represents the event.

But obviously there are all kinds of artifacts of the illusion that is photography at all these stages---I mean, the real people hanged were three-dimensional and in color, right?---and we are drawing distinctions about what we do and don't accept as a level of removal that doesn't impair "credibility" or "authenticity", not between "really the same thing as the actual event" and "merely a representation".

The negative bears silent witness to the reality of the original events rendered upon it. That's what photographic provenance means to me, and why it is so crucially important to me that a real photograph needs to possess it.

Well, it all depends on what you call "reality". We all have legions of bad photos that made us say "aw, hell, that's not what it looked like at all", right? (I've got a nice one of a five-year-old kid and his dad, only I shot at *just* the wrong moment and the slide gives the very convincing illusion that the kid was giving me the finger! Not at all a semantically correct representation of the "reality of the original events", except in the tautological sense that those photons *did* arrive at the film plane.)

And we accept certain distortions like motion blur and out-of-focus areas as being somehow accurately representational, perhaps because they create a similar impression to things that happen in our brains when viewing reality. But that's not really "silent witness", it's "lead the viewer to the same conclusion by different means", and those techniques can be used in ways that seem "accurate" (shallow DOF to draw attention to the subject of a portrait) or "inaccurate" (tilt-shift faux-miniatures). So your line is a little too clearly drawn for me, a little too much of a demand for rigorously defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.

There's something about a distinction between art-photography and documentary-photography here, too, though I can't put my finger on what it is in a succinct way. Your concept of provenance seems to me a bit specific to the documentary world, in that it leads you to use a lot of words like "real" and "original" that seem to privilege the accurate representation...whatever "accurate" means, which in itself is a hard philosophical question, n'est-ce-pas?

-NT

 

[hoffy]

I always feel uneasy when offered pictures where one medium is exquisitely contrived to resemble another. Unwelcome words like counterfeit and forgery come to mind. Most people, I guess, don't see it that way. Forgive me but I have a (possibly unique) personal anxiety about engaging in an art where success is equated with successful deception.

Then, why are you doing photography at all? Nearly all of photography, since its inception, has been about bending and distorting the truth to something that we think that we would have liked to have seen, as opposed to what was really there.

Do you dodge? Do you burn? Do you alter contrast? Do you use filters? In reality, photography is nothing but a lie.

But, that is also why many of us love it.

Just sayin'....

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

...since I don't have a darkroom I'd never shoot analog again or anything else that I can't print myself.

Pity, that...

Well, if you ever do change your mind and get the itch to pull one of those beautiful cameras off the shelf for a nostalgic retro spin, I'll be happy to do the preliminary processing and proofing for you free of charge. I did once work professionally as an employee in a commercial darkroom (between other careers). In charge of the place, actually. It was a one-man, but high-quality, operation...



Ken

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I always feel uneasy when offered pictures where one medium is exquisitely contrived to resemble another. Unwelcome words like counterfeit and forgery come to mind. Most people, I guess, don't see it that way. Forgive me but I have a (possibly unique) personal anxiety about engaging in an art where success is equated with successful deception.

The act of deception generally requires malice aforethought, I think. Deception without realizing or intending it is merely accidental. And in all the debates I've had with 'blanksy' I've never known him to hint that his intention was true deception. Rather, he simply wishes to make the best quality print for his customers that he can, within the business constraints he must labor under.

If one wants the best print possible, my feeling is one chooses true (chemical) photography. If constraints preclude that, one does the next best thing possible within those those constraints. That's digital imaging. And if one wishes to then make the best digital print possible, one aims for photographic quality as the desired baseline.

There is nothing deceptive about that progression. Unless one intentionally tries to pass off a digital print as a chemical print. And to the best of my knowledge 'blanksy' doesn't do that. Instead, he generously gives us the boundary threshold at which the perception of similar quality begins to break down. Namely, less than 4-feet and/or not under glass.

If he were trying to deceive, those would be the last data points he would share with us, not the first ones.

Ken

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I hope you don't mind my jumping in...

Absolutely not...



When it comes to primary definitions, I throw out all of the considerations other than the physical laws of nature. Interpretations dealing with whether or not the meaning of a photograph was real, deceptive, incorrect, misleading or inaccurate are human-generated baggage borne of each individual viewer's past history and agenda.

For me, the defining characteristic is that the subject was rendered and preserved on the medium in situ (thanks, Maris) in real-time by the light reflected from that subject. And the medium, in order for that to happen, must have been in direct line-of-sight proximity to that subject at the instant the rendering was realized.

