do you do real photography??

So it's fair to say that, at least in my life, the argument of digital over analog photography has not gone away. It is interesting to talk to people who come in and out of the ccp during printviewing. Many people have set notions about what photography is, and digital processing doesn't seem to qualify to a lot of folks. What seems to resonate with most people is that issue of it being too easily manipulated and untrust worthy. And just as often I hear people say they think it's too easy. I got that a lot as a graphic designer. "Well, doesn't the computer just do it?" A lot of people still live under the assumption that a computer does things beyond what a person is capible of rather than just recognizing the computer as a tool. I think this attitude carries over into digital photography.

There is one person in particular in my life whose favorite question to ask me is if i've actually started doing real photography. He blames the University for being too conceptual and for being uninterested in craft as the reason for (at least in his mind) all the grads using digital and turning out junk that we can rationalize as art. I know that's really several issues in one, but a lot of his arguments with me is that i can't call myself a photographer until i know and produce more traditonal photographs. he hates it when i engage him only by saying that i like using digital better and that i feel that he is simply unwilling to concede that digital can be looked at as another facet of photography and that it is on equal footing with traditional processes.

I love his use of the word real. it's exactly the same idea that mitchel pushes in this notion of what is normal photographic perception and practice. i dare say that my real asking friend would agree about this normal notion. So why isn't a photo legitimate if i didn't use chemicals or film? i havent' done a lot of traditional photography, and i didn't love the process or the darkroom. frankly i HATE the idea of film closets and having to do things in small dark rooms. why would i want to do something that makes me claustrophobic? or creeped out? or that i can't do at my house? so maybe those aren't great arguments but i really get a kick out of learning new programs and always have. Doing photography and design in a computer environment feels more natural to me and holds a lot less guesswork in the end. It seems like to me that its easy to have things go terribly and have things i can't fix in a traditional darkroom, where i can just start over and not have lost everything i started with in the digital darkroom. Traditional processes feel as if they have too many varibles and digi doesn't feel that way at all. I don't feel as though i'm less of an artist because i don't do traditional. i did at first to be honest which is what got me in the darkroom in the first place, but now i just realize i was buying the attitude without having figured out how i felt about any of it.

and then there's my favorite argument about what's wrong with digital. i have a person in my life who can rant for hours about the horrible look of pixels. She hates the squares! somehow the round film grains and chemical clouds are far superior. And according to her, digital photos always have undesirable noise that film photos don't. um what? why is film grain better? who cares if the dots that make up your image are round or square?

i'm not suprised that people are suspecious of digital and of the technology. we all hate change on a certian level, and i think that this is just a fine example of that. older is better. if it ain't broke don't fix it. etc etc. do i buy that there's backlash against digital? sure. do i think there will always be? no. and do i think digital will totaly destroy traditional processes? no. if anything the backlash will just keep those processes around longer or revitalize a love for the idea and use of those processes. we are in a special place of watching media converge and movements in art be created. i personally am happy to hang on for the ride. but i'll stick with my computer to make photographs while i watch.