I read an interesting article by Erwin Puts on his Leica page today. Kind of a combination reflection/sorrow/projection article about the state of photography. Without commenting on his thoughts, or passing on my feelings, I thought some photobuffs and might enjoy reading the article:
lol That was my first reaction. But I think neither, I think as you read it fully he he more lamenting what he feels is the inevitable death of traditional photography due to changes in cultural norms. He is referring to it more as a sad part of evolution by my take......
This is interesting. I did not quote correctly above and have tried three time to delete it. No luck it's still there.
While my "quote" is incorrect it captures the essense of what the author is saying.
While my qualifications are much less than the writer of the article -- I just can't agree at all with the premise.
Photography is ALL about using light and capture of the image. The photographer will see the image he wants and the camera is just a tool to get this done. OK the mechanics of actually capturing the image have changed but the basic principles are still valid.
I can't see people saying that music died as soon as instruments were invented to accompany the voice which is effectively what the article is saying.
Talking of art -- nobody said that it died as soon as decent paint, canvas and pigments were discovered -- otherwise we'd still be writing on cave walls.
I hope the writer of that article just takes a trip to the Louvre in Paris or has a look at the Sistine Chapel and then says it's not art because the images were painted rather than using a piece of wood dipped in mud on a rock -- and a lot of these artists were, if you read the biographies, often pilloried for using the newest techniques available at the time rather than the more traditional approaches.
I suppose these are the same sort of people who call a pile of dirty bricks sitting in the middle of an art gallery as "Wonderful modern art".
Anyway IMO -- Utter tosh or mega BS.
Antbody ever heard of a "Grade B a$$h$$e" -- doesn't even merit being calld a grade A one.
Perhaps it's his foresight of the death of Leica that he laments...
Erwin Puts....is.
"...The mental state of the photographer then has to be totally different. The famous pre-visualisation of Ansel Adams and the importance of having a photographers eye in order to see the scene photographically are redundant. The switch from a filmbased camera to a digital camera is a fundamental change in the mental state of the photographer and style of picture taking...
...The basic act of a digital photographer is this and you can observe it everywhere on this globe: the photographer looks not through the viewfinder but at the display, takes the picture and waits to examine the result and if he is in company, shares that result with the rest. And in many cases, throws away the image as the act of sharing it momentarily is the final stage of most digital pictures...
...This mental state is the core of good photography in the classical (film based) way. And you can evoke that state because of the tools and their inherent qualities...
...The idea that you can take digital pictures with the mentality and approach of the filmbased style of photography is as grotesk as trying to drive a modern racing car with the mental state of handling a steam engine. Going digital implies saying goodbye to the 20th century art of photography and will imply the death of photography as we know it . Does it also imply the death of the Leica camera as we know it?......Show more →
I'd say his statements and attitude indicate a person who will not embrace digital any time soon (being a Leica-guy, there's a surprise). His assertion that shooting digitally automatically and fundamentally changes how a person shoots (he goes into detail about this) is pure c-r-a-p.
Mr. Puts's arguments just don't hold up. Many of his bugaboos about digital imaging have been a part of film photography for ages.
In a nutshell, Puts doesn't approve of the speed and volume of material you can gather digitally. For example, he laments the passage of the photographer's single, "decisive moment" in capturing an image. But that's bogus. Bulk-loaded film and high-speed rewind have been around for decades. And there's really not much difference between straining with a magnifier over stacks of contact sheets and zipping through digital images stored in the camera, except that the latter is easier. Puts also moans about the virtual nature of digital imaging. True, you can do more with PhotoShop than you could with an air brush, but both alter the original image.
In the articles from the link Bob posted above, Meneer Puts insultingly dismisses digital photographers. Incredible self-absorption has apparently blinded him to the emotional power of contemporary photography.
IMHO, the self-absorbed Meneer Puts prefers to declare himself part of a bygone era (one that exists more in his mind than reality), rather than learn how to use new tools.
