[Leica] Tools and materials

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

> in my browsings I've read of a photographer who was unwilling to plunge in to
> the digital darkroom because the workflow was dependant on particular products
> or technologies ...  but isn't wet darkroom workflow similarly constrained?


Doug,
Oh, sure. Szarkowski even roughly organized his History around the premise
that the modal functioning of photography has followed the course of
technological advancement and change. There are many tales of photographers
over the decades who were affected by the opportunity or loss.


>There must be dozens of us who have lamented the loss of a favorite film,
>developer, paper or process.

Probably the most famous example of this was Frederick Evans, who quit
photography after commercially-coated platinum paper was discontinued with
the advent of WWI. 

My favorite tale of a photographer adversely affected by the loss of tools
or materials was a NYC painter named Christopher Bailey, who used a broken
Nikkormat to take haunting pictures late at night of the underside of the
city. His camera had one lens--jammed on and couldn't be removed--and a
crack in the lens, and the meter didn't work, and it was stuck on "B." And
you know, he was a virtuoso of that thing--his work was very distinctive and
technically perfectly appropriate for his subject matter.

He drove an early SUV that was popular among drug dealers, and he kept
getting it broken into by people looking for drugs. Finally he forgot and
left the camera in the truck, and it was stolen.

He got a new Nikon FM-2 but he could never recreate the "look" he got with
that old, trashed Nikkormat. The irony is that the thief would have been
lucky indeed to get $15 for that old beater of his, but for Chris it was a
serious loss.

- --Mike