Digital BW, The Print

John,

Thanks for the good response on this issue.

To elaborate on my response to Alan Zinn's 5/1 post:

> I'd love to see a useful, short statement that
>addresses print v. original film image honesty.
>Something like:  "Un-altered camera image."

I have used the term "straight" photography for this purpose, and I think it
represents a genre that is fairly well accepted.  The term may have been
first used by Stieglitz and Strand, was then strongly espoused by the f64
group, and made most famous by Adams.

Relating to this, some of the following material may be of interest.

From the PBS website:

"People have disagreed for decades about photography's essential nature. Is
it a fine art, equivalent to the other visual arts, or a documentary tool,
best suited for recording the facts? Some photographers and critics have
said that photography should take advantage of what lenses do best, and be
"straight," representing the world as it is. Others have thought that
photographs must be more impressionistic, or "artistic," in order to be
successful."

[Numerous quotes on both sides of the debate follow the above and can be
seen at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ansel/sfeature/sf_role.html]

"In the years 1915-1917, Stieglitz and Strand were in close contact. It
becomes difficult to distinguish who influenced whom, but when at the end of
this period Strand produced a body of sharp-focus work, including somewhat
abstracted still-lifes of kitchen bowls and cityscapes, Steiglitz was prompt
to recognize the breakthrough this work represented.... Strand became known
as an advocate of the new realism called "straight" photography."

[Text from The Encyclopedia of Photography (1984) reproduced at
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/strand/strand_articles1.html]


"With Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and a handful of other
photographers, Adams founded in the early 1930s Group f/64, which was
dedicated to straight photography as an art form. Photography at the time
was dominated by the \ufffdpictorialists,\ufffd who created staged, artificial (and
now largely forgotten) photographs that imitated the conventions of
painting. Adams was instrumental in the struggle to gain for photography
recognition as art on its own merits."
<http://www.turtlebay.org/exhibitions/anseladams/pg04.html>

From the Friends Of Photography website:

"As renowned photographic historian Beaumont Newhall said, "Ansel Adams, in
his photography, his writing, and his teaching, has brilliantly demonstrated
the capabilities of straight photography as a medium of expression.""
<http://www.friendsofphotography.org/pastexhibitions.html>

"Throughout his active life, Ansel Adams struggled to master the technical
challenges of  black-and-white printing so that he could express his
"visualization," or vision, of the original scene. ... However, Adams was
interested in much more than technical perfection. "You don\ufffdt make a
photographer just with a camera," he said, "you bring to the act of
photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the
music you have heard, the people you have loved." Near the end of his life,
Adams produced prints intended to represent his life\ufffds work not just as a
series of landscape images but as a panorama of the possibilities of the
"straight," unmanipulated style to which he adhered."

[From text accompanying the announcement of a Yellowstone Art Museum show
"Ansel Adams: A Legacy - Masterworks from The Friends of Photography
Collection.  From the Collection of Lynn and Tom Meredith. October 4, 2002 \ufffd
January 12, 2003. See,
http://yellowstone.artmuseum.org/Past%20Exhibits.html]

So, when people ask what type of photography I do, my response is that it is
"straight" B&W -- not digital.  It may not be "un-altered," but I think
"straight" photography as a genre includes Alan's concern.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com

____________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: John/Julie Gittins [mailto:jgittins2@...]
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2003 9:42 AM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: un-altered camera image


Joel Eisinger's book, Trace and Transformation: American Criticism of
Photography
in the Modernist Period (1995, U.New Mexico Press), provides a broad look at
the
various perspectives on photowork that were articulated from the time of
Pictorialism
(late 19th C.) through early Postmodernist accounts (late 1960's through
early 1980's).
It's scholarly, but very readable -- a few copies are available on Ebay.

Eisinger's history looks at the serious critical writing on photographs that
developed
during this period, a time when "people were still learning to write about
photography,
still defining the subject, identifying central questions...", and wrestling
with the central
issue that seems unique to photowork:  How can something which, on the one
hand,
seems to be a copy of "reality" (it's mechanical trace) can also be a
vehicle of subjective
vision. It's interesting that the two poles of this issue are the very same
ones that has
driven the discussions on this thread. Eisinger's book gives a long-view
context that's
not possible in short email posts.

John