Okay, game time. There's a lot in a name...without arguing the fundamentals here, let's say (as a game) that you were going to designate "photography" any picture that essentially respects the lens image, whether it's recorded on film or digitally. Then you were going to name a second category of digital imaging in which the pictures are deliberately modified to make them different from the lens image(s) they originated with.
And, no, adjustments to the picture to make it more accurately reflect a scene—dodging and burning, color correction, amelioration of purple fringing, choice of medium (carbro or platinum) etc., down to and including proper exposure—don't count as manipulation.
Again, please don't argue the premises here—just think of a name. A really good name would have a couple of features, it seems to me—it would not just modify the word "photography"; it would have to conform to the various noun and verb forms; and, most importantly, it can't be perjorative or derogatory—it would have to be something that its practitioners would be proud to call it, proud to identify themselves with.
And please don't take the teenager's plaint...yes, I know it doesn't matter what we decide, I know we'll never make it stick, etc.
I'm just interested to hear what you'd call it.
___________________
Mike
Well, hm, the older stuff was really sort of sloshing chemicals and light around with a surprisingly effective and somewhat deterministic result. The newer breaks up a scene or view into dots, increasingly tiny, now almost invisible in the high-end, individually manipulatable, dots.
Dotography
Posted by: Dave Fultz | Friday, 07 December 2007 at 09:56 PM
Phart?
Posted by: Stuart | Friday, 07 December 2007 at 10:10 PM
fauxtography
Posted by: Shelley | Friday, 07 December 2007 at 10:38 PM
among creative types, "potatochop" is slang for a photoshopped image file.
Posted by: aizan | Friday, 07 December 2007 at 11:06 PM
I agree with Bob Wong's comment/response above regarding reality and photos. I wonder why it's so important for people to separate this "realist artist photography" (sort of borrowed the term from the Newsweek article)
from anything digital? Are realist artist photos more valid than anything else, do they hold a higher aesthetic value? Are images of the "Found view" type just better?
This game sounds similar to the idea behind Foundview (which was abandoned), only in a different way? I would say, or ask, what to call "realistic artistic photography" instead, and let those that practice digital imaging come up with a definition or manifesto. There is a website called TrustImage, a nonfiction label for photographs that might apply to this, but the website is down until December 15th.
Sorry for so many questions in my reply - In the spirit of your question, I would suggest "Pictorialism" or maybe "Pictorialsim Nouveau".
Wikipedia describes Pictorialism: "Pictorialism largely subscribed to the idea that art photography needed to emulate the painting and etching of the time..."
and art nouveau: "art nouveau was broad based enough to encompass a whole lifestyle: It was possible to live in an art nouveau house with art nouveau furniture, silverware, crockery, etc."
In the digitally enhanced world we live today, these could loosely apply to the work now described as photomanipuation.
(hope I don't come across as crass or disrepsctful - though I may not agree with all I see or read on the site, thanks for sharing it all - it a great learning tool.)
Posted by: Jerry Hazard | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 02:51 AM
"Are realist artist photos more valid than anything else, do they hold a higher aesthetic value? Are images of the "Found view" type just better?"
Well...yes.
I think so. To me, the only thing that is interesting about photographs is their connection to the world. Regardless of receiving medium--film, sensor, whatever--a photograph which respects the lens image such that it may contain evidence about the world of appearances is potentially authentic, factual, truthful, whatever you want to call it, and one which doesn't, isn't. Anyone who wants to disagree with me (and a lot of my readers apparently do) is perfectly welcome to do so, but I think they're missing the boat. Photographs aren't reality, obviously, but they have a connection to reality, like a plaster cast of a bearprint has a connection to the bear. You have to be able to detect the pretext in the object, but, with some training, that's possible. Photographs which have that "slap of truth" are the ones that can have power. The rest are just eyewash.
Mike J.
Posted by: Mike | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 03:24 AM
So, Mike, you are essentially saying that either
- photography is not Art [as an expression of an artists perspective], or
- any work of Art which does not conform to your perception of the world, that is that does not connect to the real world the way you presume it has to be, is BS.
As somone who does know a lot about the history of photography you express here [in this thread] a rather narrow viewpoint. Or do you simply not like modern and postmodern art?
