Is digital photography from Photoshop art?
By Jim Patterson (digital photo columnist for Mac Design Magazine and contributor to Photoshop User magazine.)
Is digital photography from Photoshop art? This variation of the question "Is photography art?" is a debate gaining momentum.
Conventional photography is accepted as a legitimate art medium, attested to by the prices for works by masters such as Man Ray, Weston, Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus and hundreds more.
Acceptance of a photographer's work as art begins with the individual's vision and ability to transform it to an image: in other words, creativity. Another step is through publication, although not all published photographers are artists. Then there is exhibition and purchase by collectors.
The art world has been slow to embrace digital photography for several reasons. First is the role of the computer. For many years, "computer art" has been hallmarked by outer space themes with floating 3D spheres, star fields and ephemeral glows. Fine for a screen saver but not exactly the theme the collector wants for his walls.
Second is presentation. For some reason, art and huge size are considered to go hand-in-hand and the digital photographer has been limited to the output of inkjet printers or very expensive giclee devices.
Third is the very real concern of permanency. No one actually knows how long an inkjet or giclee print will last on a wall. Manufacturers make estimated claims for archival quality of their papers and inks based upon accelerated tests. Of course permanency has been a problem for artists since the first prehistory artist scratched into a chalk wall in a cave.
Some art critics exhibit confusion between the quality of images created with pixels and those made up of grains of silver salts.
In this column, I'll examine the work of Catherine McIntyre. An artist from the UK who is not purely a digital photographer however, exhibits incredible skill in Photoshop.
Catherine McIntyre whose haunting photo collages include digital photos, scanned photos and found objects, nude figures (often her own), and a great application of imagination with Photoshop skills and understanding. A Scottish graphic designer with a traditional art background, Catherine's interpretations of themes from dreams to time are spectacular in their shocking elements and their use of nearly monochromatic color.
You can see examples of her widely published
creations at her home page at intangible.org.
On her website, Catherine describes the evolution of her work from the traditional live studio through her discovery of Photoshop: "The layering techniques available in Photoshop were a revelation. Initial attempts at collage had always been restricted by the given scale and colour of found objects and photographs, and by the physical problems of attachment; translucency, too, was not a variable. In Photoshop, there are no such restrictions."
Although the major body of her work has been done with conventional cameras and scanners, Catherine now uses a Canon Powershot S40 digital camera as well.