Comment

Comment by dennis marsico on May 13, 2010 at 1:29am

My apologies for a misleading comment. I have no issue with print manipulation, as someone mentioned, it is part of the photography process. It is not a question of B&W vs. color or photoshop vs. darkroom or this process vs that process. What I was trying to make clear is with the advent of digital photography everyone who buys a DSLR considers themselves a photographer.
In academia it’s easy to dismiss a layman’s opinion compared to a PH.D in a field. In photography everyone is an expert, from the engineer to the accountant to the graduate student in sociology. The line between amateur and artist, tasteful and tacky has been blurred.
The photographs in lowrider were presented as art and art opens itself for critical review. As art, the lowrider prints are amateur in quality. Unlike anthropology art is not a science.

Comment by Michael Yorke on May 13, 2010 at 1:18am

I am stunned by the naivete of this discussion. Perception is never absolute or real. I will never forget the day my cataracts were removed and the whole world seemed saturated with colour, joy and precision. But even that only lasted for a few days. Howeevr I am also sure that that week or so of delight did have a more profound affect on my visual and emotional view of the world. As an anthropologist who started out as a photographer's apprentice in 1963 and now teach an MA in practical ethographic filmmaking at UCL, no one involved in the course thinks that they are doing anything other than making the real more real and striving to encapsulate as much information into the captured image, be it still or movie with added audio. The joy of photoshop means that it is possible to redress the vagaries of technology with subjective judgement. I will never forget how in 1978 some techno-frak of the time persuaded me to use Agfa stock for my postdoctoiral research project in India. When I finally came back and got it all developed I wqas horrified at the drained and colurlessmauve of the images. Then came the great moment of joy four years ago when I sat down, digitised everything, got it into photoshop and brought joy, spirit, and a sense of the original back to all those drab images that did nothing to represent the profilmic. Long live the abilitiy of ever advancing technologies that allow us to approximate that which we felt and knew was true when the shutter clicked.
And never forget that the camera is incapable of telling even a faint degree of truth. The human eye has a dynamic contrast range 9 times greater than any film, 9.5 times greater than a CCD chip and ten times greater than a CMOS chip.

Comment by SusanLayne Nielsen on May 13, 2010 at 12:37am

starting with framing and lens choice, angle, exposure and ending with how the final image is displayed/printed

Not to mention that, until recently, it all depended on a chemical reaction of silver to light. It is all, always, secondary to the phenomenon in front of the lens. I challenge anyone to define 'pure' in this context. (For that matter, I don't know what it might mean in any context except a clean room.)

Comment by ryan anderson on May 13, 2010 at 12:28am

Joella,

Only "pure" photographic images are written by light. Whether it is through the lens of a camera or negative through an enlarger, the image itself as a whole is pure until some action is taken to alter/combine the subject(s).

There is nothing pure or straightforward about photography, IMO. Photographs are the end result of a long series of choices and editorial decisions (starting with framing and lens choice, angle, exposure and ending with how the final image is displayed/printed).

Comment by SusanLayne Nielsen on May 13, 2010 at 12:13am

I have never been to Yosemite and only hope that the beauty of his photographs are realistic interpretations.

It will disappoint you. It's in color.

Comment by ryan anderson on May 13, 2010 at 12:12am

So, clearly Adams already manipulated the representation of whatever was in front of the camera, even before he started work in the darkroom.

Exactly. Manipulation and alteration starts immediately.

Not to mention that the photos are two-dimensional, and also really much smaller than the original Yosemite landscape he photographed!

Ha. Just a BIT smaller and flatter than El Cap and Half Dome.

Good points, Martin.

Comment by Martin Hoyem on May 13, 2010 at 12:03am

Ryan Anderson wrote: "Photoshop is simply another technological advancement in a long line. If we reject these innovations, then the only "pure" photograph is a Daguerreotype or a Calotype, or maybe something produced a la Niepce in the 1820s."

I'll give all of you a preview of a gallery I will officially publish shortly, with Jack Butler's pinhole camera Polaroids of Southern California car culture. I wonder if this group would consider Butler's images truer representations of reality, than what my photos constitute?

http://www.americanethnography.com/gallery.php?id=103

Comment by Martin Hoyem on May 12, 2010 at 11:52pm

Leaving aside the suspicion that some of this discussion addresses the quality of my manipulations, rather than the nature of it (it is true, I'm not Ansel Adams), it's touching to see this nostalgic faith in old technology's ability to represent a “true” image of a situation, and simultaneously the distrust towards more modern technology.

Ansel Adams, like most photographers, used lenses on his camera. And he shot in black and white. He also framed his shots (anything else would be impossible with a photo camera.) Not to mention that the photos are two-dimensional, and also really much smaller than the original Yosemite landscape he photographed! So, clearly Adams already manipulated the representation of whatever was in front of the camera, even before he started work in the darkroom. Ultimately he made his choices about what manipulation techniques to use, so that he could show clearer the objects he photographed, so that his recreation of the scene would be easier for his audience to understand, so that his message would come trough.

In fact, that is the exact same thing we do when we write. We don't publish all our head notes, scratch notes and field notes – we select from them, edit and polish the sentences, so that the words we end up using best describes what we want to describe. It would be funny to argue equally conservatively about the ethnographic writing we present to our readers. What are acceptable writing techniques? Should we only write with a pencil? Must the text be left unedited (unedited from which stage of the writing process)? Can we use adjectives, or must it be only verbs and nouns? Can I write in English about a culture in Cameroon?

Comment by Joella Davis on May 12, 2010 at 10:52pm

I believe documentary photography/straight-forward photography is a wonderful glimpse of reality. Without visual documentation, many would not be aware of the world. If one were to take a photo of the ecosystem in the Caribbean and alter the color using Photoshop or even hand coloring it, would it still be considered documentary? How could on trust an image that is not of true representation. Cyanotype and any other alternative photographic process are usually seen as works of art nowadays. Only "pure" photographic images are written by light. Whether it is through the lens of a camera or negative through an enlarger, the image itself as a whole is pure until some action is taken to alter/combine the subject(s). As for Ansel, I have never been to Yosemite and only hope that the beauty of his photographs are realistic interpretations.

Comment by ryan anderson on May 12, 2010 at 10:17pm

Mr. Hoyem is not Ansel Adams, the lowrider color manipulation alters the message and reality of the moment.

How does the color/BW split alter the message and reality? Is it suddenly a lie to foreground part of the image in this way? Is the "reality of the moment" altered if the image is all black and white?

By way of Mr. Hoyen’s post-production manipulation the lowrider photo-essay has moved from a photographic document to a photoshop/darkroom exercise.

This is interesting because I was not aware of this set of anthropological/documentary rules. At what point did this shift from "document" to "exercise" occur? How can we tell when our photographs leave the document category and become mere darkroom/photoshop exercises? Can a cyanotype be a photographic document? Do images have to be either all color or all black and white to qualify as a true document? Do you put black and white images into the "photographic document" category?

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