Got your attention?
I have been reading some of my favourite old Camera and Darkroom magazines lately found while cleaning out my garage. These date from the early 1990’s to mid 2000’s and were at the time the height of technical and artistic discourse in all things photographic.
There are amusing bits, like the old computer tech talking in kilobytes m=not gigabytes and some of the chrystal ball assumptions are way off, but some are surprisingly prescient.
The meat of the matter though are the articles and interviews featuring masters current at the time or passed. Many of these I did not bother with at the time unless the images grabbed me. A shallow skimmer, I tended to devour repeatedly some articles and shun others that were not “my style”. These were often European masters, often older works and sometimes confronting.
As I said, shallow.
Revisiting some of these has stimulated my thought processes, fuelled some strong ideas and opinions.
As an example, one interview of French photographer Willy Ronis revealed to me the sort of wisdom I like to spout, but his is from someone better qualified.
The first was the ownership of an image. In his words “You have to have the right”. In his view the relative machine gun-like image taking of a motor driven film camera takes away that right (I do wonder what he and others would think of modern digital with 60fps and effectively unlimited files). Your image, your timing, your perceptions, your custodianship, or you should walk away.
He never posed an image, only recognised one and all of his images were taken with instinct not overt control.
The second gave me a realiseation that is obvious to all, but one that time has dulled I guess.
When asked about colour and black and white he said he has gone back to mono because “I can master the process”. “In black and white if you make a little technical mistake you can correct it. In colour, without the use of computers it is impossible”*.
When I started in this ever changing space, you shot colour for accuracy to eye, black and white for artistry or to scratch the hobby itch. There were plenty of exceptions, but for most, nearly all practitioners, black and white provided near instant shoot > process > print to your preference any day, any time at your own pace. I remember many times testing gear and shooting a roll, processing, assessing, going again and again in the same day.
Like a RAW image, there were many steps of control you could exercise, some capable of salvaging the worst mistakes, all requiring some artistic commitment and there was a feeling of a “secret sauce” just around the corner.
Colour was more shoot > hand it over to another to process, taking an hour to a fortnight (slides) to get back > get them to print it, often to their eye unless you had a good custom printer or for slides, find a way of viewing it and very occasionally get an expensive print done. This was all about control up front, the. relinquishing control from then on.
Colour was a matter of accuracy when taking and controlled processes from then on. Slide films were the gold standard but slower to process and the end product was problematic, negative film was more flexible and forgiving, but considered amateurish. I guess colour is a little like the JPEG of today.
The point.
Controlling an image, especially a colour image is very much a computer thing. Ironically it is the once more flexible mono process that is now paying the price. Black and white is becoming the poor step child of the current regime with the natural limitations and feel of film making way for “film like” offerings, that are to be honest, often not film like.
With delusions of retaining a good film memory I process towards that, but I live also with the reality that this is not much like film at all. It does not have to be I guess, but film provided a good compass.
AI adds that last element which is to ditch the taking bit all together**.
AI is all about what the end user wants, with little if any regard for subject connection, even real subject existence. AI is the ultimate selfish beast, feeding the user seemingly what they want as they want it. It can make something, but will there be any creative point? At what point does the process become remote, basically a creative lie?
Looking at it all from the point of view of Ronis and his contemporaries, what is the point of doing it if you do not take ownership of all the process?
The commercial world will embrace the speed and ease of it all, hobbyists also, but for authenticity and to give the image some relevance, a reason for being, artistic creations will need to be more than just ideas created by a computer programme. If we cannot attribute emotional connections that go both ways, to our work then why do it at all?
These older photographers remind me of one truth that is timeless.
Anytime you involve another person in an image you make, it is a two-way transaction. This is how it should be, it makes it real and valid and human. AI makes no such connection, it dismisses any bargain or agreement, it just takes in a one way flow. Even if the human who’s image is used was real, any link to the end use of their image is cursory at best.
This is a real person in a real place attending a real event. Is any other version if this shot acceptable?
You could argue nobody actually exists at the other end to bargain with, but if a human being is in the image, who or what are they meant to represent if not a real person?
Are we educating a generation that will detach from true creativity, even deny any sort of pay-in, or connection and replace these with ever increasing quick-hit sensationalism, the effect of which will blunt down to nothing sooner rather than later?
I hope not.
*This is a 1994 C&D magazine, before serious digital cameras, so photoshop was the destination of a scanned negative process and colour did have fixes, but they were far from easy or cheap.
**AI has to draw from a source, so all the elements of the manufactured images were taken at some point to some level, but not the end user.