P3D Re: Holga vs Hassy for instance

[Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>]

David W. Kesner wrote:
> In P3D digest 3445 John Roberts says:
> 
> > If you pose your cousin Seymour in a Nathaniel Hawthorne costume
> > in front of Mt. Rushmore, and use a fill flash with red cellophane
> > in front, and a star filter on the camera lens, and deliberately
> > tilt the camera 17 degrees clockwise, then what parts of this
> > process are the art, and what parts are the photography? (In other
> > words, to what extent is this a useful distinction?)
> > 
> > I suspect that unless the subject is something like passport
> > photos, it's very hard to isolate the art from the photography.
> 
> Actually this is very easy to answer. It is all photography as you
> are simply capturing an image. Anyone could push the button on the
> camera and record the same identical image. Yes, you have made
> individual choices that have created a unique image, but they could
> all be very easily duplicated by anyone to produce an identical
> image.
> 

The creation of a photograph does not end with the push of a button
(the exact timing of which can also be an artistic input), there is
still the print to be made.  Ansel Adams had said that the negative is
the score and the print is the performance.  Assuming that you print
your own photographs, the artistic input continues until the final
product (the print) is finished.  (There can be input if you do not do
your own prints, but it is somewhat diluted.  I also don't mean to
imply that slides (which aren't printed) can't be art.)

> With art, there is no way to exactly reproduce a brush stroke or
> curve of clay. Yes, there are those who can make very good forgeries
> that all but the best could never tell from the original, but they
> can be detected by experts.
> 

Nor can individual printing styles be perfectly duplicated.  If they
could then the prints of Ansel Adams' negatives made by others (both
before and after his death) would be worth as much as an original
Adams print.  Although I haven't seen many original Adams prints, and
I haven't seen any side by side with prints by others from the same
negative, many people can tell the difference, even though Adams left
explicit printing instructions with his negatives.

-- 
Brian Reynolds                  | "Dee Dee!  Don't touch that button!"
reynolds@xxxxxxxxx              | "Oooh!"
http://www.panix.com/~reynolds  |    -- Dexter and Dee Dee
NAR# 54438                      |       "Dexter's Laboratory"


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