We Can’t Paint

Since its widespread adoption there has been a stigma around digital photography. This is particularly evident when you ask photographers their opinion on the matter. I’ve never thought too hard about whether an alternate mode of image production meant that photography was dead, it has always been more of an issue with subjective ethics. What I find quite surprising about the whole mess of analog versus digital is the argument of authenticity.

When the debate is either written or talked about the focus usually falls upon the digital darkroom and its possibilities. I think most of us seem to forget that photographic manipulation has been going on in one form or another since the birth of the fixed image. Although today this concern rests on the computers ability to produce an almost invisible composite photograph, I think it is ridiculous to assume that artists armed with analog techniques cannot mirror an untraceable alteration. An example of this can be seen when looking at Camille Silvy’s Valley of the Husine, France (River Scene), 1858. The landscape is an almost perfect model for analog composite and masking techniques, a photograph that was praised for its detail and varied handling of chiaroscuro.

I’ll admit that this example does not settle the problems with digital imaging but it does raise some interesting questions about digital photographic worth, beauty, and importance. I think that when it’s all said and done the lasting debate to whether digital imaging has killed the photographic tradition will be a realization that some individuals, photographers who have grown with analog techniques, feel threatened and thus press a hegemonic tradition. This is why when I found out about the upcoming exhibition titled The Death of Photography at the Stephen Bulger Gallery I was interested in its premise.

I won’t delve too much into the questionable title, but the issue of analog and digital still remains a problematic forum of comprehension to whether or not the medium is in crisis. Is photography really dead because of its loss of physicality? The exhibition seems to point more or less to this conclusion, a notion that photography is dead because of its transformation into a digital production. This is from the press release:

When the invention of photography was announced to the public on January 7, 1839 it created a sensation for both its advocates and adversaries. At present, photography is arguably more popular than ever, but it is also at the end of an era. Digital systems are rapidly making analog materials obsolete. This exhibition includes the work of three artists who are each commemorating this milestone event in the history of art and technology.

The artists showcased in the exhibition (Robert Burley, Michel Campeau, and Alison Rossiter) are basically following this claim. However, I wonder how:

the closing of the Kodak Canada facility in Toronto,

Main Entrance, View From Photography Drive of Buildings Seven and Nine, 2005 © Robert Burley

The Hopper, Building Thirteen, 2005 © Robert Burley

Employee Meeting - West Parking Lot, Last day of Manufacturing Operations, June 29th,, 2005 © Robert Burley

the decline of private darkrooms,

© Michel Campeau

© Michel Campeau

© Michel Campeau

and outmoded papers

Kodak Kodabromide F-3, expired July 1957, processed 2007© Alison Rossiter

Barnet Bar-Gas, expired 1920’s, processed 2007© Alison Rossiter

Barnet Bar-Gas, expired 1920’s, processed 2007© Alison Rossiter

have anything to do with the actual death of photography itself?

Darius Himes has wrtten an interesting essay (available on his blog here) for the exhibition catalog, an investigation into the contemporary status of the medium. He seems to think, just like Bulger, that photography is dead, or rather, that a specific form of photography is dead. This assumption still feels a little hollow and even pretentious. Painting has been continuously proclaimed dead but the point of that argument is that the medium has fallen out of favor. For photography, the main point has always resided in the realm of technology and is completely about our thirst for the new, a hunger for speed. I still believe that photography is NOT dead. It cannot die. Photography was born out of change, an evolution of our obsession with the visual. I think when we are finally able to see digital photography as more of a fruition than a falsity, we can move on to aimlessly arguing its replacement.

The Death of Photography runs from January 5th to February 2nd, 2008 at the Stephen Bulger Gallery.