One of the conversations that occurred on Friday related to the question of whether Photoshop manipulation of pictures is acceptable or desirable. It's a common debate whenever photographers get together, and has been discussed in one form or another for over 150 years.
Yes, I did say 150 years, because the tension between reality and manipulation has existed since photography was invented.
Fox Talbot, one of the inventors, described photography as the "pencil of nature" and thought of the camera as a machine that created pictures by itself. The photographer was simply the operator.
Very quickly, early adopters of the new technology started to create an art form out of it and began to adopt habits from its nearest neighbour - painting.
To establish themselves as unique and individual creators of images, they began to manipulate the image - lenses were deliberately softened to reduce their focus; the glass plates were scratched, smudged or painted on to create more painterly, less clearly descriptive pictures.
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Julia Margaret Cameron
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The term for this is usually 'Pictorialism', and people like Steiglitz, Steichen and Julia Margaret Cameron are good examples. It was often romantic, and drew inspiration from paintings, myths and legends.
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The Great War changed all that.
Steiglitz in particular helped developed photography beyond Pictorialism. As an aerial reconnaisance photographer he became aware of the impressive possibilities of good lenses to accurately describe reality and developed an idea that this quality was a legitimate form of artistic creativity.
In short, the idea of exploring the unique visual possibilities of purely photographic technique was an art in itself, without needing to mimic painting or to draw from myth. Modern reality, everyday subjects and a new technology was sufficient. This was a part of the art and cultural movement, Modernism, and was revolutionary - literally. It became part of the Russian revolutionary style - a new technology and way of seeing for a new political reality.
In America, a loose group of photographers including Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams (I think) gathered together to produce pictures that were as sharp and clear as could be, with minimal or no painterly manipulation. They called themselves the F64 group, after the smallest aperture - and greatest depth of field - available.
Ansel Adams in particular developed the technique of extracting the maximum amount of tonal range from a scene and reproducing it in beautifully crafted prints - it is called the zone system. He wanted to record maximum detail and clarity, and also interpret the scene visually. This technique created pictures that were both closely related to the actual scene, but also a subtle enhancement of the visual drama of the scene.
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But adding colours or taking elements from one picture into another wasn't part of the purely photographic way of seeing, with its very close relationship to the real scene. Adams was capable of creating composite pictures, but did not.
And that, basically, is the same conversation that is taking place today, but with computer technology and its limitless possibilities. We are able to manufacture pictures from many different sources, we can change colours and enhance and improve and exaggerate at will.
It is a choice, a decision, and in some respects, it is an ethos.
We can tap into the tradition of romantic pictorialism by creating digital artworks which are nothing like the original scene. Or we can use the intrinsic qualities of the camera - light, lenses, shutter speed, aperture, point of view to make visually appealing or challenging photographs that have a connection to the reality. When we do this, we are tapping in to the Modernist tradition.
And then there's post-modernism - but that's a whole other story.
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