On Solid Ground (The New New Monkey Business)

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(Just in case you're wondering: No Drone, Phone or Clone)

“. . . but that’s why we’re photographers. We’re preservationists by nature. We take pictures to stop time and to commit moments to eternity. Human nature made tangible.”

Ben Ryder (Ed Harris) Kodachrome.

Friend and longtime reader (and great photographer and printer) Omar Özenir recently said something in a comment to me (on one of his posts) that struck home - I'm sure he won't mind if I quote him:

"Over at Photrio someone recommended the name "Promptography" for AI-photography, which I find quite apt. But God knows where this will all lead. I've read about a kickstarter camera that will apply AI at the taking stage, and not in the way that the iPhone does it with it's computational algorithms (I hate those iPhone clouds . . . afaik it started with the iPhone 13 . . . clouds get by default a contrast boost), but for example you take a picture that contains a glass full with liquid and you can order the camera/AI to render it as an empty glass! In my view there has to be a backlash to all this shit, a return to some kind of analogue engagement."

Before I go any further, you should really subscribe to Omar's blog 'Intermittent Agitation' - you can find it here:

https://omozfot.blogspot.com/

Anyway, as is always the case with me, I tend to let stuff distill within and then write.

It occured to me (in line with Omar's comment and the Ed Harris quote at the top of the page) that a hobby has largely been rendered null and void by technology. 

Granted, you can say the same thing happened in the transitioning from wet plate to 'dry' film; from straight renditions of scenes to multiple exposures and composite printing and photograms; from 'traditional' darkroom printing to photoshop, but to my mind, the move from human-based interaction with a scene/subject/moment to machine-prompt "perfection" before anything (or even after something does) happen(s) kind of misses the whole point. 

To-wit:

If everything is "perfect" all the time (even before you've started) why continue?

Perfection can come in many forms.

Decades back, after years of struggling with not-bad but not brill guitars, I came into some money and ordered a custom-made Paul Reed Smith Custom 24, direct from the old factory. 

None of this whammy bar stuff for me - I was a traditionalist and only wanted a tune-o-matic bridge and stop tailpiece a la A Les Paul. 

And I got it in spades, with an exquisite guitar (all Honduran Mahogany, Tiger-stripe Maple and Brazilian Rosewood) that sang like a bird, played like a dream and was, in short, utter perfection. 

I played it night and day. 

And then a strange thing occurred. 

In roughly 1995 I stopped playing entirely and didn't actually play my guitar again until required to (to teach someone) in the early/mid 2000's. 

Now obviously life-circumstances came into play (we had a young family, work, houses to deal with etc etc) but I've often thought about that, and actually came to the conclusion that skill-wise and sonically (and especially on the art-interface [the guitar]) there was nowhere else to go. 

I'd reached GUITAR NIRVANA. 

I couldn't play any better or faster (this was early technical metal for want of a better term); my band had fallen apart when the singer left and I had got to a point where things were no longer a struggle and actually seemed rather pointless.

And you know what folks - I almost feel the same thing is happening again, but on a far broader scale than a wee guy in a room shredding like there was no tomorrow. 

If you can produce "perfection" just like that, why waste your time in search of it?

Why not just describe to your Ai that you would like a seaside scene in the manner of Martin Parr; or a wondrous landscape from the deep wilds like Ansel; or maybe something a bit quirkier, how about a set of Parisian street scenes a la Lee Friedlander ? 

Why not go the whole hog and produce an entirely new set of lost Viv Maier prints?

Do you get my drift? 

There's no longer any empetus to get out there and try and find things your way - sure you might try to emulate your heroes, but you will never be them. 

To a guitarist, it's like being the greatest technician ever and being able to reproduce every incredible solo that, say, Alan Holdsworth ever made, but you'll never be him.

Not only that, and more to the point (and I'll get to this later) who can you trust? 

Is that really a Stephen Shore 10x8 from the 1970's that you've never seen before? 

Did Henri really photograph the devastation of 9/11 but just never told anybody? 

Was Edward Weston really involved in the R&D of the Kodak Instamatic? 

If the online pictures for all of those exist, they must have . . .

Sure a good image is a good image, but in a world awash with good images (technically perfect, all 1's and 0's) who is to say that a human had any part in the (for want of a better phrase, ON SITE) making of that image?

Is it just the crazed world view of A DESCRIPTOR?

In the words of the old tape advert:

"Is it real, or is it Memorex?"

In the words of the Ed Harris quote:

"We take pictures to stop time and to commit moments to eternity. Human nature made tangible."

So where is the humanity in a described image? 

With no interaction between the person at the coalface and the ongoing moment, where is the soul of the photograph?

I know this sounds like art-speak bullshit, but I've always felt a photograph is an interaction between two things - the taker and the subject.

Birthdays are the same - everyone remembers the child, but who remembers the struggles of the Mother to bring that child into the world? I always raise a glass to my Mum on my birthday.

As a photographer, I try to be mindful and thankful for the fall of light and compositional elements within the frame. In other words, my photographs are as much me as they are the subject.

If all that is involved in a scene is a description of that scene, or a cutting out or adding of elements to that scene, then can that really be called a photograph, in that a photograph by its very nature is a stopping of time.

