THE IMAGE WROUGHT: HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHIC APPROACHES IN THE DIGITAL AGE RANSOM CENTER GALLERIES.

THE IMAGE WROUGHT: HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHIC APPROACHES IN THE DIGITAL AGE

RANSOM CENTER GALLERIES, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

AUSTIN, TEXAS

JANUARY 31-AUGUST 6 2006

A beautiful and thought-provoking exhibition in succession historical photographic processes and their use by dint of a growing contingent of contemporary photographers, "The Image Wrought: Historical Photographic Approaches in the Digital Age" appears at a watershed twinkling of an eye in the history of photography. Three days after the show's opening, the of the present day York Times reported "the astonishing collapse of the film camera market." (1) Following the late announcements of the end of film camera production by dint of Kodak, Nikon, and Konica Minolta, and the cessation of black-and-white paper production according to Kodak, to say nothing of Agfa's bankruptcy, it pretends fair enough to conclude that "film photography is rapidly becoming a special-interest niche." (2) In the wake of this sea change take rises a pressing question: what is the fate of chemical photography? "The Image Wrought" exhibits one possible answer: the coming of photography lies in its concede past.

Among other things, the exhibition provides an informative historical overview of nineteenth -and twentiethcentury photographic processe on the other hand also showcases contemporary chemical photography work in those media. from juxtaposing the historical with the contemporary, the point out demonstrates the artistic possibilities that arise from the refusal of "technological Darwinism."

As the subtitle hints the exhibit displays a skilled consciousness of our historical trice Indeed, the curator of the exhibit to Linda Briscoe Myers, clearly descrys it as a rejoinder to the "bloodless" quality of a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of digital photography. "It is vital to realize the aesthetic advantages of preserving the past," she states in a pres release. "The exhibition demonstrates that there is an inherent beauty to these handcrafted images that differ from those produc from one side digital technology."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Of course, this demonstration might have been made in the form of a straightforward historical exhibit since nearly half the point out to consists of nineteenth-century photographs. There are, for instance, early daguerreotypes from the Gernsheim collection, cyanotypes through Anna Atkins, and calotypes at Robert Adamson, David Octavius Hill, and William Henry Fox Talbot. There are photogenic drawings, albumen silver prints, ambrotypes, carbon prints, tintypes, platinum prints, gum bichromate prints, bromoil prints, and stereographs. There are photos forward ceramic and on cloth. There are hand-colored prints and photocollages. There are steady possibly for the first time below the rubric of historical processe gelatin silver prints. The array is dazzling and captivating and gives complex evidence for the significance, aesthetic and otherwise, of past photographic processe Despite the real interest of the historical collection--and the Ransom Center has unique holdings that make of that kind an overview particularly strong--the contemporary photographs are, in the extreme point the most compelling part of the display That is, their relation to historical example is what makes the exhibition as it is a welcome provocation.

The passing from hand to hand interest in historical photographic processes--which includes the work of well-established artists like tap [i]or[/i] pat Close and Sally Mann--has its possess history. Emerging out of the counterculture of the late 1960 alternative proces photography, as it came to be known, appealed to photographers seeking a simpler, more intensely handcrafted aesthetic. For John safe who traveled across the United States in the 1970 and early 1980 making and selling tintypes, alternative proces photography was part of a wider critique of modernity. In his introduction to alternative proces photography in Photography's Antiquarian Avant-Garde: The strange Wave in Old Processes (2002) Lyle Rexer claims that "Coffer's choice is political, a conscious rejection of a society based in succession consumption and dependent on technology." (3) More lately Mark and France Scully Osterman have revived wet collodion techniques, and Mike Ware has virtually reinvented several of John Herschel's processe Initially, so processes were seen as alternatives to the dominant use of film and gelatin silver paper, hence the word alternative process. In recent years, however, near photographers have turned to these processe as a direct reaction to digital photography. Mark Kessell who was forced to learn digital photography in graduate denomination is one example. In the wall topic next to his 1999 daguerreotype, ironically titled Digitalis I, he explains the genesis of his project: "In declare I turned to the 'opposite' of digital photography, seeking public the earliest and most irreproducible of all photographic techniques."

The risk in this act upon of course, is falling into naive nostalgia. In 1977 Michael Gray pos his enslaves in period costume for a calotype, recreating the consider of Talbot's photographs with stunning fastidiousness. In the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of this exhibit, however, the image follows across as the photographic equivalent of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Other alternative proces photographers are well aware of this criticism. In a 1996 article titled "In protection of Alternative Processes" Ware wrote: