Just a few thoughts about the direction of the fine art aspect of photography. The litmus test has always been "the print." A physical, paper print with all kinds of parameters involved; from archival keeping quality to issues having to do with the surface of the paper. Since the days of Ansel Adams the holy priesthood of photography has made the print the test of a photographer's ultimate relevance within our own culture of photographers.
In the days of CRT screens and the days of 13 inch monitors this made a lot of sense. But try this little experiment: Find yourself a friend or colleague who has made the plunge into working on a 5K monitor. A big one. Something like 27 or 30 inches. One that's perfectly calibrated. Find your absolute favorite photographic image. Make the file large and meaty. Make the best print you can. Then put the image up on the 5K monitor.
I can't vouch for your response, reaction or point of view but..... I will say this: If I were to have a show of my work next month and budget was no object I would not spend the time or money getting each of my precious images printed out on paper. I would buy or rent twelve or fifteen 5K systems and put a rotating selection of high res images on each one. I'd put them up on the walls in a gallery, just as we did for hundreds of years with prints, and I would watch a fascinated audience stand in front of them.
If the audience liked the images on the screens I would arrange to make a duplicate file of their favorites and put it onto a memory device and charge them exactly what I would charge them for a print. They would get a license to show the work on their own 5K system for the rest of their lives.
Yes, in some respects the print is a wonderful thing. A beautiful artifact. A collectable souvenir of a vision shared. But the last ten years of artists working on screens has mutated our understanding of what it is to make art and what it is to make....a print. And those two things have been revealed to be separate processes with separate methods and separate aesthetics and rules. Optimize for one or the other in your mind but you can't really do both.
Just a few thoughts upon seeing some of my recent work displayed in the new manner. YMMV depending on how emotionally dependent you may be on the nostalgia for the existing/older process. We are now evolving into two segments of artists; the traditional printmakers and the media agnostic photographers who have grown up wedded to the screen. It changes everything.
In the days of CRT screens and the days of 13 inch monitors this made a lot of sense. But try this little experiment: Find yourself a friend or colleague who has made the plunge into working on a 5K monitor. A big one. Something like 27 or 30 inches. One that's perfectly calibrated. Find your absolute favorite photographic image. Make the file large and meaty. Make the best print you can. Then put the image up on the 5K monitor.
I can't vouch for your response, reaction or point of view but..... I will say this: If I were to have a show of my work next month and budget was no object I would not spend the time or money getting each of my precious images printed out on paper. I would buy or rent twelve or fifteen 5K systems and put a rotating selection of high res images on each one. I'd put them up on the walls in a gallery, just as we did for hundreds of years with prints, and I would watch a fascinated audience stand in front of them.
If the audience liked the images on the screens I would arrange to make a duplicate file of their favorites and put it onto a memory device and charge them exactly what I would charge them for a print. They would get a license to show the work on their own 5K system for the rest of their lives.
Yes, in some respects the print is a wonderful thing. A beautiful artifact. A collectable souvenir of a vision shared. But the last ten years of artists working on screens has mutated our understanding of what it is to make art and what it is to make....a print. And those two things have been revealed to be separate processes with separate methods and separate aesthetics and rules. Optimize for one or the other in your mind but you can't really do both.
Just a few thoughts upon seeing some of my recent work displayed in the new manner. YMMV depending on how emotionally dependent you may be on the nostalgia for the existing/older process. We are now evolving into two segments of artists; the traditional printmakers and the media agnostic photographers who have grown up wedded to the screen. It changes everything.
Where was your subconscious aiming?
