If we lived in some alternate universe in which the current level of digital photographic technology (digital backs/cameras, digital post-processing, and high end inkjet printing) and the current level of chemical photography technology both appeared in the world simultaneously and photographers were asked to make a choice, would anyone actually chose the wet chemistry darkroom over the digital “darkroom?”
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The Shorpy web site features a steady stream of wonderful older photographs – subscribe if you haven’t already. Among the photos in the stream are some real gems, such as some of the Dorothea Lange photographs showing up this week.
Thanks to Jim M Goldstein for sharing the link to a video interview with Ansel Adams’ son Michael on Fast Company TV’s PhotoCycle program.
(It is fun to watch the video and see so many places I know so well… :-)
If you aren’t already following it, take a look at Shorpy: The 100 Year Old Photography Blog, where really wonderful old photographs appear daily, often with some descriptive text or comments. Yesterday’s Dorothea Lange photograph (“A New Beginning: 1939“) is absolutely wonderful. (You can view it full size.) At first glance it might seem like an old photo of some guy, but there is so much to like in this photograph. The face of this “Ex-Nebraska farmer” is an absolute wonder – simultaneously inscrutable and open. And the image is a lesson in reducing the content down to only that which is absolutely critical to the subject – nothing more and nothing less.
(For something a bit more scary, take a look at this photo while you are there…)