I am just writing a quick point in reference to Don Althaus' article, 'Are digitally enhanced images still photographs?'. How far do you take 'enhancing' photography? Where will you eventually cross the line between photography and digitally enhanced pictures. If a photograph that has just been 'made to look good on the screen' is still a photograph, when does it c=become a digital image. Surely the fundamental aspects of photography such as light, colour, definition and focus all go into the make-up of a photograph, if these are then changed, how can one differentiate good photography from bad or even have any individualism within the art of photography? Devices such as air brushing have been used to tamper with and enhance photography, there has to be a point at which we can no longer have digitally enhanced photography under the same 'art form' as photography as the use of computer graphics is more further and further removed from the skills needed to produce good photography. It will soon be impossible to use photography as any form of evidence of reality.

-- Helen King (helenking@hotmail.com), July 20, 2000

Answers

You're right; manipulation has gone on forever. Were Cro Magnon's dears really that big? Is Time magazine a court document? Is a court document photo (Rodney buddy) real? Is panchromatic film racist? ... They are all just things we see, created to be seen for some purpose. The digital question really is the same old photo question that can only be answered by the act of photographing.

Milton talked about a place in Hell where certain devils sit on a mountaintop and talk in "circles never ending" (Paradise Lost), when I'd rather talk about circles of confusion. Dean

-- Dean Lastoria (dvlastor@sfu.ca), July 20, 2000.

The National Press Photographers Association has a recommendation for newspaper photographers. (I realize everybody isn't a news photog) But anyway, it states that photos shouldn't be manipulated any more than what could be done with SIMPLE darkroom work such as dodging and burning, croping and darkening and lightening. It dosen't allow for moving anything in the photo or adding or taking away any object in a photo. I guess as long as there's been photography photos have been manipulated by whatever means. I suppose a photographer can manipulate however much he wants and it's still a photograph, but the NPPA's statement pertaining to news photographs suggests if readers can't believe the photos in a paper, can they believe the words either. I think a good point. Of course I'm biased. I spent 21 years as a news photog.

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), July 21, 2000.

Is photography really an art form? Boundaries are changing daily and I see something of a melding with photography and art which I see as positive. Is it marketable as photpgraphy or as art? Does it matter? Have you looked at Robert Rauschenberg art works incorporating photography? We are poised on a new frontier here and I recommend embracing it!

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), July 22, 2000.

We are in the process of throwing away the most powerful visual medium ever created, and we don't even know what we are doing.

Each of the arts is wonderful in its own way, and each has its own special role in enriching our lives. Each medium has its own inherent qualities, both strengths and limitations, which make it unique. It is only within the context of those inherent qualities that a medium can become art. Sculpture, for instance, is not made more "artistic" by slathering paint over a sculpted object, nor would painting be more acceptably "art" if the canvas were wadded into a ball to make it three-dimensional.

The art of photography is the art of seeing. A photograph has power because of its connection to reality. Light rays bouncing off something that is really there go through a lens and are recorded. It doesn't matter if the recording medium is film, a CCD, or something not yet invented.

What a sad, unloved child of the arts photography is! Her own practitioners, who should love her most are so often seduced by the siren song "Artist! You can be an artist!" that they rush to prostitute the most powerful purely visual medium ever created in their mad scramble to call their works "art". But look at the history of the medium. The works that have power, the works that last, are straight photographs. Their power and their art are in the photographer's ability to see and to present his vision to us in a tangible form.

The others...well, some of them have a certain charm, like a third-rate salon painting, but ultimately they are only so whats.

-- Dave Jenkins (djphoto@vol.com), July 23, 2000.

Even Ansel Adams said a strait print can be a crutch for the dull mind (Camera and Lens). I don't like most of the digital stuff I see, but I cannot in good conscience use my zowie new Verito without defending the right of others to PhotoShop. I think Derrida has shown that there is no objective any more. Unless we all have the same lens, film, camera (Auto Focused no doubt) then we don't have any apparent objectivity. Lets just all get along. Dave, I guess judging by your painting comparison you don't see the brilliance of Jackson Pollok, but prefer Norman Rockwell? That's fine, but I like both. So, just as I can't deny either the right to apply paint any way they want, I can't deny a photographer use of a pinhole, or a digital back. Oh yea, I've seen some 5th rate strait photos too. Dean

-- Dean Lastoria (dvlastor@sfu.ca), July 24, 2000.

search out and study some of the Robert Rauchenberg painting/collages which incorporate photographs very powerfully. This is just one well known example. We are experiencing the dawn of a new art form and I, for one, embrace it.

