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March 26, 2010
There is a strange debate in photography that has being going on for a couple of years as a result of the digital revolution that make the tools of the trade a PC, camera and software. This debate plays off film versus digital, and is premised on good versus bad and is often coded in terms of art versus amateur snaps. This debate ignores the 'as well'--people using both instruments to produce work--- preferring to remain with an 'either or' duality.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Franklin Street, Adelaide 2010
As an example, consider Darren Holliday's Going retro to get creative in the Guardian, which refers to the growing wave of creative artists who are eschewing digital cameras in favour of 30-year-old manual film cameras. This is true. Analogue photography appears to be "in vogue right now".
Holliday then says:
Let me explain what is so wrong with modern digital cameras, and by extension with software editors like the market leader Photoshop: I believe using such brutally efficient and capable technology in photography actually hampers a significant number of young artists. The psychology here is an obvious one, and can be observed in small children at play. Give a child a toy that does something amazing an unlimited number of times, in quick succession, then watch that child tire of it and look for something else. It's the same with digital cameras: "snap, snap, snap. Oh here's an interesting scene, let me take 20 pictures of it to make sure I get one good one, snap! I can always Photoshop that annoying lamppost out later, no need to look for a different angle, snap!" The artform of photography becomes diluted through the mass use of it.
Holliday adds that the small number of snappers unsatisfied with this approach--the retro creatives--- are not recognised as a significant cultural movement, but may be morphing into one thanks to the internet. And perhaps ironically, it is web-based sharing platforms that are feeding the retro movement. Flickr.com alone hosts a vast collection of manual photography work, and discussion.And so it does.
However, because analogue photography appears to be making a turn and becoming "in vogue right now" that doesn't mean that digital is no good, or that we should just shoot film and ignore digital as some say. Both film and digital have their uses depending on the type of work being done.
What we can say though is that as film photography developed in parallel to drawing/draughtsmanship and eventually took over from it in a hegemonic sense in the nineteenth century, so digital cameras +Photoshop developed in parallel to film and, in the last couple of years, has overthrown the dominant position held by the use of film.Is the new (digital) still wearing the ethos and aesthetic of the old( film)?
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