The Camera Nerd

I'm not really an art knower. I'm expected to be that now, apparently. There's something called modern art and something called contemporary art. I wouldn't know the difference (I'm probably supposed to know it, though), all I know is that normal rules don't apply. It doesn't have to look nice, in fact it doesn't have to be anything remotely art-like at all. Apparently the more spaced out, the better. 

I'm only saying this because we had an exhibition called "Gathering Dust" at Uni today. A good initiative; bring stuff that you've never shown before, - and it could be anything. One of the guys there actually decided to bring himself. I'm not speculating whether he's out a lot, but if I had to comment on that, I'd say that there's a good chance he does not have a whole mountain of friends to chose from. The guy was wearing a skin coloured bath hat, some Ali G-type glasses and a keyboard on his back (if you pressed the right button, allegedly it would detonate a nuclear bomb). In a rather convincing german accent he presented himself as a german techno artist called, appropriately, Techno Spoof (http:/uk.youtube.com/user/Technospoof71, - either he's 37 or there's at least 70 other techno spoofs. I can't decide which is more probable - or pathetic). He was his artwork. I will upload some pictures of him later.

 

The answer applicable for every stupid action in the world: 'It's art'. If it has indeed come to the point where this is art, I'd say we go and push all the buttons on this guys keyboard. Entertaining: yes. Art: no(!).

Well, today I have been in colour darkroom almost continuously from 10 am to 5 pm. A lot of people do not think of this, but there's a big difference between the prints you get from the photo store and the ones you print off of your printer at home. Where as your printer drips small drops of ink onto the paper, the photo store exposes light sensitive photographic paper. The viewable difference is mainly that you can se the lines where the printer have printed each line of information, and you can also make out the tiny drops. In addition, the colours greatly depend on the right light to be rendered correctly.

When you print colour pictures the old fashioned way you do approx. three prints to get the exposure right and three more to get the colours. All the printing is done in pitch black. I spent 5 hours to do three prints. And I only just managed. Think about that next time you pick up a couple of hundred prints from the local photo store!

What is a photograph though? Granted that you say you're holding a photograph in your hand. Are you then:

a: holding a print in your hand

b: holding a original (negative/positive) in your hand

?

And what about digital photographs? You can't really hold them, can you? You can hold the prints, yes. But the actual photograph?

If you say that the print is the photograph, then what happens when you have several prints from the same original. Do you then have several photographs or several prints of the same photograph?

Also consider this:

I: Is a photograph better the bigger it is? No? Pixels don't mean shit then..? When you're considering that 12 Mpix camera, ask yourself this: are you REALLY going to print in skyscraper-wall-poster-size? 

II: How do you really want your pictures to be viewed? Have you considered that maybe the lcd screen of your pc is not the best way to view your pictures? To quote my teacher, Vince, 'Prints are FUCKING cool!"

Cameras. Germany, USA, Russia and Japan. That's what counts. And Japan very much so.

Germany: Schneider Kreuznach, Carl Zeiss, Franke-Heidecke, Leitz.

USA: Kodak.

Russia: Kiev, Zorki, Zenit, Lomo.

Japan: Ricoh, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Samsung, Bronica, Mamiya, Yashica... the list really does go on.

If there ever was such a thing as a photographic war Japan would, with no great effort, blow everyone else out of the water. Big Time.

Sorry for the techie output, but as it happens I have worked in a photo store for four years and adapted an semi-insane obsession for old cameras and lenses as well as developed an unhealthy relationship to film. It's like candy to me, at least the good films. Anyways, I know the stuff, and I like to talk about it.

I am a camera nerd. But being a nerd is really only a bad thing when that is the only thing you are. I am a photographer too, I think.