Anther Luminous Landscape Pronouncement!

Every so often Mike gives some pronouncement of the state of things photographic. Today he hosts an article by Bernard Languiller that paints a picture of virtual creative worlds sans fine Art Prints!

Bernard Languiller said:

We have been using cameras for a century to picture our world. Although the technical process has changed a lot in the past 10 years, photographers still pretty much do the same thing. We find an exciting subject, carry out some neuronal magic in a fraction of a second with more or less talent and store the resulting visual content on a medium. Film or digital, the idea appears to have remained the same.................

Photography as we have known it, and fine art photography in particular, has only just started a very profound transformation. The seemingly innocent move from film to digital sensors did trigger an irreversible chain of fundamental paradigm shifts that we are only starting to understand........

Out of those many foreseeable consequences, the one that I find most disturbing is the death of Paper.

That phenomenon is already affecting various media, some of them related to photography. I believe that it will extend soon into areas some of us might not have anticipated yet, offering exciting new possibilities but also raising new questions.

Let’s project ourselves a few years ahead in time..........

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Read the entire article in Luminous Landscape, here.

So do you agree that we are at the cusp of the death of physically printed fine art?

Asher

Wedding Market

Well, in the wedding market, people are asking for digital files. Oh, there are still albums to buy but people do their own frequently, an occasional desk frame. More often there are slideshows on the desktops or i-phone. And video stills are even gaining popularity.

That said, I had some prints hanging around the office, unmatted and unframed, and one of my clients bought one. There is still a need for art on the walls, images on desktops...but for how long?

Paper won't die out entirely. Gosh, if it did and something dreadful happened, we could be in a new Dark Ages! Most businesses now lack manual solutions to things if their computers fail. I have seen so many problems with my wife's computers losing data that I don't use computers for my business data. I keep physical copies of each letter, a physical receipt book, write bookings in a physical diary and duplicate into an office diary that goes into a fire safe at the end of the day.

Some people like the latest technology - LCD screens all over their walls. Others like antiques around them. I don't think paper will vanish. Look at photography - there are still people making Daguerrotypes over 150 years since that process was rendered obsolete! Leica recently sold a pinhole camera. Film is not dead nor dying although it has become an art form.

I read Bernard's rather rough micro-thesis today and offered a brief opinion on the LL forums, which I'll repeat and expand slightly here.

The print is, and will indefinitely remain, the ultimate presentation medium for photography. Electronic presentation media (i.e. the Internet, "fine art panels" (as Bernard called them), lcd photo frames, projections, et.al.) are unquestionably popular and important for advertising, mass promotions, family snap sharing, etc. But such presentations are as ephemeral as steam. Only prints have lasting value and, from a financial perspective, are investable.

EDIT:
I might add a comment concerning luminous -vs- reflected media, a subsidiary part of Bernard's thesis. While it is absolutely true that luminous presentations (i.e. light boxes, flat electronic screens) can be vivid it is also true that they are extremely tiring to view. If, for example, you have a chance to see some of Jeff Wall's enormous light box images I think you'll agree that you wouldn't want to have them in your field of vision for an extended time

Ken Tanaka said:

I read Bernard's rather rough micro-thesis today and offered a brief opinion on the LL forums, which I'll repeat and expand slightly here.

The print is, and will indefinitely remain, the ultimate presentation medium for photography. Electronic presentation media (i.e. the Internet, "fine art panels" (as Bernard called them), lcd photo frames, projections, et.al.) are unquestionably popular and important for advertising, mass promotions, family snap sharing, etc. But such presentations are as ephemeral as steam. Only prints have lasting value and, from a financial perspective, are investable.

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Ken,

Perhaps it's a rationalization or an escapist attitude to the tide of change, but I really feel that the fine print will be valued just as classical music has survived rock and roll and rap. The masses grow each day and can afford to spend time and money on being entertained. So there's a massive market, just as for the canned beans, Cambell's Soup and the Big Mac™ and other fast food marvels of the last 100 years have not killed appreciation of fine food.

I believe people will cherish the physicality and the fragility of the fine print, as it is more individual and intimate than that found in flat shiny super detail, any time, on the internet.

Asher

That is of course until the next revolution comes where images will stop to have any physical representation at all. Streamed directly to our brains. By then the need for capturing devices will be mostly gone and all images will be virtually computed... Reality itself might then become a thing of the past…

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Yeah, we are on our way in deed to make Reality something that can be "tuned" at the push of a button. We are not that far away from that scenario in my opinion, while pictures are not streamed directly to our brains due to lack of technology, otherwise Playstation, Fox News and others would happily provide that, I consider us in Kindergarden when it comes to manipulation of Reality perception, and beyond doubts they are working hard to get it better.

