Label for Genuine Photographs

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* The photograph shows within its used crop all distinguishable objects of the subject which were part of it in the moment of tripping the shutter
* There are no objects removed, added, changed in their relative position or altered in their proportions

Then Philippe Halsmann's portrait of Salvador Dali
is not a "genuine photograph"?

For once, I find myself agreeing with Q.G. What
is the world coming to? :-0
 

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removed account4

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i sometimes use color film that was damaged or old
and the color rendition looks nothing as it did in reality,
and i have retouched the film and print ( using traditional methods )
to remove ( and add ) various things ...

it seems that no matter how traditional and / or honest / genuine an image may be
only a certain type of image will fit the scope of this new organization ...
 

tkamiya

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I am quite disheartened by some comments in this thread. Some comments border insult and ridicule which is quite uncharacteristic of APUG. It goes beyond expression of objection and counter ideas but is a personal attack.

In principle, I agree with OP - I prefer photographs that aren't highly modified. I wouldn't call all others UN-genuine however. I was talking to a friend of mine who is an art professor at a local college. Apparently, more accepted term is straight photography.

Are there reason for some of the reactions here beyond the term OP used? Please keep in mind, his native language isn't English. Taken in context, is it SO wrong to promote photographs with no modifications beyond simple adjustments? Is it SO wrong to express such opinion here in APUG?
 
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It is an elitist position that doesn't take in consideration the real value of a photograph: the vision of the photographer.
As someone else said in this thread, go out and take pictures, sharpen your vision, because at the end if you do that, THAT is the only thing that counts: your own work.
If you put your energies in being overly critical about what other people do, you have missed the point of what creativity is and in the end it will only be of harm to yourself as it will restrict your vision in your own small perception of what a good photograph is or should be, and you will feel isolated by your own doing.
 

Q.G.

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photographic prints are made using light, if they fail this test then they should not be allowed to use the term photograph

Light alone makes nothing.

You need more than light. And there the trouble begins...

The process isn't perfect either, leaves things that need be 'corrected'. There the trouble continues...

To keep it short: the trouble never stops.
 

SilverGlow

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Go back to the OP and read the linked "Statement" where you will find the definition.

I did read it, however I found it too vague, and frankly, a bit nonsense.

Just because a photograph shows the addition of subtraction of an element does not prevent it from being a photograph.

What about all those people that Stalin had removed from thousands of pictures? Are those resulting pictures no longer photographs? Of course they still are photographs....they are now touched, but nonetheless they are still genuine photographs.

I don't appreciate the need to label a picture as being "genuine". I sense this action comes out of being intimidated or afraid of digital captures.

At the end of the day, if someone loves the look of a picture, who cares by what means it was created?

Even decades before the advent of digital capture, people all over the world were adding and removing elements from their photographs, and again, doing so does not cause these pictures to cease being Genuine Photographs.

A photograph is simply a picture that was created by light which bounced off a subject/s onto a medium, be it film, a sensor, whatever.

What about Cross Processing? That process changes the colors of a color negative, so the results would be a non-photograph?

I find this whole thing silly, but before you get mad, be advise I have a right to my opinion.

This is a "Genuine Response"....and I approve.
 

Chazzy

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At the end of the day, if someone loves the look of a picture, who cares by what means it was created?

I do. I wouldn't buy the world's greatest inkjet print if it were personally autographed by Jesus Christ. I don't think I would use the logo in the original post, but if I were selling silver gelatin prints, I would be sure that they were marked correctly; and as a potential customer, I think that photographers have the obligation to honestly and clearly state what they are selling. No mumbo jumbo about "giclee" or "pigment prints."
 

Ian David

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I wouldn't buy the world's greatest inkjet print if it were personally autographed by Jesus Christ.

It would probably be a really good investment. Especially if it was JC's own work.

Ultimately, I think you can only control your own process - which I think is perhaps what Ulrich is all about anyway. Do whatever you do, be honest and upfront about it, and the market will let you know if it cares.

Ian
 
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I do. I wouldn't buy the world's greatest inkjet print if it were personally autographed by Jesus Christ. I don't think I would use the logo in the original post, but if I were selling silver gelatin prints, I would be sure that they were marked correctly; and as a potential customer, I think that photographers have the obligation to honestly and clearly state what they are selling. No mumbo jumbo about "giclee" or "pigment prints."