The result of technical imaging [as in camera+film or electronic sensor] can be documentary, [hyper-]realistic, abstract, surrealist, geometric etc. The connection to the real world is always given in and through the human having conceived the final result, [s]he does not necessarily have to be the one pushing the button.
Common sense will usually guide the viewer as to how to categoriese a picture. Does it exhibit typical photographic charactzeristics, then it will most likely be called 'photograph'. Does it look more like a painting, well, then so be it named. That's how the term 'photorelistic' came into being, to denote paintings looking uncannily like photographs while still showing obvious signs of painting.
As I wrote previously, I do not see any need to find a new term, we have enough old words to use, and they are used by humans. I agree with Sir Karl Popper that discussions on semantics usually are a sign of a deeper problem to be solved. But in this case, as you wrote yourself, it's just a game, a superficial one at that.
Posted by: Dierk | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 04:38 AM
"Photography" for the acquisition of the image: film or sensor makes no difference, it's always a (static) frame of reality*.
"Print" for the final object (silver-, inkjet-, c-, offset-... whatever; digital frame too: it is and has been photography the dia projection too, ain't it [the medium is not the message]..
*Will we agree it's not truly objective? It's there, but anyone sees it differently, or sees different parts of it.
It's my view, so what's left? The treatment.
The treatment is what lets you *print* your perceived (part of) reality. And let others see what you see.
Where am I going? Technical resources has always been exploited to their limits. And these limits have been going and are going waaaay far.
Now, think of abstract: always been there. It was photography and it is. If I say it's photography, you have to believe I got an original through a lens (or hole) on a light sensitive surface. This is the unique condition. Otherwise, I'm a liar...
Well... Don't we look at "Rayographys" as photography? I'm going to contradict myself... No lens involved...
No, wait a minute: a light sensitive surface is involved anyway.
I'll call photography any kind of art/representation that involves a light-sensitive surface in the process.
No, wait: perhaps a photoshop file printed with a lambda is not photography...
Lost...
Posted by: Alessandro | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 05:25 AM
"Photographs aren't reality, obviously, but they have a connection to reality, like a plaster cast of a bearprint has a connection to the bear."
Nice metaphor, Mike.
But, if photographs aren't reality, doesn't that subvert your argument?
Besides, what about the "reality" of the imagination? The imagination isn't real either?
Posted by: Player | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 05:53 AM
Maybe you should turn the game around. Your demands on photography having a close relationship to the world of appearances, are far more stringent than used to be necessary to define photography as being different from image creation.
So I propose for 'your' kind of photography: Available Reality Photography.
Posted by: robert55 | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 05:56 AM
To Max:
Well... some compact cameras allow photoshop style edits to me made as the photo is taken, Canon's "My Colours" in their Point and Shoot Digitals, can alter bokeh into shapes, selectively make the photo monochrome except for one colour among other heavy photomanipulation options...
And "Picture Styles" in the EOS dSLR range can be set by users to heavily change the colours in the photo as it is taken... want to make things look like faded photos, change blue twilight skies turn a surrealistic purple , you can do it, all while taking photos, no photoshop necessary. http://web.canon.jp/imaging/picturestyle/file/index.html
Posted by: Joey | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 06:12 AM
Mike,
Your example "... a plaster cast of a bearprint has a connection to the bear" is not good (though your teeth are still sharp).
That illustration is closer to what I make (composite images; your worst nightmare) than to what you are after. From a hole in the ground, you are making a solid form which you will define as the foot of a bear (not a hole in the ground).
A better analogy might be a fingerprint. A photographic plate is the paper onto which time's flesh is pressed to make its fingerprint.
-Julie
Posted by: Julie Heyward | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 06:25 AM
Mike,
Many folks who support your views often seem to be promoting a traditional process, rather than results. With respect, I would be interested in knowing where long exposures, fisheyes, and five stops of grad filters fit into your - what shall I call it? - preferences.
Posted by: Carl Root | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 07:47 AM
Christography.
Because I'm sure others care for that about as much as I care for the idea that it's not photography.
