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COMPUTER-MANIPULATED IMAGERY
Is it Photography?
by Dale O'Dell
In
the world of art, there exists a collection of terms and classifications which are used to
define, include, exclude, characterize, designate, identify, pigeonhole and otherwise
clarify or confuse art and its many flavors. Photography is but one sub-category of
artistic expression. Now, with the advent of the digital-imaging workstation within the
studio and photo-lab, photography seems to be witnessing a revolution.
Computer-generation and manipulation
of photographic imagery has been around since the 1960's. By the 1970's a small market had
developed for computer-generated imagery despite equipment that was bulky, slow,
astronomically expensive and available only to a few. In the 1980's the amount of
computer-imagery grew tremendously as did the availability of good equipment at somewhat
less than exorbitant prices. By 1985, in photographic circles, digital imaging was the in
trend despite a limited and confused marketplace. Now, in the mid 1990's, if you believe
the popular and trade press, film may be dead, and if you're a photographer without a
digital-imaging workstation on your desk, you're a dinosaur--archaic, outmoded and
non-competitive. Is the digital revolution truly the evolution of photography? Or is it
something else?
Apples Aren't Oranges.
Most digital imagery
is not photography. All art forms are branches of a single tree called "art,"
and "cybergraphics"1 is a new limb growing from the branch called
"photography." Currently this is a point of great confusion. Photographers have
embraced cybergraphics as their own and, even though the majority of cyber-artists came to
the medium from photography, sculptors, painters, illustrators and other artists have also
embraced this new medium. Artists who have come to cybergraphics from mediums other than
photography have not really made a big deal of it. To them it's just another medium.
It Does Look A Little Like A Duck...
Photographers, on the
other hand, feel compelled to include cybergraphics as photography because the new medium
shares some photographic characteristics. Those photographic characteristics are
image-capture and image-realization, or to put it in more common terms, input and output.
In general terms, cybergraphic imagery is accomplished in three distinct steps: inputting
of captured imagery (scanning), image-processing, and output. Input or digitization of
imagery converts pictures (often from but not limited to photographic film) into digital
information recognizable by the computer. The cyber-artist (photographer, painter or
whoever) then uses the computer-tool to manipulate the imagery however s/he sees fit and,
finally, the completed cybergraphic is output (often to film). Because the usual process
is commonly accomplished in a film-in, film-out fashion, photographers think it is
photography. It is not.
Cybergraphics cannot be construed as
photography any more than painting or illustration can. You're probably thinking,
"But I don't construe painting as photography." Of course you don't. That's
because your major point of consideration is the middle part of the process, which is the
part that should be considered. But think about this: some painters and illustrators use
photographic reference. They may photograph or avail themselves of photographic elements
they use as a starting point for their paintings or illustrations. Often they
"input" their photographic reference by actually tracing it onto their canvases
or paper, or they may simply visually refer to it during the painting or drawing step.
Finally, especially in cases where the work is to be reproduced, the completed
illustration or painting is often photographed (output) on film. The resulting film images
are often inserted into portfolios, used as marketing or advertising tools for the artist,
or supplied to color-separators. This, too, is a film-in, film-out process, yet
photographers make no claim to it. What happens in the middle-- the creative act between
input and output--defines the (new) medium.
Check Out The Tools
All the different
mediums of art can be defined by the processes and tools used to create the finished piece
of artistic expression. Painters primarily interact with paint, brushes and canvas;
musicians with sound and musical instruments; dancers with the body and motion; sculptors
with clay, metals, etc. Photographers primarily interact with cameras, lenses, chemistry
and film. If you're interacting primarily with a computer to bring forth your art, you're
not a photographer. You're something else--a cyberartist.
Process does determine the art form.
In the 1960's when the photomontage (not to be confused with a "collage" which
is altogether different) was popularized, it was a new and non-realistic kind of
photograph which caused critics to proclaim, "It isn't photography!" To them the
photomontage was not photography because it was non-representational and not
"straight." They were mistaken. Those photomontage images were produced through
the photographer's interaction with the pure photographic process. Those images may have
been created (and still are) by non-traditional uses of an enlarger, slide-duplicator or
chemistry, but the majority (if not all) of the equipment and supplies used to make those
images came from the camera shop. You may use a camera; you may be an accomplished
photographer, but if a computer is required to make a specific image, then the result is
not a photograph; it's a cybergraph.
Re-Touching and Collages
Not included in
cybergraphics is the simple retouching of photographs. Retouching is an accepted form of
traditional image-enhancement and has been since the inception of the photographic medium.
How much retouching is acceptable is still open to debate. Even in the 1800's, some
heavily retouched and hand-tinted photographs were considered more art (painting) than
photograph. Regardless, the spotting brush and retouching pencil predate the computer.
Also not included in cybergraphics is the collage.
Although collages may include
photographic elements and may be re-photographed on film, they are neither photographs nor
cybergraphs because the imagery is constructed through cutting and pasting. This
distinction shouldn't be a point of confusion, anyway, since the collage is already an
accepted, distinct art form in and of itself. Cutting and pasting done with a computer is
a cybergraph only if the end result could not be accomplished without the computer. Cinema
and video are not included in cybergraphics, because they are not still images, and they
are already recognized as separate art forms. Other digital imaging technologies--such as
the MRI, for example--are also not included, since they are not construed as art or
self-expression. Maybe someday someone will make an MRI for purely aesthetic,
self-expression reasons. Then it would be a cybergraph.
Now You See It...
What is considered to
be a cybergraph is simple and fairly obvious. Any still image that owes its existence to
digital generation or manipulation, that could not be realized in any other way without
the use of a computer, is considered a cybergraph. This includes computer-generated
imagery and any other non-lens imagery which relies on software to exist. Cybergraphics is
actually pretty straightforward for the viewer who considers process as a component of
artistic expression. But, beware! You can be fooled! Things are not always as they seem.
"Nothing is as it seems" is
a good maxim for the consideration of computer-manipulated imagery in this epoch of art,
photography and technology. Reality, representation, expression and Truth are at a
crossroads due to technology. Technology is an irresistible force which will not slow
despite confusion, categorization, ethics, law, fear or anything else. Despite
technology--or because of it--art will be made (because it can be) in any way, shape or
form, with any tool. If this is confusing, don't worry about it. Separations will all be
sorted out eventually. That much is inevitable and absolute.
The human animal categorizes
everything. It's our nature. It's how we understand things. If art is a tree with many
branches defining each distinct artistic medium, then we should welcome the new growth.
Cybergraphics is a new branch. It may have budded from the branch of photography, but it
is not photography. Once we understand that we've got something new here, cybergraphics
will emerge as a fresh and distinct art form with its own beauty, pleasures and perils.
The silver image is not dead (it could even become more valuable). Photography is not
headed for extinction; it has witnessed a birth.
______________
- There needs to be a name for this new art form, some word that describes it the way photography describes light-pictures. Cybergraphics sounds pretty catchy. Here are some other terms, choose what you like best or make up your own: digistration, pixography, pixelography, cyberpictography, digimagery.........
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Tech info:
All original components came from 35mm transparencies.
Scanned using Kodak Photo CD.
I used the 18 MB resolution in PhotoShop.
A few plug-in filter effects were used.
The files were archived on Zip 100 MB removable cartridges.
Output at 6X7cm on Kodak LVT, Ektachrome film.
My computer is:
Pentium 200 mHz processer
128 MB RAM
20 inch monitor
12x12 Wacom tablet
Adobe PhotoShop, Hi-Res QFX image processing programs