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Introductory Note
This essay I wrote in 1999 was just translated and reprinted at the prestigious Italian website about art and culture: cultorweb.com. In its introduction to my article, Cultorweb.com wrote "His[Rick Doble's] almost prophetic article, written in 1999, opens the door to digital photography, describing his early experiences that led him to discover the potential of this new medium of visual art."[Google Translation]
See the article in Italian at:
La Fotografia: espressionismo
http://www.cultorweb.com/foto/Exp.html
I modified this PIXIQ essay slightly from its original. If you want to see exactly what I published in 1999 go to my website:
http://www.rickdoble.net/xtremeself/photoexpress.htm

This translation has been particularly gratifying to me because during the last twelve years I have developed these ideas that I had only begun to formulate with this essay. This imagery I did develop has now led to my body of work in experimental digital photography and my book of that name plus my experimental work being shown in the U.K., Italy, Slovakia, Romania, and Portugal.

And please bear in mind, when you read this, that in 1999 I only owned a Casio QV-100 which would be a throw away camera today -- but that this first digital camera opened new doors to me about the creative process. I also hope that this article and the resulting work will perhaps inspire others to rethink the creative process with digital photography and then chart a path that leads to new imagery.

"...the most powerful methods of human thought are those that help us find new kinds of representations."
Dr. Marvin Minsky, cognitive scientist, The Future Merging of Science, Art, and Psychology.

About Cultorweb That Translated This Essay
Cultorweb.com is a wide ranging art site that covers art and culture -- everything from Giotto to contemporary art theory -- and has an extensive aesthetics section, where my essay is located. It is used primarily by scholars and graduate students. The cultural association, Cultor, was created in 1999 as a non-profit, with the aim of studying, developing, promoting and disseminating research and cultural debate.

IS DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
THE NEW EXPRESSIVE
VISUAL ART?

Originally published in 1999 on my website -- now translated into Italian at cultorweb.com
© Copyright 1999 by Richard deGaris Doble
All rights reserved.

Digital photography could be a major art form in the next century. It may be the culmination of the development of photography. I have been working with a very simple Casio QV-100 camera for over a year, and I am still amazed at the variety and depth of imagery I can achieve without a flash or a zoom lens. (Of course I will eventually get a more sophisticated camera, but not until I have exhausted every aspect of this basic Casio.)

I suggest the term photo-expressionism for digital photographs that are as personal and expressive as the expressionist paintings of the recent past.   NOTE: Speaking today in 2011: to my knowledge I was the first person to coin the term 'photo-expressionism' in this essay.

Many people do not realize and even experienced photographers can forget, that photography is all about light. Photography literally means light (photo) writing (graphy). The action of light on film (*1) creates the image.

As I used to teach in a basic photography class 25 years ago, photography is not about objects or people or scenery. Rather it is about how the light reveals those things. As any beginning photography student knows, a cube can be lighted so that it almost disappears or so that it is virtually three dimensional. The key is the light.

Digital photography is a radically different kind of photography, because the photographer can finally see what the film sees. This is more important that the ability to manipulate the image in a computer.

NOTE: For the sake of simplicity I will speak of film instead of electronic light sensitive material or other term for electronic photographic media.

In addition, taking pictures in color means that it is not only the intensity of the light, but also the color of the light that creates the image -- different light sources (color temperatures and wave lengths) and subtleties of color may be seen differently by the film than by the human eye. So color is not simple. For example, a scene may include several light sources which have their own particular color. There are many subtle aspects to working with color film. For example, various street lamps can be seen by film as having unusual colors.

In the middle of this century, the single lens reflex (SLR) camera was a technical breakthrough. For the first time the photographer could see exactly what the lens saw. This solved a number of problems such as parallax. Digital photography goes one step further and lets the artist see what the film is seeing in "real time" on a LCD screen(*2).

For a variety of reasons the real time LCD screen lets a photographer "paint with light," light that is in the real world. While some of these effects could be approximated with the aid of a computer, images created in the real world have a vitality to them that a computer manipulated image cannot approach. It is the difference between the real and the artificial. I believe the real world has much more power. For example, the true story of the Titanic grabs us more than the fictional story of a luxury liner disaster such as The Poseidon Adventure.