Chris :)
Posted by: Chris | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 07:48 AM
"To me, the only thing that is interesting about photographs is their connection to the world." Mike J
I agree. When I took slides they captured how the world connected with my lens. But now digital editing allows me to also show my connection to the world. If my lens sees a barbed wire fence and I never noticed it, I can take it out. The final image is an I-in-the-world image - it's more of a dialog where the reality of the world and my response meet. Is this emotionography?
Posted by: John Geesink | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 08:36 AM
"...you are essentially saying that either - photography is not Art [as an expression of an artists perspective], or - any work of Art which does not conform to your perception of the world, that is that does not connect to the real world the way you presume it has to be, is BS."
Dierk,
I am NOT saying that, essentially or otherwise. I am saying my perception of the world doesn't have much to do with it. The world, and the camera's view of it, is what it has to do with. Most of the legitimate advances in photographic aesthetics have been concerned with successively greater acceptance of camera vision--how the camera shows the way things are--often in contradistinction to our perception of the world, or the way we want the world to be.
I have to chuckle when you say "does it exhibit typical photographic characteristics," "does it look like a painting," etc. How exactly did we ever find out what a photograph looks like? By having camera vision forced on us, that's how. Photography has taught us what a photograph looks like, not the opposite, which in this case would be us forcing our "vision" on the world, like a bunch of little Renaissance painters.
Mike J.
Posted by: Mike | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 09:06 AM
"Nice metaphor, Mike."
It's not mine. It's a famous argument from art criticism, I think by E. H. Gombrich (my memory is getting to be like Swiss cheese...).
Mike J.
Posted by: Mike | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 09:15 AM
"From a hole in the ground, you are making a solid form which you will define as the foot of a bear (not a hole in the ground)."
Julie,
No! No one mistakes the foorprint for the bear, or the cast of the footprint for the bear's foot. Except perhaps Oliver Sachs' man who mistook his wife for a hat (about a man who confused objects with what covered them, a rare mental defect. He called a hand a glove, for instance). It merely replicates the bear foot, reports on it. But it does have a retrievable connection to the actual foot. For instance, you can measure the bear's foot from the plaster cast.
Mike J.
Posted by: Mike | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 09:19 AM
Fauxtography (tm)
Posted by: Guy Batey | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 10:39 AM
some more words to play with...
Funtography
Photofantasy
Digital Imagination
Photopainting
Photothingy
Photoshake
Artiphact
Photosome
Photoillusion
Photospell
Picturette
Transphoto
Posted by: Clara | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 12:09 PM
and ...
Photocraft
Posted by: Clara | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 12:34 PM
Mike, I'm not sure if anybody else suggested this; after reading the first 20 or so posts of people insisting their digitized and/or fantized version of the truth be called photography I just skipped to the end to leave the comment.
These answers to your question are actually from a chapter on ethics in photography in a National Geographic book. The book suggests to use either 'photo illustration' or 'digital illustration', depending on how the illustration was created.
Posted by: Nick | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 02:14 PM
Witchcraft
Posted by: charlie d | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 04:43 PM
Mike,
Kudos for a subject that has many of us thinking and discussing here.
In an earlier comment, you answered someone's questions of:
"Are realist artist photos more valid than anything else, do they hold a higher aesthetic value? Are images of the "Found view" type just better?"
[Well...yes.
I think so. To me, the only thing that is interesting about photographs is their connection to the world. Regardless of receiving medium--film, sensor, whatever--a photograph which respects the lens image such that it may contain evidence about the world of appearances is potentially authentic, factual, truthful, whatever you want to call it, and one which doesn't, isn't. ]
I would like to agree about the "connection to the world" and somehow it resonates with me, BUT when I look at the work of Jerry Uelsmann in the May/June 2007 issue of CAMERA Arts magazine, I am left confused.
Certainly his pictures (photographs?) are composed of elements that connect with the world and contain evidence about the world of appearances, yet his work certainly speaks of fantasy or the images from inside of one's mind and bears little resemblance to the photographs of Edward Weston or Dorthea Lange.
I find Uelsmann's work powerful and I consider it to be photography. How do you define it?
I was amazed to read that his compositions are created in a traditional darkroom. Although all of the elements appear to be of the realm of our world, the images as a whole are otherworldly.
