These thoughts were stirred by a momentary reflection over a number of photos I unpacked recently, most of which were from the days I spent with my own darkroom, developing my own film and printing my own images. It was an overwhelming addiction, so much so that awaking for a work day would include a 30 min detour into the darkroom to further perfect a print before heading to work, returning 9 hrs later to do it all again. I would go for weeks with the smell of photo toner on my fingers, the scent of which would instantly take my mind back to the details of the last printing efforts, usually scrawled in pencil notes onto the back of the photo paper itself, lit only by the orange hue of a film safe light. I'd constantly tweak and refine, reprint, examine, revel in recognized improvements and isolate and scheme on those yet to be perfected.
And although that behavior is all to familiar in the many things I undertake using computers today, where does it stop and when does art cease to be artistic? What difference does the introduction of technology have in our understanding of the skills of an artist. And most importantly why does this paragraph sound like something out of a 'Sex and the City' episode?
What I found myself thinking when I unpacked all the photos, at first, was the desire to scan and post them on my website for posterity... followed by the thought that, once captured, I could utilize photoshop to clean and enhance the images, and finally, with some sense of deflation over the hours and hours spent working in a darkroom before this was an option, what do I have today to show that can't be done by most anybody with general level photoshop skills?
I have a number of photos that I'm particularly proud of, many of which I spent hours and hours working in the darkroom to perfect, using a range of manual techniques and tools. Filters, dodging wands, moving the paper about on the tray... all means taken, intentionally, and with precision and timing, to effect an outcome. An outcome you would only know during the final, and irreversible, steps of processing an exposed sheet of paper in a serious of baths as the permanent results of that effor, slowly appeared before your eyes. The process was pure exhilaration. There's nothing like it in today's digital medium, where the relatively instant gratification is second only to the immediate preview of the results of any number of effects or filters and best of all, the ability to revert or back up if it did not work right. By today's standards and technology, what once reflected hours of work and dedicated effort can be reproduced in any number of fashions with minimal time and effort.
Ultimately It's not about recognition and appreciation for the work. It never was. Those photos were labors of love for the art, craft, and often the sublet matter. But when I look at them and consider the prospect of digitizing them, I'm torn between the excitement of the possibilities a new frontier holds, and the lessening it applies to the art of the original effort. When everybody and their brother has access to digital tools, where does the craft and artistic effort enter the picture?
