Art Is Dead

I’ve had the ultimate displeasure of having to deal with countless amounts of people who all seem to disagree with me, and I’m sure that you, dear reader, will feel the same. I do not expect this book to change your views on the subject, nor do I believe it has the power of changing the way people view Photography or any kind of visual image constructed with a conceptual idea.  This is merely an observation.

Maybe I am a bit nostalgic in the old ways. Maybe I wish people would give more credit to where it’s due. In this case credit should be given to understanding the origin of Photography, as it seems this is where people might miss the point as there is a lot of misuse and misunderstanding surrounding Photography and the various analog/digital processes a photographic image goes through after the photograph has been taken. This book should hopefully cover my point I’m trying to make, without diving into too many technical details. Not that I’m trying to be condescending in anyway. I just wouldn’t want to bore the few readers who actually decided to take the time to read this book.

Photography was introduced to South Africa at quite a late stage compared to countries like America and Europe where the medium was constructed, modified and perfected as early as the 1600’s.

We as South Africans completely skipped the analog phase the rest of the world endured for centuries. We moved readily into a digital world, wanting to forget the absurdities of the old analogue world. This might not be a concept as bad as I’m making it out to be. Yes, we caught up quickly with the rest of the world already Tweeting away their thoughts and feelings. But one thing was missing. Moving straight into the new phase of technology caused many people to forget the origins of such a great invention. Instant gratification was a monster unveiled at the time digital was introduced.

Most people living in a functioning environment have digital cameras. Snapping away moments to be stored and remembered forever, or at least until their hard drive crashes. The digital environment has made it easier for all of us to quickly take pictures or videos of events we wish to remember. However much I seem to like this method of keeping memories intact, I do not agree with the long term effects, or shall we call it Side Effects this mindset grips modern society. The founding fathers of Photography would surely be doing somersaults in their graves if they knew that Photography became something completely superficial.

Gone are the days of spending hours in the darkroom, inhaling the wonderful smells of chemicals and waiting patiently for that one image to finally develop. Gone are the days that limited edition prints that meant exactly that. One copy that really existed without the proper means to adequately reproduce it. Gone are the ways of seeing world through a different medium. We’ve become so used to seeing photographs being printed in media, on billboards, on our television sets and on the side of billboards that we seem to dismiss the fact that Photography, all be it a manner of displaying a picture of a product or service, lost its emphasis on creativity as a whole.

I might sound like a terrible hypocrite, using a digital medium myself. But I do however respect the art for what its worth. I agree there is still nothing quite as beautiful as film, and the digital sensor is years away from adequately capturing the same beautiful hues as a E6 Processed film. However…

Thanks to mediums such as Photoshop, one can now adequately reproduce techniques and effects used in the old darkroom days. But many people seem to miss the point there. Yes, thanks to the Knoll Brothers our lives have been made simpler and faster. But they might as well be directly responsible for the death of the traditional darkroom.

This brings me to my next point. The use of Photoshop.

I’ve seen people comment on many Photographers work, respected and otherwise, that the use of Photoshop was too much or that the mere fact that Photoshop was included at all was a crime to the original Photograph, and that digital Photographs should be taken and published as the human eye sees it. Unaltered in all its glory. I agree with that fact in theory, however, that mindset, I feel, could only be applied to film, especially slide film.

But therein lies the problem. The human eye sees twenty-four different levels of contrast, where the digital sensor only picks up a maximum of twelve. Combine that thought with the ability to use different shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, White balance and Picture Style settings, the image is already altered in camera and it’s physically impossible for the camera to capture a single image exactly as the eye sees it without it being altered. The digital sensor also cannot adequately capture and represent all the shades of colour the human eye perceives, as it brings it down to a digital average. The use of a digital imaging processor such as Photoshop is used to bring back those colours and contrast that have been lost in the process of capturing the image. And yes, this does give one the option of altering the colours to make it appear more vibrant. Maybe the Photographer had a concept in mind and he wanted his representation to be shared with others? Isn’t that what Photography should be? Art is in the eye of the beholder… Or is it?

This view of using digital software to process your photograph seems to upset many people. I’ve had many people approach me and ask me why do I ruin a good landscape with the use of Photoshop. Well the answer is simple, dear reader. If I wanted to represent the landscape as it was, in its purest form, then I will use slide film, and leave it unaltered, if that was the concept I had in mind for the photograph. But most, if not all my Photographs are concept based. I want the mood and feel of that particular setting to come through. Maybe there was an emotion I felt when standing there in front of that particular landscape and I wanted to express it in my Photograph.

The emotion one feels when comparing a Black & White Photograph to that of a Colour version of the same image one perceives it as being vastly different. Isn’t that what makes Photography a form of art? One now has the ability to show society a view perceived by an individual, as he saw it, or the emotion he felt and sharing it with others in the hope that those he or she has a chance of connecting and being able to relate to the Photographer’s emotion or views of the photograph.

In the end we all want to connect to an emotion. Photography is just a device in making this a possibility. People tend to get very technical, judgmental and perhaps threatened when they see a good Photograph and has to start nit picking on the smaller details such as use of Photoshop.

I would love for someone to approach me and instead of lecturing me on the use of Photoshop and all the other technical details instead tell me that they could connect to that particular emotion evoked by the Photograph.

I want society to wake up to the fact that there is truly more to a Photograph that meets the eye. It’s not always just a pretty picture. I’m all for chocolate box photos and their various uses on calendars and above mentioned chocolate boxes. But that’s all they’ll ever be – a photograph of a pretty scene lacking substance and originality(I do apologize to all the stock photographers out there who specialize in it, we all have our different niches, I don’t expect everyone to have pictures with a thousand messages)But these photographs sell very well in the microstock industry. Thinking back, what images have stayed with you through your life? Definitely not a Namibian desert sunset or a misty seascape with beautiful purple Cirrus clouds. No. The market is completely flooded with those kinds of images and have become watered down in such a way that even I sometimes feel compelled to stop looking for new landscapes to conquer in the hope that I might capture that one image that I can connect with an emotion at the time of capturing it. If any images that I have always held dear throughout my life come to mind, it will surely be from Photographers such as Ansel Adams and Jerry Uelsmann. Two very different Photographers, but highly skilled in their darkroom techniques. Both of these Photographers had the gift of evoking emotion with their Photographs as well as carrying through a concept or idea that the viewer could connect with.

I think people need to start thinking twice when taking a Photograph.I think I’d like to make that my closing sentence… for now. Perhaps in conjunction with the next sentence ‘People need to also educate themselves properly and charge according to their experience (experience judged by others, not themselves), and a decent governing body for Professional Photographers should be put in place in South Africa, to weed out the real Professionals from the weekend warriors.’

To Be Continued…

Fred Out.