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From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos)
Newsgroups: net.rec.photo
Subject: Art vs. Technique
Message-ID: <1471@peora.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Aug-85 23:19:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: peora.1471
Posted: Sun Aug 11 23:19:55 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 05:49:19 EDT
References: <54600009@trsvax> <4088@alice.UUCP> <1418@peora.UUCP> <286@harvard.ARPA>
Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl.
Lines: 68

> If manipulation of a print is important to acheive the previsualized
> effect, then you should do it. Burning in, dodging, using hot
> developer, bleaching, etc., these are all important tools in realizing
> the final image.

This is true; and ever since writing my long essay last weekend on the evils
of darkroom manipulation, I have been feeling guilty that my tendency for
hyperbole would lead some ingenuous learning-photographer astray.

Obviously, Adams did use burning-in and dodging; he grumbles often about it
in his notes on his photographs.  Nevertheless, it is my intuitive feeling
that he didn't particularly like this.  (On the other hand, he did do some
considerable manipulation of the negative on his most famous photograph of
all, _Moonrise,_Hernandez,_NM_, the bottom half of which he bleached,
redeveloped, and intensified.)

Many people who read this newsgroup I suppose have gotten used to my
dogmatic expression of philosophies of art, and probably even ignore it.
I forget that other people read it besides those who so regularly write
here (e.g., Marty Sasaki and Howard Moskovitz), until I write something
semi-metaphorical, and someone sends me mail which ends with "I can
only conclude that this must have been a joke."

However, I am not Adams, and I really do believe in the ideas I expressed
last week, mentioned in the posting above.  Working almost exclusively now
with color materials has led me more and more to believe in the merits of
exacting realism.  I do have several negatives which I am often tempted to
manipulate in these ways; yet, when I look at the unmanipulated print,
compared with any manipulated image, I almost always come to the
conclusion that the unmanipulated print is best.  This has indeed led to
some strange images, which, to interpret them as I do, requires you to
study them until you are truly in the mood of the picture.  I look at some
of them at other times and wonder why I made a print like that.  On the
other hand, I have only a handful that I like; only one that I feel
captures any essence of the spirit of the particular school of Realism in
which I spent my formative years.

Nevertheless, I think that even unconventional dogma is a good thing.  If
art does not inspire feeling, it doesn't have much to recommend it to the
world.  (This is, of course, an essentially "Romantic" philosophy, and I
realize that there is some art -- T. S. Eliot's poems are an example -- that
don't inspire much feeling, yet are nevertheless very good.)  This is why
I often tend, in here, to attack with a certain hyperbole many absolutist
technical statements, such as, "don't roll your film all the way into the
35mm cartridge, or light will leak in;" "Only Kodachrome is the True Way,"
and statements about the Zone System that are made in a constraining tone.
Or, "automatic cameras are not good for the Real Photographer."  I tend to
feel these are diversions, like the detailed notes under the photographs
in Modern Photography.*  If you are to accomplish photographs that are
the essence of something you are trying to express, the camera and the
equipment and the techniques should all disappear.

Thus, I would like to see more inspired photography, and less technical
photography; but I hope that no one is misled by my comments like the ones
on darkroom manipulation mentioned above.

----
*I will admit, though, that I am always interested in the type of camera
used, and for color, the type of film, though it's often possible to guess
both, because sometimes there are true surprises.
-- 
Shyy-Anzr:  J. Eric Roskos
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