Worth More When It's Gone

I have no complaints against digital imaging.  It is a miracle, and it is much fun.  I like analog, too, though, and if this were a decent world, there would be support systems to make certain that things like Polaroid and Kodachrome, miracles in and of themselves, would never vanish.  Free market mentality is O.K.  I like new things.  But the best of the old world shouldn't be allowed to die off.

Maybe I'm wrong, though.  If not for the dying off, what would happen to nostalgia?

Come to think of it, I shouldn't be allowed to die off, but my friends tell me that when I do, my photographs will be worth more (of course they have to be as they are worth nothing at present).

I was looking for some photo corners yesterday so as to begin a summer's journal.  I wanted to put in some of the little Fujis I've been taking (I figure that it is the only way I'll be allowed to keep some of the pictures I take).  In looking, I was forced to go through drawers full of old materials, old photographs I once bought of unknown people, old cards and ticket stubs. . . AND things I had made when digital was new and I was clever.  And boy, they WERE cool.  I was thrilled to have them in my hands and eyesight again, but sad, too, knowing I wasn't nearly as devout or clever to making such things now.  I used to make things for other people--girls--decorative things that went into packages full of mix CDs (I know, I know) with original covers that I made (usually with a photo of them), charms and bracelets and beads and silk bags and amulets I'd buy whenever I saw them and homemade sachets, all tied up with colored raffia.  I quit, eventually, because I didn't feel I got a good return on my efforts.  But I was wrong.  The return was in those drawers.  I will spend the summer making displays of some of them to put up around the house.

All of it was a nice blend of the digital and the analog worlds.

When I was a photo student in college, we had to choose to work either in black and white or in color.  We had a black and white darkroom, so it was cheaper and that is what we did, but I had classes that required us to shoot color slides, too, which you could have printed through the old Cibachrome process.  The slides often looked good, but I didn't like those shiny Cibachrome prints at all.  When I wanted color, I would use the old Marshall oils and hand paint my black and white pictures.  Those always looked nice.

It was always a thrill to walk around with a camera full of black and white film.  You had to be  much more selective.  That way of making photographs taught me much.  I wish I had made more photographs back then, but it wouldn't have mattered, really, since my mother threw away everything from that period long ago.

One of the things people seem not to like about digital is that you don't have to make a choice.  You shoot and decide later if you want color or black and white.  For some, it is inauthentic.  It is a cheat.  And, in truth, having shot black and white film my entire life, I have never cared for the look of digital black and white images.  I think, however, that I can get over that.  I don't have to abandoned film to make black and white digital images.  It is just a different way of saying something.  All images are manipulated anyway, whether in the darkroom or the computer.  Nobody ever wants the colors they see unless it is Kodachrome.  The rest, whether digital or film, is personalized through secret techniques, even if it is just one of the Instagram filters.

I can't decide whether I like the color or the black and white version of this picture better.  I like them each for different reasons.  I've been learning how to make the black and white digital images richer in tone and contrast.  The key for me will be when I print them.  I like seeing the images big on a wall.  I won't print these street images as big as the Lonesomeville pictures, though.  Not by a long shot.  I think these will look nice around 16"x12", large enough to see but small enough to put several together easily.  Oh. . . framing for the b&w will have to be different from the framing of the color.  All of this is to be decided.

There are two new art galleries in town, one mostly photography, that are showing some very good work.  Not local.  This has happened suddenly, I think, while I was sleeping.  Now there are two types of galleries in town, and there is a steep divide.  And I feel it.  I don't think the tonier galleries have enough foresight to pick up on good new works.  They are going to be trying to sell things by name-brand artists.  It makes me sad for reasons I won't explain.  Somehow, though, I feel diminished.

But perhaps I should be liberated.  I make silly things.  I should own up to it and make more and sillier things.  Therein lies freedom.  Fuck the factories, art or otherwise.  We must live for passion and joy, right?  Indeed, we can't live to please and be worth a shit at anything.

I've always surrounded myself with people who were bound and determined not to please.  Thanks, guys.  Fuck!