Thus the two are inexorably linked forever. The moment came and went, and will never repeat in exactly the same way. And the medium, having faithfully recorded that unique moment, can never be exactly duplicated because that now-past moment can never be originally repeated. And thus is born that first-generational state of provenance.

Now, 'blansky' once challenged me with the Weegee example. Weegee was well known for "rearranging the bodies" before his tabloid photos were exposed. Didn't this alter the reality of the scene on the resulting negative? No, I responded, because the resulting negatives were accurate first-generational renderings of those rearranged bodies. The deception, intended or not, was the photographer's, not the camera's.

To the extent that I trust the LOC, I too am comfortable accepting that linked scan as a representation of the glass plate it depicts. But I do so in recognition of the fact that I am also aware it does not—and cannot—absolutely prove that representation. The acceptance of the scan is a matter of convenience, not a matter of provenance.

I mean, if I were bidding to buy that plate I might up my bid based on what I saw in that scan. But I would never sign the final check until I had seen the physical plate in person and held it in my own hands.

Ken

 

[blansky]

There is nothing deceptive about that progression. Unless one intentionally tries to pass off a digital print as a chemical print. And to the best of my knowledge 'blanksy' doesn't do that. Instead, he generously gives us the boundary threshold at which the perception of similar quality begins to break down. Namely, less than 4-feet and/or not under glass.

If he were trying to deceive, those would be the last data points he would share with us, not the first ones.

Ken

Thanks for the printing offer.

Firstly I don't consider a digital print second class. Not in any way.

Secondly the "under glass and 4 feet away" reference was to the way portraits of the 20x24 size are viewed. "Sniffing the print", is the humorous term often given to photographer types that when seeing a print have the need to look at it from 4 inches away while everyone else is looking at content from a proper viewing distance.

I don't think any people and very few photographers can tell the difference in a good digital print and a good analog print holding it in their hand. I've seen many times top pros that were fooled by some of the best photographers demo on what digital is capable of and in the "blind taste test" they very often got some wrong.

As for the deception aspect, well that's too far out to even mess with. As I alluded to previously, there is no such thing as THE analog print or look. And there is no such thing as THE digital print or look. And when most photographers migrated over from analog to digital we already had a style or look or a way we like the print to look and we merely duplicated that look.

Granted digital is far more of a chameleon in terms or what you can do and I guess that bothers some people but calling that deception is pretty silly.

 

[doughowk]

The best "deceptions" I've seen are digital images printed on silver gelatin paper which is then processed in a traditional wet darkroom. One thereby has the look and feel of a traditional print. But is it missing the provenance of the original subject due to the nature of the initial capture? I personally would say so, but there is no visual clue to that deception.

 

[blansky]

The best "deceptions" I've seen are digital images printed on silver gelatin paper which is then processed in a traditional wet darkroom. One thereby has the look and feel of a traditional print. But is it missing the provenance of the original subject due to the nature of the initial capture? I personally would say so.

Interesting point.

Would you say analog capture, scanning and digital printing is deceptive or other hybrid types are.

Just asking because I don't have a dog in this fight since my area of photography there is no concept of deception, being that it is entirely print oriented, and how it got there is of little/no interest to the customer.

 

[kb3lms]

No, the reason they are breathtaking is that while looking at them we suddenly come to realize that those fragile plates in our hands were, at the moment those four souls finally hung, physically present inside of Mr. Gardner's wet-plate camera, situated on the second floor of that building overlooking the gallows, only about twenty yards from the doomed prisoners, on that long ago March afternoon. And now we are holding those exact same glass plates in our hands 148 years later thus affirming, via these singular first generation objects, that those events did, in fact, really take place.

Very, very well said, Ken. My feelings exactly. I use the lunar landing negatives as my example but it is exactly the same.

 

[dslater]

An awfulmatic, as I call them, isn't even driving. At best it's "causing a four wheeled conveyance almost but not quite completely like a car to roll around."

Seriously, it depends on why you drive. If you enjoy the driving, as I do, you'll probably like the stick, as I do. I've owned over a dozen cars (I think the total is about 14, I'd have to think about it) over the years of which only two were autos, both of which were kept less than six months, one for only about two WEEKS. If you drive only to get from one place to another as quickly and easily as possible you will probably like the automatic transmission.