Before bloviating further, Puts should spend some time studying the wealth of photographic art, both film and digital, to be found on this website.
I think I knew better, but I went there and read it anyway...which makes me the dumb guy. But at least I know how to spell putz. This essay is so full of contradiction and irrelevancies it's beyond criticism; too bad, because the ways in which digital might change or has changed the art form would make good debate.
Kyle - it might depend on who was doing the piling.
And what about the time impact of digital photography and the internet? When something in the world happens it's just moments before it appears on a news service website. It sure beats waiting for the paper to be delivered the next morning.
We are probably a biased audience for an article such as this. While I think much of what he writes is typical of your average Leica snot, some of what he says makes sense. Keep in mind that he focuses a great deal on the mindset of Henri Cartier Bresson, who had a very particular view of what image capture really meant. He is lamenting the death of this type of photography, because the instant review feature of digital cameras changes your mindset as a photographer. He does not necessarily bemoan the change in mindset, but he states that digital photography DOES change the way we pursue the image. With that I definitely agree.
This change does not necessarily mean that we know less about traditional technique, but it DOES manifest itself in the way many (or at least I) capture images, and the comfort with which I pursue it. When shooting digital, I meter for different values, and sometimes will take multiple compositional and exposure approaches. I would do that with film too, but digital gives me the comfort of being able to check my exposure and make sure that I got what I needed before I leave the site. I also shoot while keeping my post processing possibilities very much in mind.
The author's notion that the decisive moment is no longer decisive though, is pure bunk. Whether your shutter opens up to a photosensor or a photosensitive emulsion, the moment is the same. You choose to fix the shadows in different ways.
Eh. So many Leica users are snobs. What are you going to do?
I disagree that it's the death of photography. It's the death of film photography as a business tool, like photography pretty much killed the portrait painting industry a little over 100 years ago. Then, liberating painting from the burden of having to be a commercially lucrative pursuit only strengthened it as an art form. Likewise, now and in the near future digital capture will liberate film photography from having to be a day-to-day tool in the pursuit of business. It will now be free to blossom as an art form. It's not a dark demise -- it's a bright new beginning!
While I don't agree with the writer's view, I do understand his lament...self-absorbed as it is. I think, in general, there is this misplaced fear regarding digital from many an "old-school" type of photographer. Without coming right out in saying it, there seems to be a fear that the "great unwashed" will gain easy access to techniques that took them years to master in the dark room (e.g., burning and dodging to many folks are just two funny named controls in Photoshop). And further, that with these "wizard's secrets" in hand, the masses will somehow pervert the art form...the art form they worship and also to which they feel they have a vested entitlement.
My own feeling is that care needs to be exercised by these folks or their own contributions will stand the chance at becoming passé, or perhaps even irrelevant.
To sum up my argument, because I don't wish to retype my thoughts ...
He is confusing two issues ... the development of a new form of communication with the creation of art. Today, the digital camera, in either a P&S traditional style, or in cell phones, etc allow people to communicate something they saw to an infinite number of people easily and without effort. He sees this as crushing photography as we know it.
However, his argumet does not hold for the second issue. If his argument were true, then we would all have been using video recorders (film based and digital) for decades and just choosing the frame we like most).
He may also be worried about something else. As photography becomes more accessible to those less advantaged and the total cost and effort to make high quality images to hang on ones wall becomes less, the need to obtain art from others in some ways is lessened. However, the thing that will maintain the value of the photographer in each of us (which we can sell), is the ability to find a unique and/or different perspective, an unseen situation.
I got my first camera - a Kodak Brownie - when I was eight (1947) In the years since, I have always had at least one camera, and more to the point, I don't think I have ever been acquainted with a family that didn't have at least one camera. The idea that relatively expensive digital cameras and computers makes photography more available to the disadvantaged doesn't seem to hold up. It has been available for a very long time. Eventually, the distribution-communication side of it will change things, but I doubt that it will threaten 'real photography'...