There is another aspect to this LCD screen: it allows a photographer to review pictures that he or she just shot. Again this is a radical development. Immediate feedback is vital to learning.

In a personal note I have spent years trying to shorten the time between taking pictures and seeing the developed images. I have used black and white slides and color slides that I processed immediately, along with instant Polaroids. When not using any of these techniques, I developed negative film on the same day it was shot and made contact sheets to get some idea of what I had just done.

There are many psychological studies that point to the importance of feedback in learning. People who aimed bullets at a target, but were not told where the bullets hit until later, could not learn quickly. However, those who were told immediately improved rapidly. While this seems obvious, it is often forgotten. (Sorry for the gun example, but that is what the study involved.)

Digital photography allows an artist to learn quickly in new situations. For example, I took pictures at a fall carnival and wanted to get a sense of movement with blurred images. When the pictures did not turn out as I hoped, I started to move the camera in relation to the ferris wheel. In less that one hour I went from traditional night shots to some of the most unusual pictures I have ever taken. The immediate feedback was crucial.

The bottom line is this: in the past still photography couldn't get no respect, color photography in particular. It was rarely considered a valid art form. It was thought of as a mechanical process, or a trade rather than having any potential for an artistic vision. Of course, those of us in photography knew better.

Now with digital photography, those with artistic ideas can realize their imagery in strikingly individual and unique ways. A full understanding of light and color means that, in the hands of a master, modern photography is a rich, complicated, sophisticated and expressive art form. Even the permanence of color photography has been solved with the digital process because the digital file can be stored indefinitely.

My own personal quest in photography involves a number of "purist" notions added to the capabilities of a digital camera: I try to do most of my work at the moment of taking the picture rather than later with a computer. This vital instant is the "decisive moment" of snapping the shutter as stated by Henri Cartier-Bresson. I believe that the most powerful images are spontaneous and not reworked. This gives them a vitality which is similar to the difference in music between a live concert and a studio recording.

As a result, I rarely crop; I rarely manipulate the image in a computer graphics or paint program or in PhotoShop. (Notice the word rarely; never say never.) I do use the traditional photographic controls of adjusting brightness, contrast and color balance. This is usually all I need to achieve my effects.

I would like to propose a new term for this photography. The term is "photo-expressionism." (*3) By this I mean photographic imagery that is both personal and expressive, photography that is as artistic as the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch (The Scream), or Jackson Pollock.

FOOTNOTES:
*1. For the sake of simplicity I will speak of film and electronic film instead of electronic light sensitive material or other term for electronic photographic media.
*2. The LCD screen is an approximation and is separate from the electronic film. All viewing screens show less than the full image (also true for SLRs), the resolution is much lower than the final image, and the LCD may see light somewhat differently that the electronic film. There is also a delay in the "real time" display with the Casio. If you snap the shutter in a fast moving situation, you will find you get the next frame, not the one you thought you got. In short you have to learn to anticipate. However, the approximation is good enough so that a photographer can learn to work with it. As in all photographic processes part of the art is being able to accurately guess how the final image will turn out. There is only one true image that shows you exactly what you shot; that is the final output of your image. A picture displayed on a computer monitor or on the Internet will look quite different than one printed out on the best quality photographic paper or reprinted in a magazine. Photographers find themselves unconsciously adjusting their imagery to match the final output form.
*3. I derived this term from two movements in painting: expressionism as practiced by German and other painters (Kirchner, Klee, Kandinsky) at the beginning of the century and abstract expressionism as practiced by artists in New York in the 1940s and 1950s (Pollock, Rothko, Frankenthaler) along with others around the world. Also I realize that van Gogh is not strictly an expressionist, yet his work is considered to be one of the foundations of expressionism by virtually all critics. Clay Riley, the director of the local arts council, the Carteret Arts Council, looked at my work and said that I was "action painting" with a camera. That thought started me thinking about the idea of photography as an expressive medium.

NOTE:See a list of my other articles here at PIXIQ. www.pixiq.com/contributors/rick-doble

For more about my approach to photography see my book: Experimental Digital Photography.

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