This seems a bit apples and pears, Chris. The folks I know who work in film (either b/w or color) typically scan the film and often rework the scan in Adobe Photoshop. Digital files are de rigeur for most professionals when working with publishers and magazines.
Yes, there are folks who are religious about older technologies - ambertypes, or working direct from negatives on to printing out paper, and using older cameras with superior lens. etc. Frankly I think it is now a pluralist playing field.
I think what drives any serious photographer is the desire to get prints that serve their aesthetic. However, inevitably, the new technologies will drive out the old. (No matter how beautiful, 150 years salt prints and dageurotypes got rubbed out by new technologies.) But we always lose some great stuff in the process. The current traveling Robert Frank show, The Americans - now at SFMOMA is fantastic in part because it shows his contact sheets, and how he marked individual pictures(edited them), before making a final print. A man is chasing a dog, for example, and he takes the dog out of the picture, to get a much more metaphysical statement of what it is to be 'in the chase'. The show is an extraordinary opportunity to see how these decisions are made - and one whose current history is certainly lost in the field of similar Adobe Photoshop decisions where all this evidence disappears with 'the delete function.' Such is similar to the records
now of the revisions of poems and fiction pieces - the ink notation process on mss. in progress is kaput. Nevertheless the Adobe world is clearly dominant for the moment for all of its conveniences, as well as ways of altering aesthetic/visual perceptions - and who knows what will replace it, but something will.
But yes, those silver gelatin prints of old remain looking practically edible in depth. Yet, these huge prints off digital images can look fantastic as well.
Sorry if this sounds condescending at all, and already much apart of your knowledge. I just happen - both as a photography reviewer and in my personal life - surrounded by photographers and curators of which these conversations are frequent.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
--- On Mon, 6/29/09, Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Silver gelatin prints
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Monday, June 29, 2009, 11:32 PM
Oops... in trying to give too quick a reply I forgot the question I
wanted to ask.
I have read that the so called Postmodernist or avant guard (sp?)
artists of my generation have returned to black and white and the fibre
based archival B&W print.
Reading some forums on photography Ansel Adams and the zone system are
treated as some sort of god and they the high priests of the order. Not
the sort of place one would expect avant guard artists?
My reason is simply one of money and time since digital is much slower
and far more expensive and B&W prints are just as capable of providing a
Modernist critique of perception. Anyone else more?
best, Chris Jones.
|