I appreciate that this is red meat for the APUG
faithful but I see nothing to be gained by dismissing
art because of the medium the artist selected for
his or her work. This is the same attitude that, a
hundred years ago, led to the dismissal of photography
as an artistic medium altogether. We've overcome
that shibboleth, only now to eat our own by drawing
lines and saying that a darkroom print has merit, but
an inkjet print does not. Does it ever end?
 

Shaggysk8

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hmmmm.....weeeeellll.....I get your idea, I don't think its the best way to do it, I do think put a note saying what was used to create it and on what if you feel that it adds to your own work, but a nice image is a nice image how ever it was created and if you like it buy it.

Paul
 
OP
OP

Ulrich Drolshagen

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Hi all,

I am on leisure now so I have some spare time to try to give a more extended answer to the issues you raised.
First of all: We expected to get bashed to a certain extend for our initiative but I was surprised by the amount of emotionality it raised. I did not expect to open such large a can of worms. To my impression due to the emotional impact one or the other reply got submitted before considering our statement to full extend. As far as I got it it's roughly about twenty to one. So I hope you don't mind me taking you one after the other. So off we go.

@Marin
When we talked about publishing your little essay you warned me that your position may be too controversial. I now see that it was a mistake to publish it along with the start of our website. Though we made it clear that your article only touches an interesting side aspect of our topic which by no means represent our position (may be yet) it was instantly associated with our aims. And things got mixed up. We should better have waited with publishing and discussing this -for me interesting and important- aspect to a later time.
I have to emphasize here that we -at this point- are interested in the way photographic pictures are processed after they were recorded only. I will not talk about the media and aspects of their naming conventions here.

@keithwms
>>
Print and show your work. Talk to people about it... in person. Take them inside your thinking and your technique. Teach those who want to be taught. When they understand what you did to create a photograph, they will see that it is genuine.
<<

As I have stressed further up. We do not talk about media photographs are published on at all. We do not raise that topic. It's Marins case and a completely separate issue.

@ektagraphic
>>
Will this go on non-photoshopped digital prints or will it be for analog only?
<<

For us it does not matter by which means the picture was recorded. It's certain aspects of the postprocessing we are interested in.

@iandavid
>>
Nice idea, but seems misconceived to me...
Ask the French - they have long had problems trying to stifle the evolution of language.
<<

As I see it, the problem with the language arises from not being evolutionary. In some cases the term "photograph" does not (may be in more than one respect) reflect the generic character of the pictures it represents any more. There is something new they did not find an appropriate term to express the novelty in it's character.

@jnanian
>>
who is to say that someone who is making ungenuine images isn't going to suggest that the images are genuine
<<

Yes, it's totally possible to fake. It would be a good sign if someone cares to do. It will show us that the difference matters. Up till now it seems not the right time to bother unfortunately.

>>
and in the end, after an image is made numeric it isn't an authentic genuine analog image anymore is it ?
<<

The medium is not our concern.

@Silverglow
>>
So what does the OP define as a genuine photograph? What is his definition?
<<

It is here But may be you found it already on your own.

>>
And is the definition universally accepted?
<<

It must not be. As I have said already in an earlier post this morning: the crucial thing about the label is the dot org part. We do define what genuine photographs are to us. Thus we avoid the necessity to find an agreement on a universally accepted definition first. Which will be impossible. That was the reason for creating the label in the first place.

>>
To me, a photograph is made by using light to create an image, and not about how that light was captured, nor on what medium that light effected an image.
<<

I'm totally d'accord, please reread our statement for further reference.

>>
One more question: Why would one care to label their photograh genuine?
<<

May be it does not matter to you. But there are a lot of pictures out there that seem to be photographs but are so highly worked on that the subject it claims to show does not even exist. May be there is no problem with seemingly unspoiled landscapes which do only exist in the mind of the photoshopper but it has serious social impacts in the case of models which could not physically survive if they would really look like they were shown on the titles of magazines. This meanwhile has an impact to the self perception of people especially young women as these pictures exploit the reputation of photography to deliver authentic pictures of the real world. This is, as a teacher, one of my main concerns. You may find more if you think about it.

