[Leica] Benjamin [was: Photoshop dilemma]

[Guy Bennett <gbennett@lainet.com>]

>> I've just spent several hours in the good old fashion "dark room" making wet
>> prints, washing, drying and all that other stuff we do with such reckless
>> abandon before the mighty photo god   ...... Photoshop descended on planet
>> earth or whatever.
>> You know, as much as I enjoy using Photoshop, not for screwing with
>> pictures, but the ease and convenience of making prints on demand without
>> all the fuss and muss of the wet darkroom, it's wonderful.
>> Then once a photo is electronically saved heck I can go back a year later
>> and knock off a hundred identical prints without batting an eye getting nary
>> a wet hand.
>> However, their is an old fashion mystique of doing it real-time with hands
>> in the trays and watching those wonderful photographs come to life under the
>> orange dark room lights. Damn I love it!
>> It's mine coming to life and I don't get that same kind of magical feeling
>> when I'm electronically tweaking a burn here or there in Photoshop. It seems
>> cold and just sits there on a screen. Like no giving a life feeling happens
>> as it prints out.
>> Maybe I'm just a sentimental old fool, but as much as I'm always in awe of
>> the electronic print, I just can't set aside the good old fashion darkroom.
>> It has life and feelings, I suppose so many wonderful memories of seeing
>> dramatic moments captured on film and then prints coming up in the soup is
>> tough to cast aside for a "machine!"
>> OK OK I'll go back to the dark and make prints. ;-)
>> Hopefully you guys and gals will have this seemingly endless "to Photoshop
>> or not to Photoshop" debate to an end by the time I'm finished printing. ;-)
>> ted


There's something really fascinating about the above commentary. I just
reread Benjamin's 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction," in which he speaks of the "aura/authenticity/authority" of
the traditional work of art and the lack of such qualities in the
mechanically reproduced work of art, using very much the same terms as Ted
does above when talking about the traditional darkroom and the digital
darkroom. Now, photography is a means of mecanical reproduction, and,
according to Benjamin, a photograph lacks the "aura/authenticity/authority"
of, say, a painting, due essentially to the fact that it is produced
mecanically and can be mechanically reproduced ad infinitum. He even makes
that claim that it is ridiculous to speak of an "original" print for this
reason.

Not to reopen that old "painting vs photography" can o' worms, nor to drag
ol' Benjamin over the coals, but it does seem that this debate has entered
a new dimension. With the increasing use of digital tools such as
Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, etc., replacing traditional darkroom/editing room
practices, people are now relishing the "old fashion mystique" of
traditional methods of mechanical reproduction, in much the same way as
Benjamin describes the loss of "aura" of the traditional work of art in the
age of mechanical reproduction.

Which suggests that what mechanical reproduction was to manual production,
digital reproduction is to mechanical reproduction.

IMO, an interesting perspective on this old issue.

Guy

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