New School Imaging

Rembrandt 1657-- etching

                         

                                Edward Weston 1937-- 8X10 view camera

Anna Schmidt 2013-- cellphone

I have a couple of nieces who post photos to Facebook with some regularity. Not the usual Facebook variety of people or places one knows or visits, but rather, they post abstracts. They are frequently beautiful abstracts involving regular or irregular shapes, contrasts and color. Almost all of the images are of things that surround us and can be seen by anyone who knows how to look.

Driving down the road yesterday I saw and old oak that lay in a field, up rooted and broken, it was weathered like a piece of coastal driftwood. Seeing it made me think I should grab a photograph of the tree's multiple twists and its desiccated bark. But I didn't. But it also reminded me of those nieces of mine-- and of every artist and photographer over time.  I had to wonder what would be our aesthetic if photography were a medium present throughout history? And what would our catalogue contain if instant photography were our only medium?

I love the immediacy of digital imaging and the convenience of smartphone cameras that allow us to take a shot on a whim, and discard all the "mistakes." Instant imaging should make us think about what it is that draws us to images, to imaging, and how we see and interpret color, shape and the world around us.

Looking back, however, in the absence of technology we collected a thousand years of painted and drawn images, all done in an era when there was no alternate method of image capture. Similarly, in the absence of instant imaging, we have more than a hundred years of photographs that were painstakingly created; created without the luxury of preview or casual deletion. Photographs that required the photographer carry the unseen images home, process the film, and study the result as satisfactory or not.

I don't know if our current flurry of digital imaging really owes anything to that pre-digital, pre-photographic era, but I do think that this new era of creative image seems somewhat removed from most of what currently hangs in museums around the world. Not better, just different. And a whole new and exciting chapter in the way images are created and art is made.