Digital BW, The Print

On 5/1/03 12:16 PM, "Paul Roark" <paul.roark@...> wrote:

> On 5/1/03 Alan Zinn wrote:
> 
>> ...
> 
>> I'd love to see a useful, short statement that addresses print v. original
>> film image honesty.  Something like:  "Un-altered camera image."
> 
> On 5/1/03 Robert Morrison wrote:
> 
>> ...but if you are an artist...what difference could that possibly make?
> 
>> Art is about the final image and message that it
>> conveys and it seems to me irrelevant how you created that image. ...
> 
>> If you are a photojournalist, ...I think we all want to
>> know that the news that we see and hear was true to what happened...but for
>> art...at least I want to know that the art was true to what was imagined.
> 
> Well, I love many art and photographic forms & categories (sub-markets?).  I
> have no idea how one defines "art," but I see or feel it in the very best
> performances of many communication forms,  as well as jobs that are just so
> well done that they demonstrate a deep understanding of the "medium" in
> which the person participates.

To me this is not art...but rather technical mastery.  For me visual art is
an attempt to use a visual form to communicate.  Art can show technical
mastery or not...it can be judged to be good or bad by a viewer/critic.  It
can have lousy technical mastery but still be great art because of its
message or intent, while it could be technically masterful and lack any
depth of communication.
 
> Some photojournalism rises to the level of "art," in my view.

I didn't mean to suggest that a photojournalist couldn't be an artist.
Rather the function of photojournalism puts an additional constraint on
their output...requiring image fidelity...a requirement that doesn't seem to
be a necessary constraint for other art forms...which seem to be to be about
the artist's message and their ability to communicate that message.
  

Robert