Indeed - I've been driving stick shift ever since I started making enough money to buy the car I want instead settling for a used one I could afford. Unfortunately, finding new manual transmission cars these days has become very difficult. After the recession when car manufacturers took such a big hit, most of them stopped producing manual transmission cars - they simply didn't sell well enough. Instead they now produce these idiotic "semi-automatic" cars where you shift, but don't have a clutch. What they fail to realize is that having a manual transmission isn't about the shifting, it's about having the clutch and the whole different way you control your car using it.

 

[ntenny]

The best "deceptions" I've seen are digital images printed on silver gelatin paper which is then processed in a traditional wet darkroom. One thereby has the look and feel of a traditional print. But is it missing the provenance of the original subject due to the nature of the initial capture? I personally would say so.

It seems sort of analogous to "lightjet" RA-4 printing, where the scanned stage functions as a kind of digital internegative. The hybrid practice of scan/enlarge/print to transparency/contact print, which a lot of people use as a way to get small-format images usable for contact-only alt processes, is another form of the same beast.

They're all technically off-topic for APUG, of course, but whether the Curse of the Hidden Pixel breaks "provenance" depends on what concept of provenance you subscribe to. In Ken's model it seems like one would say yes (broken chain of custody), in the accumulative model one would say no by definition (because provenance can't really be broken, it can only be added to). I don't really think one alternative is right and the other wrong---they both mean *something* valid.

-NT

 

[doughowk]

in the accumulative model one would say no by definition (because provenance can't really be broken, it can only be added to).

All conversions include the loss of data information. This is true whether its making the initial conversion from an analog electrical current in the sensor to digital, or within digital from one file type to another. The final loss is when converting the digital representation into a physical object. To my way of thinking, provenance is part of that data info loss.

 

[Chris Lange]

All conversions include the loss of data information. This is true whether its making the initial conversion from an analog electrical current in the sensor to digital, or within digital from one file type to another. The final loss is when converting the digital representation into a physical object. To my way of thinking, provenance is part of that data info loss.

This is also true of optical aberrations and and processing degradation in an exclusively wet process.

I love film, but I've seen both inkjet prints from digital originals as well as scanned film (the same goes for Lambda/Lightjet prints) that, on a purely visual technical level rival, or exceed the "best" darkroom prints I've seen (I think Steichen's platinums serve as a good example for the baseline I'm using here). However, this is only the case when the digital originals have been made with that sort of output in mind (full frame or larger (MF) sensor, good lenses, and exacting handling of the digital file as far as post-processing. I would also like to remind those of you that think otherwise that no 35mm negative will, at this point in the technological cycle, ever rival, or even come close to equalling a photograph made with an 80mp Leaf AFi-II back. Hell, neither will 645, but that's another can of worms.

But I prefer Daido Moriyama's work to Ansel Adams, so what the fuck do I know about "good" printing...

As I've said in the "Loss of Fine Art Photo Traditions" thread, anyone that doesn't accept the fact that digital techniques are indeed fully capable of exceeding the -technical- abilities offered by normal film (aka, not weirdos that use a 16x20" view camera and claim that they have 3 gigapixel images or what the hell ever...show me a situation where you can use that to make a photograph where you don't have 10 minutes to unpack your camera) is a luddite that refuses to grow up. As I also iterated in the same thread, anyone that disparages film because of its perceived lack of technical perfection, is as much of a dumbass as the film guy that says a cibachrome is the only kind of color print worth making.

Because, you know, the supplies are so readily available and made frequently, right?

Bringing it all around, Ken Rockwell's site is a waste of time for anyone that can actually use a camera. He massages the collective crotches of the internet "photo-enthusiast" community while in reality being just another talking head himself...

I'm sorry but, he is a terrible photographer, his obsession with Velvia is nigh on nausea-inducing, and I have no problem saying that the -only- beneficial thing he has done as an internet personality is convey the idea that film is worth using, sometimes, if you're a "real photographer" (Sorry Pinocchio...)

His sensationalistic attitude and pseudo-cocky/experienced tone are annoying at best, and we would all be a lot better off if for every click someone gives his site, they were to open a book by Walker Evans, or Penn, or for that matter, anyone who has ever actually pushed the medium forward, instead of whining about farting and what Canon's best DSLR ever made is.

To top it all off, his sense of visual geometry is pretty mediocre, too...which is ironic because that's all he ever seems to brag about when it comes to composition.

You can learn far more about color from looking at good painters than a hack like him.

 

[clayne]

Give me an inkjet print and a fiber silver gelatin print, handheld, unframed, and ill tell you which is which.

