Wednesday, September 10, 2008


Once upon a time Edward Weston and his ilk revolted against pictorialism on the grounds that the great thing about photography was its ability to record objects in great and exact detail, and that fuzzy Romanticism should be left to the painters. He would say no other medium was as able to reveal such truth in things. However the world of photography has expanded from the camera obscura to the CMOS sensor and beyond, with an ever increasing ability to record things accurately, especially in lower and poorer light. So now of course the photography he spoke of, which is the photography I use today (Analogue and predominantly B&W) is no longer capable of representing things as exactly as digital photography can now!

So this has made me wonder, where does analogue photography fit now? There is no doubt in the minds of those those who have actually seen or made a beautiful analogue print, that while technology can make things faster, clearer, and more accurate etc. It doesn't compare to the aesthetics of a beautiful hand crafted analogue print. So perhaps conceptualism is the domain of digital photography and beauty is the domain of analogue photography now. Which kind of takes us back to what Weston revolted against!

The picture above is from a body of works produced with this in mind.