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), July 24, 2000.

Fred, looked up Robert Rauchenberg. Yes, splatter of paint, sort of thing that no one could call a charming 3rd rate salon item. Powerful. Uses some photo-type images (though I don't know if they are screened but that is still a photographic process if not silver).

Just a telling anecdote. I did the search wrong. I did "Robert R.." and up came Robert Bateman -- here in Canada he is derided by art circles, but all the people like him "My my, that eagle/rhino/wolf looks more like a wolf that a photograph, it is really good art" I'm not here to slag Bateman, but we're not all into verisimilitude.

So, someone could use a scanning back and come up with hyper-realistic photos, or montage them and run the risk of being labeled un-American (see my response to Apogee article). At some point the debate goes in circles and we are divided into Bateman vs. Pollok. I repeat can't we all just get along? Dean

-- Dean Lastoria (dvlastor@sfu.ca), July 25, 2000.

I don't care much about differences between painters, and it is irrelevant to me whether they paint in an abstract or realistic mode. My allegience is to photography, the medium with which I have an ongoing, 32-year love affair. I deeply believe that something of great value is about to be thrown away, and that most of the people who are doing it so casually truly do not have a clue.

My point is that photographs have an unique power all their own and that their power is derived directly from photography's connection to reality. As Fred Picker said (quoted in the March, 1994 "Shutterbug"), "This Koudelka on the wall contains the most amazing combination of things that I know happened, because when he made that photograph there was no electronic imaging. Here are two horses, standing in a certain position, a boy sitting on a bicycle wearing an angel suit with angel wings, here's an old lady scolding him, all in magnificent light and beautifully composed. Today, that picture could be made by some guy sitting in front of a computer. Knowing that would take all the wonder out of it."

Photography shows the strangeness, the beauty and mystery of life. It shows us things that are beyond our imaginations and compel our amazement because they really happened. The magic of photography is that life holds so many amazing and wonderful things which are entirely unanticipated, unexpected, even unimagined in the deepest sense, that is, that no one would ever have thought of such a thing happening. And then, suddenly, right out of the fabric of the uneventfulness of ordinary life, there it is. "I can do a beautiful illustration, but it doesn't have that 'instant of wonder' that a photograph will have." (Art Director Tony Anthony, quoted in "Photo District News," February, 1987.)

Each of the arts is wonderful in its own way, but each must be defined in terms of its individual essence. The essence of photography is that it's photographic. It is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that has objective reality onto a sensitized substance. It is "writing with light." When a photograph is digitized and scrambled, it becomes no longer a photograph, but a subset of painting. Rauschenberg, for instance, creates art which I would catagorize as collge. It may be fine in itself, it may use photography as an element or a point of departure, but it is not photography.

The great photographer Dorothea Lange kept a quotation by the English essayist Francis Bacon on her darkroom door: "The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention."

-- Dave Jenkins (djphoto@vol.com), July 25, 2000.

"most amazing combination things that I know happened, because when he made that photograph there was no electronic imaging"

What about Oskar Rejlander? "The Two Paths of Life" is an amazing combination, and one of my personal favorite photographs. It is not a subset of painting, but the masterful use of negatives. It is honest in its intent, yet it is not real. Who would have access to a studio that big and that many extras. So if Rejlander can do it and be firmly within the photographic tradition (a pioneer) then how can digitally doing the same thing be wrong? I've seen a digital moon over a tree -- the moon looks pasted there -- bad digital, but it is just an image. The bad makes itself visible and the rest should be left to their own devises. Dean

-- Dean Lastoria (dvlastor@sfu.ca), July 25, 2000.

Dean, if you like Rejlander's work, that's fine. It is skillfully done, especially with the technology available at that time. But when all is said and done, it is only hokey sentimental collage masquerading as photography. I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that it is firmly within the photographic tradition. Like all pictorialism, it is an attempt to make photography "art" by making it look like something else.

-- Dave Jenkins (djphoto@vol.com), July 25, 2000.

Well, I guess we'll just agree to disagree, as Rejlander isn't really a Pictoralist. Though I'm glad you are so passionate about photography. Dean

-- Dean Lastoria (dvlastor@sfu.ca), July 26, 2000.