 

[Maris]

Do you dodge? Do you burn? Do you alter contrast? Do you use filters? In reality, photography is nothing but a lie.

This class of argument comes up every time there is a discussion involving the putative relationship between a photograph and its subject matter. And the argument is always wrong.

Going back to philosophy 101 the concept of truth and lies only applies to propositions; formal statements about the nature of things. A proposition that on investigation turns out not to be the case is untrue, a lie in other words. So the question devolves into: What formal statement does photography offer about its relationship to subject matter? Interestingly, those who insist that the camera lies or photography lies never offer (never think?) that there is a proposition to state and then to test.

Here are a couple of illustrative examples of silly propositions:
"A photograph of a tree is not a tree therefore photography lies". I can't remember a case of anyone credibly insisting the photograph should be physically congruent with its subject.
"A photograph is cropped from reality therefore photography lies". Does anyone sensibly require the photograph to be as big and inclusive as the universe in order to be true?

On the other hand: "All points in a photograph bear a one to one relationship to points in the subject matter". This is likely to be necessarily true of photography because of the physical causality of the process.
There are several other propositions that are also true of photography and it is a pleasant diversion to think of them.

 

[omaha]

This is a topic that is of keen interest in the art fair world.

And digital photography has screwed it all up.

Pre-digital, there was an inherent relationship between "art" and "craft". A good friend is a potter. Every piece is hand made, by him, with his own hands. No assistants contribute. When you buy a piece of Bauman Stoneware (and you should) you are getting something that the artist touched with his own hands.

Sadly, the art fairs missed this inflection point, and began allowing digital, photographic prints. No big deal, you say? Well, the problem is there is zero incremental effort involved between printing the first and printing the 1000th copy. That is a fundamental difference. An analog print is a unique thing. Even if one has highly disciplined darkroom technique, no two prints will ever be truly identical. EVERY digital print is metaphysically identical. That's a huge thing.

The pottery analog would be having someone like my friend John design the piece, and make the prototype, and then have some Chinese factory crank out a zillion of them for a nickle each.

No one would accept those factory-made copies as anything other than factory-made copies. But we accept digital prints as "authentic"?

There is more to things than how they look. How they are made matters.

 

[clayne]

The pottery analog would be having someone like my friend John design the piece, and make the prototype, and then have some Chinese factory crank out a zillion of them for a nickle each.

No one would accept those factory-made copies as anything other than factory-made copies. But we accept digital prints as "authentic"?

This is pretty much succinctly it!

 

[ntenny]

("photography always lies")

This class of argument comes up every time there is a discussion involving the putative relationship between a photograph and its subject matter. And the argument is always wrong.

Going back to philosophy 101 the concept of truth and lies only applies to propositions; formal statements about the nature of things. A proposition that on investigation turns out not to be the case is untrue, a lie in other words. So the question devolves into: What formal statement does photography offer about its relationship to subject matter? Interestingly, those who insist that the camera lies or photography lies never offer (never think?) that there is a proposition to state and then to test.

I think this analysis is a red herring except in explicitly documentary photography like news illustrations (where something close to a formal proposition is fairly obvious, like Ken's example of the Lincoln conspirators above). The kind of "truth" that people associate with any art, not just photography, isn't very compatible with the propositional-logic sense of the word, IMHO. That makes for a richer sense of art than formal logic can offer, but it also makes it pretty hard to settle internet arguments with a decisive proof of correctness...

But that aside, surely everyone realizes (if they think about it) that analog processes are also full of stages in which information is lost or distorted, and that the feeling that a photo is somehow an accurate representation of "what was really there" or "what you would have seen" is an illusion that skips over a whole lot of mental modelling that we do unconsciously. There's nothing wrong with that unconscious elision, but it's easy to confuse "I don't notice this class of inaccuracies" with "This class of inaccuracies is not important" (or even "...does not exist").

There is, pretty obviously, no optical system that doesn't lose *some* information, including your eye---even before anything takes place that could be described as a capture, the in-camera projected image is already "degraded" from the pool of available photons that arrived at the lens. Practically speaking, nobody really thinks the degree of loss in a reasonably modern camera is important---we accept photographs as legal evidence of fact without having courtroom arguments over the number of air-to-glass surfaces in the lens used---but at some point, people start saying "I dunno, it just doesn't *feel* *real* *enough*", and shockingly enough that point is differently defined for different people in different contexts. I'm not sure why the first digital processing stage is such a popular critical point, but it sure is one.

-NT