@Q.G.
>>
When is a photograph not manipulated?
Does pulling and pushing count? Development duration and contrast control? Choice of developer and/or film to influence grain? Filters used on the lens? The choice of paper grade? Spotting? Dodging and burning? 'Alternative processes'? Etcetera.
<<

To judge by your words, you didn't bother to read our statement. May be I should have copy and pasted into my opening post to your convenience but I thought it being too long. To answer your question in short here: It does not matter what you do with your picture as long as you respect four things:

- The photograph shows within its used crop all distinguishable objects of the subject which were part of it in the moment of tripping the shutter
- There are no objects removed, added, changed in their relative position or altered in their proportions
- The textures of the subject elements were not altered
- As far as color pictures are concerned the colors of all parts of the subject were not basically altered.


@Chazzy
>>
How about genuine photographs which are printed from multiple negatives? A number of famous fine art photographers have done that. And how about the surrealists? They have sometimes altered the proportions.
<<

No these are not genuine photographs they are composites and I may be wrong, but I have never heard that the authors ever claimed them to be something different. The youngest photographer and great artist in this realm I know of is Andreas Gursky. As far as I know he did never claim his (later) pictures to be genuine photographs as they are much more complex and sophisticated work than mere photographs are.

>>
I love the idea of claiming the label genuine photograph and shaming the purveyors of inkjet prints. But I suspect that they will only react with ridicule.
<<

As I have explained further up already we are of not much help here with our label.

@railwayman3
>>
Perhaps the only viable and sensible option would be to label an original print as a "silver/gelatine print", "platinum print", or whatever process was used. Such labelling would actually means something to a buyer of a print?
<<

You may have noticed meanwhile that our concern is not print making at all. It is merely about certain aspects of postprocessing the captured picture. But talking about prints. In fact most photographers making prints use to name their product by the used technique.

@clay
>>
This is all pretty funny. Buried in here is the assumption that a single person or group can dictate the meaning of the phrase 'genuine photograph'. This is laughably naive.
<<

Two years ago I would have answered: Yes, we can. I leave that to your president now. Now I say: We may and it is in no way naive. It has been done before. Not in the realm of hmm .. picture making but with products I buy every week in the supermarket. IIRC the first products were, don't laugh, eggs.
Up to the 80's nobody bothered about how eggs were produced in Germany. They are from gigantic farms in which the chicken are held in tiny cages where they could barely turn around themselves. The place a chicken had for itself was about the size of a sheet of paper. Somewhere in the 80's some crazy environmentalists began to produce free-range eggs and labeled them appropriately. Only then people began to question the conditions under which eggs were produced seriously. Even the living conditions for battery-caged chicken did improve massively since then due to public pressure.

@keithwms
>>
"Genuine" is, predictably, going to be a problem for many people... even those who know very well what you intend. It raises all kinds of questions, and I think you want your photographs to raise the questions, not the label on the photographs.
<<

No, I want the label to raise questions. we can not drop the term "genuine" here as this is the term which separates our pictures from those only (implicitly) claiming to be such

@Chassy
>>
I wish that the magazines would disclose what they are publishing for all photographs—a scan from a negative, a scan from a real print, or a digital photograph. It may not matter to everyone, but it matters to me.
<<

At least to me it really doesn't matter.

@rolleiflexible
>>
Then Philippe Halsmann's portrait of Salvador Dali
is not a "genuine photograph"?
<<

No, it's a composite. Even Halsmann would tell you that. But does that really matter? I think here reveals a misinterpretation of the term "genuine" as something especially valuable as opposed to something not being so. The picture by Halsmann of cause is a great piece of art. And he surely is a great photographer and artist. But sorry, no, the picture is a composite. Nobody -including Halsmann- would deny that.

Please excuse me leaving out some posts here. I took me too much time already and there are some repetitive ideas and other things which must not be commented on.

