Digital BW, The Print

Richard,

Thanks for clarifying who the people you are talking to are. 
My personal experience with that type of audience (friends, relatives, 
etc.) is that they view any kind of manipulation of the photo 
either with increased respect or with the sense of letdown you 
are talking about depending on their own personality, understanding 
of photography or art, etc. I have, for example, a shot I took 
30 years ago of a bag lady in NYC. I mentioned to a friend that 
it had taken me several days of working on the negative and print 
to get the lighting to look the way it finally does (which is 
how the scene looked to me when I shot it), as the negative had 
been badly underexposed and the scene was a very high-contrast 
scene that needed shadow detail. He said, "don't tell anybody 
that" (though he still liked the picture). On the other hand, 
other non-photographer friends have been fascinated by the manipulations 
I have done with an unusual use of an image filter to make some 
more recent pictures abstract and painterly and they wanted to 
know more about how I did it. So I would find it hard to generalize 
about the general public's attitude as a single entity. Most 
people I know personally actually don't ask unless there is an 
obvious deviation from "reality," and then they seem merely to 
be curious.

In any case, what my friends and relatives (and, by extension, 
the general public) think about how I get my images to look the 
way they do is of much less concern to me than the way dealers, 
collectors, etc. regard these processes when they are done electronically. 
My teacher's experience is encouraging to me, in that regard, 
as his dealers, publisher, and buyers either don't ask or don't 
care.

Incidentally, I first started taking pictures back in 1968, and 
I was at that time facinated with and a practitioner of lots 
of darkroom manipulation techniques, which were described in 
the photography magazines at the time in the same way Photoshop 
techniques are described today. I solarized, used Kodalith, contact-printed 
from paper negatives, dodged and burned, etc., along with many 
others. This stuff was not secret lore back then, and it was 
not really that hard. 

And by the way, it's djb (David J. Bookbinder), not "dsc," with 
whom you've been discussing this subject.

More anon,
- David
= = = Original message = = =

Wednesday, September 18, 2002, 11:26:54 PM, david_bookbinder@... 
wrote:

dsc> I am curious as to who you are talking to about this bias. 
Are 
dsc> these gallery owners, collectors, dealers? And, do they 
make 
dsc> a regular practice of inquiring about how a photographer 
comes 
dsc> to a particular final image?

dsc> - David


David,

No just general public type people. Friends, relatives, friends 
of
friends. I have no doubt that many dealers, collectors, etc. 
would
have no problems especially if it helps to sell the work. My 
"fear",
as it may be, is that there really seems to be a public perception
that most photographs seen *are* realistic examples. Perhaps 
there is
a long history of manipulation done in the darkroom (much of 
it the
"same": as what we can do with PS today) but, and as has been
discussed, much of this had been more difficult and not as prevalent
as today's use of PS. I get the feeling that it may be "diluting" 
the
parameters upon which photographers may be judged or respected.

Again, I have just found that when told of use of saturation 
tools in
PS, etc. that most non-photographers do *not* say, "oh, well 
that's
great" but more often say such things as "Oh, so THAT'S how he 
did it"
and is often followed by "I did not think it was real..." and 
their
attitude has changed from awe and respect to a sound of being 
let-down
and even that they had been subjected to "trickery".

Best regards,
 Richard  

mailto:richard@...

Links to my galleries:
http://fujirangefinder.com/document.php?id=246



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