The Photographic Process has its Place

Digital Photography Revolution

Digital cameras became wide-spread some 5-6 years ago when their prices crashed. Taking pictures and sharing them soon became commonplace taking up slice of our time. This trend continues today with Digital SLRs on the wishlist of many.

Earlier, photography was inaccessible because of expensive equipment and lengthy development process. Now, buy a decent camera for less than $100, read a few web resources to learn light capture basics and you can take pleasent pictures and publish them easily. By making photography accessible, digital photography has probably launched thousands of new and exciting photographers.

Digital Shift

A few years back, I used to joke with friends about how one could find pictures of tables, wine bottles, ceiling fans in photo albums on the internet. We also coined a term for it – Digital Photo Abuse. By making photography accessible, digital photography reduced the attention given to each frame by the photographer. The large number of photos meant that each photo received a smaller portion of the viewer’s attention. I can’t produce any figures but I think the overall quality of photographs went down.

The most important advantage of digital photography is that it captures the image in digital. I mean the working of the camera itself has not changed. It still has a shutter and it still has the familiar controls. Digital photography has distracted many of us from the basics of the camera and the focus has shifted from how the photo is to captured to what can done with the digital format. Digital post processing has therefore become popular and there is no ends to what can be achieved by means of digital alteration.

Value of the Process

Digital photography has had an impact of the traditional photographic process. Some digital warriors might label the process as something that is tedious, unnecessary and out of time. They are probably right in their own ways but the photographic process has its merits. The process forced photographers to learn the basics thoroughly, the expensive chemicals, film and equipment gave respect to the shutter button and the time spent developing the photograph attached value to the photo. I think there is something meditative about the time spent in the darkroom. Handling the film, the chemicals, the paper, the effort that goes into the squinting eyes in the red light – all of this enriches the photo. The photo is not just the information captured on a medium but there is story and sweat to back it. Just like a piece of art made by someone well known receives a second look, the process prompts the viewer to think about the photo.

Center for Alternate Photography, GOA

The center was started by P. Madavan, Srinivas Mangipudi, Edson Dias and Enith Perez to promote alternative photographic process. The main motive behind the center is to give back the photographic process its due importance.

The stated mission of GOA-CAP is

“…a Centre of excellence to work on the alternate photography and archival research with ongoing programme of projects that utilizes an historic process and a commitment to the continued development of preservation and conservation techniques for photographic materials…”

CAP offers a space called Galerie Daguerre, named in honor of the French pioneer Louis Daguerre. It is intended to be a place to present “exhibitions dedicated to Alternative and classic photography”.

CAP also houses a darkroom, a small office cum living space. Here is a list of the services they offer.

Pin-hole Photograph Exhibition

CAP took off with an exhibition of photographs taken using a pin-hole cameras. The exhibition started on the 8th of Jan and ends on the 11th. I was stunned at the simplicity of the camera. It is made using a matchbox, a piece of tin plate, some sticky tape and a coupe of film roles. Pin hole is a lens-less camera where the small hole acts as the lens and projects the image on standard film.

The simplicity and low cost of the camera means that it is suitable as experimental platform. The first camera I saw involved a single matchbox. The thickness of the matchbox determined its focal length. To get pics with narrower angle of view, two matchboxes were placed adjacent to each other. In another version of the pin-hole camera, a mask was placed in the form of a piece of cardboard with slots of different shapes. Yet another version had two pin-holes creating a photo with double image that created interesting geometric patterns from the subjects. Try doing this with a conventional camera and you’ll start seeing the benefits of going low-tech.

Here is a photo from the double pin-hole. Happy New Year.