Cycles of the new and the old, part 2

This post was cross-posted in The Camera Club of New York's Blog.

The Carleton Watkins stereograph was taken around the time of the founding of the Camera Club in 1884. Watkins' journey to the falls was arduous. He and his assistants were literally carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment.

I have been thinking a lot about the journey it took to produce a picture and where technology stands today. The iPhone 4S is a game changer. It has me thinking about photography and meaning in our contemporary life. Many current smartphones are shooting images as big as 8 megapixels and above. This gives the public access to pocketable cameras that are now approaching 35 mm film in terms of resolvable detail.

As mentioned in my previous post, the iPhone 4S and the handful of other new phone cameras are shifting photography the same way that the Kodak Brownie did in the past. The Brownie pushed photography from a niche specialty into a popular pastime. Now the iPhone has pushed photography from a popular pastime to something more akin to breathing, eating and memory. What did you do today? Here is a picture on my phone. What did you eat today? Here is another picture. Whenever you attend an event, the scrum of people in front of you are no longer are holding a lighter. Many are holding up their phones.

I bring up the Upper Yosemite image partly because of the fantastic difference in degree of difficulty in attaining an image, but also because Apple's iPhone page seems to be referencing this historic tradition.

Now take a closer look at the image in the lower right:

This is nearly the identical view of Upper Yosemite that Ansel Adams was shooting, along with Carleton Watkins before him.

I don't think Apple's awareness of the history of photography is any accident. Like it or not, these devices are the new normal camera for amateurs and professionals alike. With these new devices come a host of new features and new questions for the medium.

Not only are phones and cameras fixed together, but they are attached to a GPS. As long as the device attaches location data, a permeant record of the photographer's location will be left for historians and writers to think about when discussing that image. Apple was kind enough to share this data with the image above so we know that the photographer for their Upper Yosemite photo was at:

37 44.64N 119 35.51W

I imagine this spot isn't too far from where Watkins stood to make this image below.

Yosemite Falls, photographed by Carleton E. Watkins, 1861.

I was curious how much the iPhone image could resemble this Watkins. So, I opened up Apple's iPhone Jpeg in Photoshop and in a few minutes I made the Apple image into this.

Not exactly there, but close enough for this example–the iPhone is not simply a contemporary Kodak Brownie with bells and whistles, but a machine that continually manufactures photographic simulacra. As anyone who had used any number of iPhone apps such as instagram or Hipstamatic, one of the adictivly fun features of this new technology is the ability to instantly transform any picture into a simulacrum of a process of the past. Think that picture looks good in black and white--similar to Illford XP2? Maybe you're unfamiliar with an Illford XP2. Who cares? It looks great, right?

Take a look at this 1000 memories Real world instagram guide below and their post:

With or without a guide like this (which most users will never see) what does it mean to use a filter on your images? And, for that matter, what does it mean to be producing images in traditional processes (when the simulation is now what many think of as the original)? In this era of people mistaking theme parks for real life, we are being removed from the original. There will have to be new ways of explaining this to the future generations to make sure we don't also remove originality as well.

TONIGHT: 2011 CCNY Photo Benefit Auction

Big event tonight for the Camera Club of New York (where I am their current guest blogger). I haven't been to the annual Auction before so I'm looking forward to seeing all the action. Many many great photographs (including the one below) will be available. Check out the press release and I hope to see you there.

Amy Stein, Cage, digital c-print, 20 x 16”, 2005

Join Us Tonight, Monday, November 7, 2011, 6 - 8pm

Location:25CPW 25 Central Park West (at 62nd Street)