I know a lot of this is philosophical ranting, but as I've said before Fogblog is my fiefdom and I can really do what I want within it.

No doubt there will be many disagreements, but hey-ho, Merry Christmas!

On a further spaceship cruising somewhere in the beyond . . . music!

I actually (contentiously) have a bit of a dislike for streaming services.

 

Why oh idiot from Yore? I hear you cry.

Well, the reason I like radio (GOOD RADIO - let me emphasise that) is that you'll often hear things you aren't that keen on.

That's a bit disingenuous isn't it - you're hoping to hear something you like, but you end up hearing a lot of things you don't like.

But in my weird brain, this can only be a good thing, because it forces you to adapt to new things. MANY times I've heard something on the radio and thought "what a load of shite" only for a number of years later (or even weeks or days later tbh)  to come around and think, Gosh I like that, and in that liking of something I was initially adverse too, I've opened up another door in my brain that makes me receptive to other 'new' things.

It is like Olives. I loathed them when I was young, but now, oh boy, sling me over a bunch of those big 'uns any day of the week. 

Eating and eventually loving something that initially my pallet thought was foul, opened a new world for me.

So where's this leading us, I hear you ask.

Well, if something only ever feeds you stuff you like all the time, where else is there to go?

If your streaming service only feeds you music based upon stuff you like, what are the chances of broadening your horizons with a hellacious racket that eventually becomes a part of you?

In other words, if you only like burgers, you're only going to look at things like burgers. 

As such, in ticking all the right boxes, your algorythmically-aligned vendor is only going to feed you stuff that's related to burgers.

Vegetables are out the window unless it's pickles. And even then . . . . stick some sauerkraut in the mix and you've lost your customer!

I understand it would be easy to turn around from that and say to me:

"But Ai is just another new thing . . give it time . .  you'll love it!"

Thing is, I don't really. It is very dangerous ground. As I have said multiple times over the years, too many apocalyptic SF books back in the 1970's has led me to the conclusion that this isn't going to end well.

It's already widely in use criminally, because someone left the sweetshop door open and whilst a bunch of kids are enjoying free Bazooka Joes' like there's no tomorrow, there's also a healthy bunch who are helping themselves to the cigarettes and have jimmied open the tills. 

In other words for all the sweetness and light (and hopelessly optimistic "tech will save us" brigade) there are as many elements of the really quite nasty side of human nature who have far more weapons in their arsenals than they had two years ago.

Pandora's Box has well and truly been opened.

In other words - tech companies only design for this golden world where everything is far too much like The Eloy in 'The Time Machine' - people flit about in the wispy clothes and kittens skip across sunlit meadows holding hands with laughing mice . . er . . was that that film? Can't remember, anyway and despite that, they're clueless and naiive to the point of utter stupidity.

"Is it real, or is it Memorex?"

I could go on all day, but you'll be getting tired, or have switched out already.

As I said to Omar:

"It is the imperfection of humans that makes everything more interesting - I hate the perfection of most digital stuff - the world isn't like that. It's funny that in these days of Ai-photography everything, the likes of you and I - both anachronisms in our use of darkroom printing - are starting to be seen as last outposts of human endeavour."

Yeah that's a hard one - are film, the physical negative and (perhaps most importantly) the darkroom print, actually the last bastion of traditional photography?

Are your digital files actually moments in time or described moments in time?

Can you prove you were there?

Did they actually have that look on their face?

Was she really surprised when that tiny gnome jumped out of the bushes?

Even more contentiously, are you A Photographer, or A Descriptor?

Anyway, hopefully this will be food for thought. To my mind we've blundered into something that hasn't been thoroughly thought through, but that has generated millions of cash prizes for the people who are in the right place at the right time..

I'll leave with some scans from physical darkroom prints, made by me on 9.5 x 12" Ilford Multigrade Fibre - the new New Monkey Business - lovely stuff. 

They're double-fixed, selenium toned and stored in Secol sleeves. 

They're as real as a sledgehammer to the nuts. 

The negatives (FP4+ developed in Fomadon R09) are real and stored in archival sleeves and boxes.

The only software interaction is a tiny bit of dust retouching from the bed of the scanner - not the print. Also, please note on the fourth one, the scanner has picked up the texture of the paper in a rather cack-handed way

They're as close to perfection as I can get, but they're my perfection and as such (as a "preservationist by nature") I feel an enormous need to continue along this route and try and leave some:

" . . . Human nature made tangible. . ."

That'll probably be the last lot of pictures from this location - you can find the place throughout my pictures from this year - I've done my usual thing and photographed the same place and even the same subjects multiple times. 

The camera was the loaned Mamiya RZ with 65mm f4 lens. 

All MLU and tripod too.

As a total aside, after I had taken these, I'd packed up, and was crossing some extremely slippy rocks when I lost my footing and in order to preserve someone else's camera hit the ground (broken large boulders - quite jaggy ones and water) with a hell of a crash. 

I thought I had split my shin wide open and refused to even look at the wound till I got home. 

It was like two hard-boiled eggs under the skin and the most almighty graze . . and it is still healing some 6 weeks later! 

I was very lucky.

You know, it has occured to me that I could have described these photographs to an Ai and got similar results, but then I wouldn't have the wound to prove it.

And that's it - till Next Year, take care, be good and keep taking the pills.

H xx