I personally think the following:
- If Photography truly means "writing with light," it doesn't really matter whether the artist is using a 35mm Leica, a DSLR and Photoshop, Polaroid transfers, or a view camera and doing extensive manipulation in the darkroom -- it's still Photography.
- What Newsweek, newspapers, and other MSM voices are having a conniption about is that the ease of using digital imaging to alter and manipulate images is causing the general public to ask, "is what I'm being fed by the media REALITY or is it a manipulation of what I perceive to be reality?" This is a good thing given that too many Americans still believe that what they see on TeeVee or read in the papers is "reality" or the truth.
For most of us that regularly enjoy your blog, we know that photography is never REALITY, and is only as close to reality as the photographer decides to portray it.
I'd love to see John Sexton take some of Ansel Adams iconic negatives and print them "straight" and also the way that he knew/saw Ansel printed them, and display them side by side - maybe then those not familiar with the actual process of developing and printing in a traditional darkroom will abandon their misnomer that film photography is any more "real" than digital photography.
- At the end of the day, it is all Art. Good art, bad art, it is still Art - using one's skill to create an asthetic result.
Posted by: Craig | Sunday, 09 December 2007 at 12:54 AM
Mike,
"The world, and the camera's view of it, is what it has to do with."
Since you started a thread on semantics: How can a camera, a technological object to collect light [ray or globule property does not matter at the size level we are talking about] have a 'view'. Isn't 'view', as we usally use the term, confined to cgnisant beings? A camera can only catch what we define as a view.
"Most of the legitimate advances in photographic aesthetics have been concerned with successively greater acceptance of camera vision--how the camera shows the way things are--often in contradistinction to our perception of the world, or the way we want the world to be."
Just as painters did this when leaving realistic [let alone authentic] styles behind. Strangely I rarely hear painters disucss their bruches, their canvases or the meaning of the term 'painting'. The latter has been done to death by every single generation of critics, whenever they tried to find definitions of 'painting' or 'Art' including what they likedand excluding waht they detested.
"I have to chuckle when you say "does it exhibit typical photographic characteristics," "does it look like a painting," etc. How exactly did we ever find out what a photograph looks like?"
You conveniently leave out my 'common sense' part of this. As some US judge once famously said: 'I recognise it when I see it.'
The defining difference between photography and painting is mere technological one, that's how we recognise what is what. That does not mean - aren't you a philosophy major yourself? - there may not be overlaps or problematic cases at the limits of the set.
"Photography has taught us what a photograph looks like"
Did I deny that anywhere? Would surprise me since I usually use evolutionary and continuum arguments. The only difference I see between your statement and mine is a small letter, 'y'; I'd say 'Photographs taught us what a photograph looks like'.
But you did not ask about photography, you asked about photographs used as the basis for something considerable different. Since this end result is most often - even in advertising where it is done most - a view of the world as perceived/conceived by the manipulator, how does that differentiate itself from your definition of photography?
As somebody suggested, what about b/w photography, isn't that a manipulation of the world as it stands large enough to render the resulting image as not a photograph?
PS: Since we can only realistically evaluate our own, human, perceptions, the argument, 'we show the world as it is for a dog*, cat, bee etc.' is hogwash.
*Dogs actually use mainly their nose to perceive the world, just as bats use sub-sonar waves.
Posted by: Dierk | Sunday, 09 December 2007 at 04:23 AM
Nick,
what's a "digitized version of the truth"? Something really different from a solarized contrasted dodged burnt tinted masked ... version of the truth?
Are you suggesting "digital=fake" cause it's just technically easier do create a fake?
Perhaps "The truth" is black and white???
I could agree with NG's ethics, but we have to agree that an illustration is everything, from photo to comics. And that computers and SWs are just tools as tools are cameras and darkroom accessories.
I do digital photography, as opposed to argentic photography, cause my camera has a sensor instead of film. I print with a digital/chemical workflow as opposed to an all chemical workflow (yes inks are chemical, "digital print" is an oxymoron, it's false).
And I show my pictures on a monitor, through the internet too (as I used to show my slides on a screen).
We can't imply that technological developement changes names to things.
Otherwise, if you use a 35mm film you are not taking photographs: that was a film made for movies. You are cheating, you can get 36 shots where a "real photographer" gets one only.
