civilized ku # 3075-76 / diptych # 211 ~ there and back again
Much of my thinking has been on topics, photography wise, instigated by 2 primary factors - 1) "...Many contemporary photographers lament the “lifelessness” of digital images. We look at the picture, admire its vibrant colors and sharp lines, and still can’t help but feel nostalgic for the photographs of the old, pre-digital age." (Pavel Kosenko, author, LIFELIKE:A Book on Color), and 2) my recent acquisition (in NYC) of the book, SAUL LEITER: Early Color. And, to my way of thinking, items 1 and 2 are very closely related inasmuch as one is nostalgic for pre-digital age color and the other is a tour de force of pre-digital age color.
Pavel Kosenko's nostalgic lament is somewhat understandable to me inasmuch as I still believe that some of the pre-digital C prints I made were indeed beautiful, color space / tonal wise. That standard / benchmark of representational color and tonal value is still the one I aim to replicate in today's digital era. In doing so, I am very much de-digitalizing my digital picture files and have been doing so since my early digital picture making days.
My issue with the current standard / benchmark (for so many) of tack sharp, noise (aka grain) free and somewhat over-vibrant color is, to my eye and sensibilities, rather plastic or not lifelike as in the sense of not real or sincere. While many who ascribe to that picturing M.O. would state that they are trying to make "realistic" pictures, in fact (again, to my eye and sensibilities) they are making pictures which appear to be hyperreal as in the sense of something fake and artificial which comes to be more definitive of the real than reality itself.
You know, like the Nexus 6 replicants manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation which were made to be more human than human.
Inasmuch as Kosenko seems to think that replicating the look of analog film is the answer to introducing "life" to color pictures - he advocates for a RAW developer that is at its heart an effect app-like program with many presets for various types of analog films - I would disagree with his rational / nostalgic longings for "photographs of the pre-digital age".
Are pre-digital photographs more real (or less real) than digital era photographs? I think not. Are they more pleasant to the eye than the current crop digital picturing 'perfection'? iMo, unquestionably so. They are, to my eye and sensibilities, 'softer' and more gentle to behold.
Perhaps that is what I am experimenting with adding 'grain' (monochromatic digital noise) to my pictures - like those in this entry's diptych.