Digital BW, The Print

At 10:32 AM 5/2/03 -0400, you wrote:


>Alan Zinn wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >>I symphathise with your struggle to get just the right tone to your medium
> >>description.  I am still tweaking the way I discribe prints too. I keep
> >>waffeling with the word "ink."   Pigment sounds better to me than ink.
> >>There can't be just one solution. I think it depends on how and where the
> >>photographs are displayed or sold.  "Serious" art buyers know conventional
> >>terms for variious media. The average person does not. I would avoid
> >>inventing a new or too similar to old process nomenclature.  I'm preparing
> >>an edition of small prints that will be gifts (premium items).  They will
> >>be labeled: Continuous tone black and white photograph made with archival
> >>materials. Good enough for most.  To those who can't see why photographers
> >>need to be so fussy about this when a watercolor is just a watercolor,
> >>etc., it has to do with marketing and acceptance (as art) as much as 
> anything.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>Regarding your attempt to demonstrate the fact that your imagery is
>"unaltered," or "unadulterated"  I think that is best handled by
>identifying your imagery as falling in a genre that would be defined by
>the bounds you set out..  While the description of materials etc. might
>be affixed to some label, if people know that your imagery falls into
>said genre, such an indidvidual genre label for the individual prints
>would be redundant, while a show or installation could still identify
>the genre you work in in it's materials or introduction..  Instead of
>"found images" you could use something like "objective
>representationalism" as the term du jour..
>Keith
>
>
>
>"Just some guy," and caretaker of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer
>User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo
>Publications), at:
>
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSONx7x_Printers/
>
>"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together
>guys"
>
>

You have conflated the two issues.  Medium data isn't about aesthetic or 
philosophical issues.  Exhibitors customarily indicate the medium of the 
work in some way consistent with the venue.  I have seen many print shows 
with art that used a slew of techniques and appreciated the more complete 
(and conventional) descriptions of media.  Not having that information 
indicates a lack of professionalism by the gallery and the artist.  I'm not 
being a tight-ass about it - it's just a long standing professional practice.

Consciously dealing with the photographic idea may seem academic, esoteric, 
or strange to some but to me it is essential dimension of every picture I 
see or make. As for my interest in having the viewer understand I haven't 
messed with the image that the camera made in any non-printcraft way,  it 
IS about the viewer's perception (baggage) of objectivity truth, reality, 
optical verity, whatever.  In other words, the historical, cultural, and 
phenomenological idea that is a photograph. (Including, BTW, collage, 
montage, re-touched, etc. images.) I don't tell the viewer what to think or 
what I think about the work  (or anything else). The statement simply gives 
the viewer the starting point that the pictures operate from.  Once again - 
I have no ethical or dogmatic positions to defend :-)

AZ

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