In my six years of blogging, there is one post that I started to write maybe up to ten times, and each time, I refrained from posting it. Maybe it’s time to get it out of my system. It’s not even anything particularly interesting, even though I’m sure some people might disagree.
I sometimes get an email with a link suggestion and a comment along the lines of “these photos are great, they use [add your favourite process here]“. I don’t care much about the process when looking at photography (unless the process is an integral part of the photography, which is almost never the case). What I mean by that is that whatever it took to produce a photograph does not determine whether the result is good or bad.
Using a so-called toy camera, for example, doesn’t automatically produce a great photo. A light leak or a soft lens might contribute to what makes a particularly photo good, but that doesn’t mean that if you buy a Diana camera (which are now in production again and sold for way too much money - seriously, if you want one buy a vintage one on Ebay) you’re guaranteed good photos.
The same is true for large-format cameras. There almost is a cult of large-format photography out there. It’s true, large-format cameras can lead to very spectacular results, but using a large-format camera is no guarantee for that.
Or take vintage/alternative photography processes, many of which are notoriously hard to use. But as before, using a wet-plate collodion-type process (or whatever that might be called) does not guarantee good photographs.
For me, photography is an art form and not a craft (not that there’s anything wrong with crafts - I’m just not as interested in crafts as in art). How a photograph is produced I find not all that interesting (which probably in part explains why I don’t share the wide-spread rejection of digitally created work). At the end of the day, I am interested in the image.
-Jörg M. Colberg
Originally posted at Concientious
as When The Medium Becomes The Message, 2008
2 Comments
I’ll agree. The process that creates a photograph and makes it art lies more in the process inside one’s mind and heart rather than the process in one’s computer. Use the computer or whatever tool is at your desposal to convey your mind’s eye first.
Don’t be a slave to the process, make the process work for you.
Yes, just technique creates just pictures, and pretty pictures can shine, but only like so many rhinestones. To continue an unneeded metaphor, I often find the oft mentioned “rough” more interesting.
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