Thursday, July 14, 2005

Art: Museum or Shoebox?


Slate has an interesting piece on "When is a snapshot art?" There's a slideshow of nine of Lee Friedlander's photos. For the record, I only think four of them rise much above the level of what tumbles out of a machine at CVS. [link]

On a related note, I just want to express my dismay at the death of black and white photography (at least in the true old-school darkroom sense). Fake "B/W film" (ie: C41 process) is all you can find except at the most high-end photo stores, and now Kodak announces it will no longer manufacture B/W paper and chemicals. A real shame. Changing a digital shot to B/W in Photoshop is just not the same thing. This all but ensures that this kind of art will only be attainable as a hobby or interest to those with plenty of money to get diminishing (or imported) supplies.

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