Digital BW, The Print

It has only been recently that photography has been accepted as an art 
form. As late as the 70's there was the raging debate as to the status 
of photography as a form or art. While the images produced by the 
photographers of the old Farm Security Admin, e.g. Lange's "Migrant 
Worker's Family" and "White Angle, Breadline" and the images produces by 
may of the photographers for Life magazine, e.g. W. Eugene Smith's work 
comes to mine they were not originally accepted as anymore than 
documentation of facts.

Now we throw in scanners and digital cameras which capture a computer 
file. On top of that there is the "digital darkroom" which consist of 
say Photoshop - a piece of software that one can use to easily remove 
the imperfections and  age lines from the face of a subject and make a 
person look 20 years younger. With photoshop you can easily mix in 
portions of different images that will be almost undetectable in the 
final print.

I think the real question is not the final presentation method, 
convention silver prints vs. inkjet printers, I think the question at 
what point does digital photography cross the line (fuzzy as it may be) 
between photography (as most view it) and graphics arts?  

When a serious buyer looks at a silver based print produced with 
conventional photographic methods, he knows what he is getting (assuming 
the craft that goes into the photograph is sufficient). I am not so sure 
that they are as comfortable with the new digitally produced images.

So I feel the question is a little bigger than just the way the final 
print is produced, inkjet vs. chemistry.

That being said I am sure if he were a young man today, Ansel Adams 
would be at the forefront pushing the techniques of digital photography. 
 It just may take awhile for the photography community to catch up.

Truman

jhazard68 wrote:

> When somebody INVENTS a reason why inkjets should be 'collectible' as
> silver base, then they will be accepted. Money, Rarity, Archivalness,
> luminance, tonal qualites, all have been successfully argued down in
> this thread. Inkjets are a different medium that photography is used
> to, so different rules will be invented to apply. We just have to
> invent them. interesting.
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