Digitalization has made much of art photography's vast variety possible. But it's also a major reason that, 25 years after the technology exploded what photography could do and be, the medium seems to have lost its soul. Film photography's artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera. A digital photograph, on the other hand, can be a Photoshop fairy tale, containing only a tiny trace of a small fragment of reality. By now, we've witnessed all the magical morphing and seen all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers—formerly bearers of truth—into conjurers of fiction. It's hard to say "gee whiz" anymore.

How is that even remotely possible? The medium certainly looks alive, well and, if anything, overpopulated. There are hordes of photographers out there, working with back-to-basics pinhole cameras and pixeled images measured in gigabytes, with street photography taken by cell phones and massive photo "shoots" whose crews, complexity and expense resemble those of movie sets.

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Posted By: Herbie2 @ 12/03/2007 1:35:07 PM

Comment: Manipulaiton of images did not start with Photoshop or the digital era. Over the years I have created images such as a Lake Erie shoreline enhanced by a Maui sunset. I once did a portrait for a family who had never been photographed together as adults. Using a group photo I shot at the father's funeral with spaces left for missing family members, together with a picture from one son's wedding, and a photo of the late father taken at the same son's wedding, I created a formal, family image -- with film -- that never happened. It used to be that many people shot pictures, but the creation of art began in the darkroom. The only change today with digital cameras and Photoshop is that many more people can be creative with less efffort and far less expense.
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Posted By: roberthuesman @ 12/03/2007 1:09:46 PM

Comment: I've always been mistified by the simplicity of photography. What is seen, by the human eye, through the camera lense is the photograph. I personally have always strived to develope my work that way, both in the camera and in the darkroom. Trying not to see what isn't there, but only see what is there and still interesting to the later viewer of a print. I always felt that, like a good joke, if you had to explain it, it was ruind. Same would apply to HOW you achieve the effect . If it wasn't obviously natural and raw, then i'd failed. But even Ansel Adams manipulated his work, knowing full well when he exposed the film in the camera that he would need to adjust what he put there later in in the darkroom. That's how and why he developed his zonal system. I think most photographers, even snapshooters, realize there is a difference between photographic art and something else. It's the vision thing, that counts.
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Posted By: jeffjefferies @ 12/03/2007 11:55:09 AM

Comment: This is a woefully ignorant article. Photography and truth have never been friends. Anyone with a hint of knowledge of the history of the form would know this. From burning in to cropping, to Ansel Adams resizing the moon for effect. The only thing that has changed is that technology allows a greater range of manipulation.