Preview Works Here

Featuring work by emerging and established photographers, including : Mariette Pathy Allen / Rachel Barrett / Jacqueline Bates / Matthew Baum / Michael Berkowitz / Per Billgren / Anita Blank / Timothy Briner / Jesse Burke / Eric William Carroll / Sean Carroll / James Casebere / Lindsey Castillo / Jesse Chan / Vincent Cianni / Annabel Clark / Margarida Correia / Megan Cump / Pradeep Dalal / Bobby Davidson / Allison Davies / Isaac Diggs / Maureen Drennan / Emile Hyperion Dubuisson / Mark Fernandes / Larry Fink / Lauren Fleishman / Martine Fougeron / Jona Frank / Fryd Frydendahl / Theresa Ganz / Anders Goldfarb / Curtis Hamilton / Jason Hanasik / Daniel Handal / Kara Hayden / Jeanne Hilary / Francine Hofstee / Henry Horenstein / Michi Jigarjian / Erica Leone / Sze Tsung Leong / David Levinthal / Sam Levinthal / Wayne Liu / Feng Lu / Ryan MacFarland / Jerome Mallmann / Chris McCaw / Jo Meer / Dana Miller / Azikiwe Mohammed / Paolo Morales / Keren Moscovitch / Laurel Nakadate / Katherine Newbegin / Lori Nix / Heather O’Brien / Brayden Olson / Alice O’Malley / Cara Phillips / Libby Pratt / Richard Renaldi / Mauro Restiffe / Saul Robbins / Caren Rosenblatt / Michael Schmelling / Tina Schula / Manjari Sharma / Aline Smithson / John Stanley / Chad States / Amy Stein / Joni Sternbach / Motohiro Takeda / Maureen Testa / Sally Tosti / William Wegman / Randy West / Grant Willing / Jessica Yatrofsky / Rona Yefman / Pinar Yolaçan / Arin Yoon

Benefit Committee: Mariette Pathy Allen, Paul Amador, Brian Paul Clamp, Daniel Cooney, Michael Foley, Martine Fougeron, Susan Fulwiler, Françoise Girard, Tom Gitterman, Peter Hay Halpert, Henry Horenstein, David Knott, Michael Mazzeo, Lizanne Merrill, L. Parker Stephenson, Spencer Throckmorton, Sasha Wolf, and Alice Sachs Zimet.

$20 admission. All proceeds go to The Camera Club of New York (CCNY), a non-profit 501(c)3 arts organization that has been nurturing talented photographers since 1884.

Catering provided by Moustache.

To see the donated works, please go to CCNY’s online auction preview.

CCNY wishes to thank 25CPW Gallery for their generosity in hosting this year’s auction.

For further inquires, contact CCNY at info@cameraclubny.org or by phone: 212-260-9927

Please visit us at www.cameraclubny.org

An early critique at the Camera Club of NY

(This post is cross-posted on the Camera Club of New York blog)

Last weekend, I looked through the Camera Club of New York's historical archives. They are safely kept in 18 boxes under Bryant park at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, also known as New York Public Library's main building. I will return over the next few months to dig around and choose a few pieces from the archive for this blog.

One of the first pieces I ran across was a clipped article by Theodore Dreiser on the Camera Club from Ainslee's Magazine.

One of this images in the article is this one by Camera Club of NY member and the Club's Vice President, Alfred Stieglitz.

Alfred Stieglitz, The Letter Box, 1894

The article describes an early account of a photography critique (circa 1899)—not dissimilar to those of today. I love the details and the phrasing:

Very few photos are perfect, and the critical zeal of the camera masters is exacting far beyond the pale of humble human accomplishment.

And yet it occasionally serves to make an humble student of a self-opinionated and self-exaggerated individuality. A case in point is a now distinguished member who came from Brooklyn.

"I was fine in Brooklyn," he remarked one time. "My experience there gave me a good opinion of my work. I began to make lantern slides and exercised my individual taste, with the result that my work was admired. Gradually I began to exhibit it more and more. I joined a local club whose fad was lantern slides and became a star member. Finally I gained such repute that I decided to come to New York and astonish them. I decided that I would quietly enter my plates for exhibition, and, in the vernacular, 'sweep 'em off their feet.'"

"Well?" I inquired as he mused reflectively.

"Oh, I exhibited. They walked on me. One of my pictures made them laugh, and it was intended to be sad. There were twenty-seven objections made to another. My best one came off easy with three criticisms, and all valid. Oh, lord! I thought I would never get out alive."

"Were they fair?"

"Yes; that was the bitter thing. I could realize that it was all kindly said and meant, and was good for me. After it was all over, one gentleman, who noted my crest-fallen state, came up and told me that my work was not bad. It was only the high standard of the club that laid it open to so much criticism. This was too much, and I went home in despair."

"And yet you profited by it."

"It was the best thing that could have happened. I began studying in earnest after that, merely to blot out my terrible defeat. In another year I exhibited again, and the whole set passed the 'test' audience with only a few suggestions."

Below is a photograph from this article and possibly the room that this critique took place.

Here are some pictures from some more recent critiques:

Ansel Adams – Conducting A Critique Session, Courtesy the Ansel Adams Gallery.

A recent critique at the Yale School of Art's Photography Department. The panel: John Pilson making a point on the left, Lisa Kereszi, Shirin Neshat and Richard Prince. Image from this post by Photographer Davin Ellicson.