But again, I break the premises: till there are people snobbing the digital workflow claiming it is diminutive of "real photography", I can't be proud of what I am doing! Otherwise, "digital photography", in brief "photography" is what I'm doing.
The fact I am not so good at it is a different story... :-)
Posted by: Alessandro | Sunday, 09 December 2007 at 07:01 AM
"Strangely I rarely hear painters disucss their bruches, their canvases or the meaning of the term 'painting'. The latter has been done to death by every single generation of critics..."
Dierk,
Don't those two sentences directly contradict each other? Or are you just saying you don't read art criticism?
Mike J.
P.S. As another poster pointed out not long ago, the phrase "painters don't discuss brushes" is a canard. Painters do discuss their equipment and materials.
Posted by: Mike | Sunday, 09 December 2007 at 11:03 AM
Allesandro, sorry if I wasn't clear. Digital or analog photography makes no difference to me, it's just capturing light in a different manner. It's what is done afterwards, be it digital or darkroom, where a photograph, in my opinion, can cease to be a photograph and become a photo illustration or digital illustration, or whatever you won't to call it.
I don't get the fuss really...
Posted by: Nick | Sunday, 09 December 2007 at 01:20 PM
Many of the suggestions explicitly sound digital -- which is very much not what's wanted, I don't think. Because if the word takes off at all, it's as likely as not to get attached to all digital photography. And that's exactly the opposite of what you want as I understand it; you're actually looking for a distinction between "photographs" as works that 'respect the image' from the lens, vs. for images based on photographs which are essentially original crations, simply using "photographs" as some of their raw material.
I like "photohack", because it fits both with the computer-hacker usage of "hack" and the slang term for cutting roughly.
I also like "art"; beyond that, long descriptions seem more suitable than precisely-defined short names. "Oil on canvas" is useful as a label on a work in a museum, but most viewers don't care if it's oil on canvas or acrylic on board, it's a "painting" either way.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Sunday, 09 December 2007 at 06:15 PM
"Netsy" - an abbreviated term derived from "Networked Digital Systems Photographic Imaging", a formal designation of the early 21st century (see also The Rise of 'Digital Photography', WikiHoloPedia presentation)
Posted by: Dirk | Sunday, 09 December 2007 at 11:27 PM
How about some more possible names:
Imagipation (from image + emancipation)
Phototransforms (from photo + transformations)
Alterography (from alter + photography), not to be confused with Altarography (wedding photography!)
Irv
Posted by: Autocord | Monday, 10 December 2007 at 12:23 AM
"Don't those two sentences directly contradict each other?"
Read carefully. The first of my sentences talks about the creative force itself, the painter, the second sentence talks about the critics of those. It is a statement about how the world can be divided binary - into those who do and those who know better. The latter reside, together with phone cleaners and accountants, in Ark B to prepare new worlds for all the useful people in the other two spaceships.*
*Curiously they never followed, only B was launched.
Posted by: Dierk | Monday, 10 December 2007 at 04:11 AM
false photography.
Posted by: tom | Monday, 10 December 2007 at 05:04 AM
1) Your phrase "respect the lens image" makes a false distinction. You yourself have written about how different lenses produce different interpretations of the same subject.
2) As another commenter pointed out, even a black and white film image doesn't "respect the lens image". I'm startled to see color on the ground glass of my old Crown Graphic every time I open it up.
3) Well, okay, digitography is simple and clear, and sounds like a actual English word. Unlike "bokeh".
Posted by: Luke Smith | Monday, 10 December 2007 at 08:52 AM
Bokeh is a Japanese word.
Mike J.
Posted by: Mike | Monday, 10 December 2007 at 09:20 AM
How about "Electographer"?
Posted by: Dave | Friday, 08 February 2008 at 11:31 AM
Hmmm, just stumbled upon this conversation. I do have a soft-spot for the use of the term "digiography" as that is and has been the name of my company for the last few year. I tired to come up with a more classic photographic name for my studio, but I think photography didn't quite explain what I did when I manipulated images into things that don't truly exist.
I must admit though, people have a real problem when contacting me with the pronunciation of digiography but less so the concept of combining photography and digital editing.
Posted by: Grant J. | Saturday, 15 November 2008 at 12:26 AM