Ansel Adams and digital

"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practioner will again strive to comprehend and control them" (Ansel Adams, March 1981, "The Negative") Introduction, page xiii.



Would Ansel Adams have used a digital camera? I have no doubt that he would have embraced the concept. Yet many artists, patrons, and even photographers look upon digital photography as some sort of red-headed stepchild of photography. They say it is not art, that the pictures don’t last, that we are “cheating”. They think that digital photographers are corrupting the art of photography with such tools as raw processing and Photoshop.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Ansel Adams did a great deal of modification of his images in the darkroom. Indeed, most film photographers who process their own film do a great deal of modification in the darkroom. The vast majority of digital photographers use Photoshop for the same changes that could be made in the darkroom. Yes, there are other capabilities of Photoshop that could not be done in a darkroom. But they are not push-button operations.

As for the “pictures don’t last” argument I carry two “visual aids” with me to shows. One is a color enlargement made 20 years ago. The Kodak logo, the symbol of quality in color processing at that time, is visible on the back. It had been stored in a box for the majority of those 20 years, never put in the sun. It is visibly yellowed and faded. Independent tests have shown that a pigment on archival paper ink-jet print will last 200 years with no visible fading or yellowing if stored in a box. The other one is a print that I made in my early darkroom days, when I did my darkroom printing in a walk-in closet of my apartment. It has a very visible smudge on it as a result of improper technique. Just because someone does their own darkroom processing doesn’t mean it is good and just because it is digital doesn’t mean it is bad.

So when you are walking the shows or looking in the galleries this year, please ask yourself, does it move me?, do I love it?, and even does it match the couch? Ask about the process used because you should make sure that it is done with quality but don’t turn away because it is digital.