@SilverGlow
>>
Just because a photograph shows the addition of subtraction of an element does not prevent it from being a photograph.
What about all those people that Stalin had removed from thousands of pictures? Are those resulting pictures no longer photographs? Of course they still are photographs....they are now touched, but nonetheless they are still genuine photographs.
<<

No, for us they are not genuine any more

>>
Even decades before the advent of digital capture, people all over the world were adding and removing elements from their photographs, and again, doing so does not cause these pictures to cease being Genuine Photographs.
<<

No, it does. It has ever been disputable. Think of the pictures of Chaldey. The difference is, that the methods used today are so much more perfect, that in many cases even experts hardly notice these manipulations (the others are showing up on photoshopdisasters). There is no problem with the above mentioned picture by Halsmann or by Grusky or let's say Emil Schildt. Everyone sees that these pictures are highly worked on so that they are not photographs anymore. BTW Emil puts the term photographs in quotation marks as I have seen on his interesting web site lately.

>>
A photograph is simply a picture that was created by light which bounced off a subject/s onto a medium, be it film, a sensor, whatever.
<<

Jep

>>
What about Cross Processing? That process changes the colors of a color negative, so the results would be a non-photograph?
<<

No, a cross processed photograph. OK, you made a point here. But again, does it really matter whether you put a label on it, being in compliance with genuine-photograph.org? Everyone can see it is a cross processed photograph anyway. It is thus not less valuable and may be even a piece of art.

As I see it, much of your issues with our approach arise from unintentionally dropping the "dot org" from discussing our label. The whole thing is not about analog vs digital, art vs not being art or having value or not. It is even not about pictures not being photographs at all. It is merely about compliance with certain rules in post processing. You may see it this way. Everyone has the perfect right to call whatever work being a genuine photograph whether it is making sense or not. But nobody can deny that our interpretation is included in all possible interpretations of that term. With our label we only give a hint onto our very special interpretation of that term that can be found on genuine-photograph.org.

cheers

Ulrich
 

Sean

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I had a similar concept back in 2006 but was going to try something on a mass scale involving all artists who incorporated no digital (photographers, painters, craftsman, etc). I even had some branding done..

inqsg7.gif


After some time though I realized it was futile to think it could do anything other than add hostility to the market so I left it alone. These days I have come to terms with the market place, the wild variety of choice available and that people are going to do what they like. Personally, I prefer the handcrafted side of things and if a viewer does not care how something was created so be it. What I focus on now is doing what I like and educating the viewer to what they are seeing and how it was made -some of them will care and find value in it, if not I am still fulfilled by my creation of it. In 2006 I had a genuine concern that digital was overtaking everything, but my mind is at ease in 2010 when I see us register 700+ new members in a month. APUG's growth has yet to slow since 2002. We are here to stay even if we are a small group in comparison to digital we have solidified our craft and continue to do what we love..

Sean
 
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Ulrich, I think the disconnect comes not from
us ignoring the .org suffix, but, rather, your
decision to use the word "genuine." In English,
it sets up the dichotomy with "fake" and it
suggests that only photographs that meet
your criteria are entitled to be considered
"photographs" and all others are false, and,
by necessary implication to an English ear,
lesser works.

I was the one who offered up Halsmann's
Dali as an example. It might be a photograph
made by a composite process, but I am certain
that Halsmann would have been shocked to
hear that his photograph was not in fact a
photograph, much less a "genuine" photograph.
 

nick mulder

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I don't know about these labels, I could type for ages but like has been mentioned but I'd rather just set up my new 'lightroom' (alt. process) here and get down to business... I'll keep it simple, just communicate with people about your passion, its an uphill battle and frustrating on occasion but just keep it up - no need for verbose contractual statements and what not... Do it 1:1, keep it simple and alive :smile:
 

nick mulder

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oh, oops! - didn't read the thread fully - so just put me down as a ditto on one of Keiths posts :D
 

Marco B

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I was the one who offered up Halsmann's
Dali as an example. It might be a photograph
made by a composite process, but I am certain
that Halsmann would have been shocked to
hear that his photograph was not in fact a
photograph, much less a "genuine" photograph.

:rolleyes:

Salvador_Dali_A_%28Dali_Atomicus%29_09633u.jpg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Halsman

There is actually surprisingly little "composition" here...
 
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