Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Austin Franklin"
<darkroom@i...> wrote:
> Keith,
> 
> > >>Fist, photography always has and always will be about
artificiality and
> > >>manipulation (it's two dimensional for goodness sake - how real
and
> > >>true is that...?).
> > >
> > >I certainly disagree with that.  A LOT of photography is about
accurate
> > >reproduction of a scene.
> > >
> >
> > Not since I left Pleasantville have I seen a B&W image that
actually
> > accurately depicts reality.
> >
> > B&W imagery is axiomatically an abstraction of reality..
> 
> That's not true...it is different from some people's vision of
reality, but
> it IS reality, just an aspect of reality YOUR sensors don't see. 
What's
> there, is in fact, there.  But none the less, it's only tonally
"different".
> That doesn't make it an abstraction at all.
> 
> Is IR not reality?  Just because you can't see in that spectrum,
doesn't
> make it not reality, or make it "an abstraction of reality".
> 
> Austin

Actually, it is true. Photography is an abstraction. One of the
definitions Webster's uses for abstract is "expressing a quality apart
from an object." Photography expresses a 2D quality apart from most
objects' 3D reality.

It gets better in B&W, which expresses a grayscale quality apart from
most objects' full color reality.

To argue that photography is *not* abstract is less than wise. You put
yourself in the position of arguing with the acknoledged experts in
the field, Stieglitz, Adams, Weston, etc. who all come down on the
side of photography being abstract.