the electronic print?

Is the physical object that is the photograph, to be replaced by the photograph as an image purely consumed through electronic sources. Does the print have a future?

I believe that print will always remain, but more and more as an object in a niche market, as far as the general population goes, imagery i believe will be consumed in the most direct and appropriate manner, and that will always be through electronic means... the photograph as object, its important isn't it? That tangible thing that we can inspect for ourselves, verify it authenticity with our own eyes. Would it matter tomorrow if all the imagery we consumed was purely through electronic means, if the print ceased to exist, is there reason for it to continue?

Even photography in the print media is being digested through sources such as the iPad et al. Those images within it exist only as long as some one is looking. Does that make sense maybe not, I think that the advent of this portable technology will bring about a shift in the way we consume and reproduce imagery, it is happening at the moment. It has been happening for the last few years, imagery, the photograph has transcended its original form, it has grow into form where the images we produce balloon in number, and the effect of reproductions add the ever staggering amount of imagery circulating in the world today.
Will the photograph remain, the photograph as tangible object, the photograph that ages, the photograph that is torn and only one half remains, the photograph that is incomplete, the photograph that stands as the only evidence for the fact that this was. The importance of a thing is tied up with how unique we imagine it to be, an image reproduced innumerable times pitted against the only photograph left of a distant relative. Of course we have our archive that we seek to hold precious, to pass on. But what happens when that archive becomes integrated into the vast web of images, it becomes detached from its original meaning, its importance, its significance shifts and floats in and out of understanding, it may become a historicised image, men at work in the early 21st century or something like that. This will probably happen even in terms of the print, it becomes a historical object, cut off form it s original context.

In a situation where all the imagery is consumed and distributed electronically, do we enter into a situation where imagery is edited and dropped out of history simply because they are seen as no longer relevant? It may be far fetched to suggest this, but as I see it, the imagery of the world is chronicled and moulded into nice neat packets of history as ‘the unity of the archive is imposed by it ownership’ we can see that imagery is selected for its adherence to what is perceived as fact, what fits.

I’m getting away from the point, it the object that is the photograph even important as a physical object and are we entering a point in history where the photography is consumed primarily electronically, and the print becomes an Objets d′art. A symbol of our importance, of our status. I don’t know, but I believe in the importance of touch, the ability to turn the thing over in your hand and see the surface of the print, its flaws and it failings. I know there is lot more that is involved here but this is just my slice of the pie. I don’t assume to know much, but ‘The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.’*


*Frank Herbert
US science fiction novelist (1920 - 1986)

paul graham equivalents

an alternative to the idea (thanks to daniel) that photographer's are adding to a stock of cliches surrounding the northern troubles, be they past or present. I may seem pedantic but they seem somewhat similar to alfred steiglitz's equivalents.. and as for going beyound the cliche of the imagery of the troubles, i can't say that they even direrctly reference the troubles, albeit but in their title, ceasefire. it seems like something that isn't fully formed..but in general i can't honestly say if clouds are evrn fully formed, with all that wind and stuff up there, but as images i don't know what they make me feel, grey, irish skies, don't know?

for 'against interpretation'

Susan Sontags essay ‘Against Interpretation’ is a meditation on the division in the visual arts between form and content. Form being the surface qualities of the image, by content we mean the rationalisation we place on the image (Sontag’s essay is primary concerned with art... here I am just interested in the implications her ideas have towards the photographic). What Sontag’s tells us is that the images form has been over ridden by its content. That the content has overtaken form in emphasis and importance.

The idea of the image spit between not only form and content, but we could say between it mimetic qualities and it as a statement. Photography unlike the other visual arts is primarily concerned with the indexical, it referent, what object or series of objects we place in front of the camera. The photographic can never escape it own nature, and why would we want it to do anything else. Abstractions aside, even here we are dealing with the idea of ‘what is it’, we understand photographs as essentially reflecting something that either is or was. But photography as an art form has always fought against the indexical (in most cases, this is a generalisation, but I’m human so you’ll have to forgive me) nature of the photographic. Photographic movements have each in heir turn change the image into something that suits them... I’m thinking here of Margret Cameron, Steichen and other early art photographers. They tried to develop the other qualities of the photographic, symbolism, metaphor. As we moved along we see more movement interrupting the photograph, disrupting its power, dada etc. And we end up here the image have moved beyond the indexical... our stock of images is near complete, if you can’t get the image you want you can make the image you want. I’m not interested in the idea 0f the truth of the image just our faith in it, the faith that this was.

