7 July 2009

the revolution

Last Thursday I had a Penland Coffee Shop meeting to discuss the coming plans for an upgrade to the Photo Studio in Northlight with my friends Dana Moore, the program director here, and Robin Dreyer, who does all the photos for the Penland publications, plus Mark Boyd our coordinator and two photographers and teachers who live nearby. What we were really talking about was the whole Future of Photography and its place at a School of Crafts like this. The main issue is, of course, Digital Photography. At this point in time, all chemically-based photography is an Historical and Alternative Process, even the black-and-white and color processing that is still taught in most schools. Photography as a contemporary medium is heading into purely digital technology (although I suspect we will still have film and paper for a good fifty years more.) But since Penland is a place where so-called obsolete techniques like blacksmithing and letterpress are taught and preserved, we were discussing whether it also makes sense to keep Penland in the Chemical Past.

Of course, there are computers here, and even the class I just taught had computer-derived negatives built into its course description. In fact the last session was a completely digital class, where students shot and projected their images and then made final digital prints. The school bought two new iMacs and printers just in time for it, which we made rather heavy use of ourselves over the last two weeks. It’s an odd fact that some of the people who stretch the digital capabilities of Photography are the same ones using 19th-Century processes, often generating digital negatives to be printed in Platinum or Gum, as we did. It’s all part of an expanding Photographic Art, really.

But computers have their own pitfalls (as I’m sure anyone reading this knows…) And no one really wants to see a class full of summer students at Penland hiding out in front of the screen (and, um, checking Facebook every few minutes, like you know they would!) There is a lot of pressure to add a digital lab, not only for the photographers, but for the other craftspeople who combine several centuries of technology, particularly the printmakers and textile designers – but everyone else too. Heck, last session’s glass instructors were into using 3-D rendering to previsualize their work, and to “photograph” it as well. It’s still strange for me to have a few computers up in Northlight already, and wifi access in many studios, and I have certainly seen students drawn into the usual Time Suck that computers create.

But that’s not even the real issue here. The point, I believe, is to preserve and encourage the Old Ways, not as historical relics but as alternative methods of creation. It’s still an open question as to what Penland will do, but I think in our discussion we made a strong case for keeping just a couple of computers around as support technology (like a dry-mount press or hairdryer or color processor) for those who will use it (i.e. all of us.) But there’s no need to make a state-of-the-art computer lab at Penland (with its constant necessary upgrades and expenses.) There are other places students can go for that. Penland will be only that much more special as it continues to preserve past techniques for future makers to rediscover, over and over again.

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