Did you ever have a chance to speak to a "Second life" junkiee who spends 10 hours or more a day in that computer generated world? Do it, you might be suprised.

Apart from that, when we reach the time of ProPhoto++ RGB devices, and later down the road technology that utilizes holographic display devices to project the picture around the observer, of course this would include microparticle dispensers that support the sense of smelling, we may find ourselves living behind walls.

Walls.... Doh?

Yup, the rest of the world continued to live under circumstances of war and starvation, and the endless streams of those who try to reach the walls in their relentless attempts to flee the humanitarian catastrophy constantly increased, so the rich world had no chance but to build walls, again.

Behind these walls it is against etiquette to speak of what is going on outside of the walls. It is socially inaccpetable and since generations those living inside were sheltered from the human tragedies outside.

Science Fiction?

Not really, just that these walls are not of physical nature all the time, some are of course, but most of them are walls that exist in our brains already, the biggest of all is called ignorance.

But what about prints?

The masses grow each day and can afford to spend time and money on being entertained.

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Paper as we know it has long ceased to exist, nano technology enables us to reuse thin data foils over and over again. Oh, language btw has undergone a transformation, there is only one language left behind the walls, its has been introduced by the 2067 Patriot Act and does not have Past Tense included in the grammatical structure, it consists of 650 vocabularies only and is the only language allowed to speak. Writing has been banned with the same Patriot Act from 2067 as there is no need for written text anymore, there are no more questions left to be asked. We solved it all, the universe has been explained and God is dead.

Crystal Ball OFF.
Back to printing some images on my old Epson 4000.

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Yup!

P.S.

A super slide show going from Ansel Adams to Alain Briot without having to visit the attic to switch frames.

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Who is Ansel Adams?

Asher Kelman said:

Every so often Mike gives some pronouncement of the state of things photographic. Today he hosts an article by Bernard Languiller that paints a picture of virtual creative worlds sans fine Art Prints!



Read the entire article in Luminous Landscape, here.

So do you agree that we are at the cusp of the death of physically printed fine art?

Asher

Click to expand...

I confess to a rather quick scan than a long thoughtful read. Heck, I can't wait. Just think what a platinum palladium print on fine rag paper from an original (insert favorite format and size here like 61/2" X 8 1/2") negative will be worth 5 years after this transformation is complete.

Georg Baumann brings up a very interesting and pertinent point when he says "Did you ever have a chance to speak to a "Second life" junkiee who spends 10 hours or more a day in that computer generated world? Do it, you might be suprised."

Ask the same question to different sections of the population and you'll find that most will give entirely different answers which can quickly become confusing as people try to make sense of them and try to come to a happy medium that everybody agrees with. It's like politics and the elections - on the ballot paper you get the chance to vote for X, Y or Z. There is no option like "X for foreign policy, Y for home policy and Z for control of the treasury". Thus you have to choose the least of 3 poor choices, knowing that they'll only ever be 1/3rd capable of doing their job well.

I used to know some internet addicts and they lived in a very surreal world, believing implicitly everything that was advertised on TV and what was said in internet forums. The interesting thing was that such people were utterly worthless as a market as none of them actually had any money as most had dead-end jobs and spent every penny on burgers and the internet.

The future means different things to different people. As regards the future, it looks very interesting and the only thing I can be certain of is that there will be change.

The word from Microsoft is that Windows is dead. Midora is the new OS and will be run along the line of computer networks of old. Data will be stored locally or on your favourite data-space provider. Software will all be browser-accessed and not stored on your own machine. The big question is whether viruses will be effectively eliminated as everything goes online including online email access?

Now if that becomes the case with data being stored in huge data centres (where incidentally it's easier for the government to browse your files or for terrorists to cause problems or blackmailers, hackers etc), will paper cease to be relevant?

At the moment, I prefer paper because my computer screen is not big enough to show a complete page. Having said that I saw a very nice HP in Sams that had a very large touch-sensitive screen. That was nice but I'll also point out that my PDA (a Palm Zire 31) has definite trackmarks on the screen. The prayer books in churches have well-thumbed pages and sometimes fall apart but are usually decades old. I can't imagine my PDA lasting many more years (I don't use it seriously as it crashes too often).

I think there will always be a place for paper. I am so glad that paper exists. I had a good friend in Brazil who died about 10 years ago. All I have left of her is the letters she wrote to me. Sure - I saved her emails but the hand-written letters mean so much more and convey so much more emotion and information about her personality. The computer messages are interesting but not as emotionally charged nor as indicative of personality.

I wonder whether junkmail will continue if people go over mostly to computer delivery of information. Of course, the veracity of computer information is less than that of newspapers - which aren't that accurate anyway. I have personal experience of inaccurate reporting with reporters saying I'd said things that I never uttered.