We’ll come back to this in a minute, firstly the importance of Sontag’s essay. Sontag tells us that:

‘Interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that. One tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comfortable.’

Sontag goes on to advocate anew vocabulary for talking about the image, one that emphasises form over the content. The notion of transparance , experiencing the ‘luminousness of the thing in itself’. That it radiates meaning from it surface, but not meaning, meaning is content, it radiates light. It traps light through a series of optic, and then it radiate that light back off the photographic surface. An everlasting single moment.

So what do I care? Photography and the photographic image are the strongest most directly involved aspects in this argument of Sontag’s with out her knowledge. The surface of the photographic, its form, is all there is, its form is its content. We can codify, we can unpack the image, and we can manipulate and make an argument for within the image. All we can do is reflect the light through a series of lens. We communicate through words and text better than images why want to tell some one something through a limiting medium as photography when you could just tell them what you think? We want to make image to communicate with each other, we're social being that why we do anything we do, but photography does something much more magical than that. It talks to us through its own surface, auteur or not, it speaks for it self and it ‘I was’. We should celebrate its inability to break free of its own indexicality; it is the one defining part that sets it apart from any preceding visual art form. Again it own form out ways any reading or notion of a statement that we place upon it, we can argue with it but we cannot disempower it. Any one who doesn’t believe this only has to see the importance of the role of the family album in any family, to see that we as people embrace the photograph as an affirmation of where we come from, who we were and how we will be remembered. We don't look for meaning in it, it makes us feel, it can make us mourn, it serves as a memory. These are the images that are unreadable to those outside of the family unit, those who see content in the images were there is only form.

Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag
Evergreen Review, 1964

a sea of steps

Frederick H. Evans - A Sea of Steps

imitation is the highest form of flattery

The Pond—Moonrise, 1904

Edward Steichen

So what I’m talking about here i think is the photographers desire to be original but that we are taught to study other work and be able to reference it and to have a knowledge of the various movements within the institution of photography/art.. But why? If I think about it we get this huge body of work which we are always ripping off and passing off as our own.. If photography is the tool of modernity and the new, why then are we still homaging images over one hundred years old.. is art just a copy of a copy of a copy etc... I don't think its necessarily bad that we look back and become influenced by the stuff that precedes us, but the knowledge of that stuff (stuff here I mean photographs hereby referred to as stuff) works against the idea of learning and exploring the world photographically.. I always feel the need looking at stuff in galleries, that I want to be able to say 'yeah that like so and so' or 'that reminds me of your man' not ' cool thats funny'.

So what then? Is the blind photographer (http://blog.blindphotographers.org) better then the institutionalised photographer? Probably not because hey they can't really see shit... better than me no doubt... but looking at Steichen and his lot (pictorialists) they were doing something that they were drawn towards.. Romantic notions though they were... I can't get away from the idea that photographers should be cut loose from the dogma of the image and instead reflect what they see everyday.. What else can photography do? Its not going to influence people (apart from buying shit that is) is it?

People are going to read imagery from the perspective of the whole package of images they carry with them, we don't see something without wanting to put in a place alongside other things we feel it belongs with.. We do this with out even having to think about it.. But isn't it great when we actually see some thing that actually pricks us and makes us smile because we simply don't know where to put it...

little green men

images of the north have always been so cliched, the union jack flying on a street lamp or the curbstones painted outside a housing estate...so i guess one more image of a ragged flag on a street lamp can do no more damage...

we all (by 'all' i mean who ever has) can claim responsibility to either reproducing the imagery of the north in either cheaply replicating it in our own work or by buying into the imagery it provides, such as borderlands, innocent landscape, the troubles photo montage (sean hillen).
people speak about the diverse imagery of the northern troubles, but what about it? as photographers the imagery of the north is too good to ignore, colourful (red,white,blue,green,orange and white again), le quotidien du spectacle (unless of course you live there with it every day).

but what i am interested in, is that the imagery of the troubles has become tired and has been in the years past source material for many irish photographers.. but now that we have the men in green back on the television again, i wonder whether if these bodies of work were intended ever to heal the wounds of the north or merely use them to their own gain.. has any image added any positive value to our notion of the north, or have we merely perpetuated the imagery of the north to meet our our needs...

/diagonal/\compositions\

downandoutindublin