Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/10/30
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While it's true that digital process has taken over the real world of imaging
(product, photography, advertising, daily news), it is also true that it is
misplaced to call it "photography." Eventually, so-called "digital
photography" will be renamed. We don't call "video tape" film anymore, do
we? And we don't call automobiles "buggies". "Photography" is a
chemical/mechanical craft-process that uses 150-year-old technology.
All "photography," as we have come to know it, is now retro. It is
virtually an antiquarian pursuit. This is why I say that the "future of
photography" is in its past; it will include the use of hand-made papers and
film, alternative and "obsolete" printing methods, the pinhole camera, wet
plates, even the Leica "O." It will continue to be great fun and a worthy
enterprise.
But the digital manipulation of photographic prints and negatives is a
"crime against photography." The worst crime is the digital montage of
photographic images, which at best is some kind of "illustration" and at
worst (and most commonly) simply the latest form of visual and intellectual
pollution, IMHO. Arthur