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There has been a great deal written about digital photography over the past several years. It’s time to step back from all the hype for a more grounded assessment. Because this assessment comes from me, a photographer who has done no digital work, it may appear negatively biased. In my defense, I will note that I feel digital approaches are perfectly legitimate, I regularly invite and work with digital practitioners as co-instructors with me on my workshop program, and I have not hesitated to judge digital images as "best in show" when I have been invited to jury exhibits. So while I don’t do it myself, I’m not biased against it.
There are two basic points I wish to emphasize in this article. The first is that traditional photography carries a host of powerful tools in its tool chest that are neither diminished nor superseded by the advent of digital. Second, there are problems with digital methods that are ignored or glossed over regularly, and these probems should be recognized and openly discussed along with digital’s many attributes.
Digital photography is new, yet some fine work has already been produced. Traditional photography has been around for more than 150 years, and extraordinary work has been produced by hundreds of greats, including Kertesz, Adams Weston (both Brett and Edward), Cunningham, Emerson, Sudek, Mark, Uelsmann, Salgado, Porter, Haas, Caponigro, Cartier-Bresson, Riis, and many, many others. We can expect fine work in the future from either approach.
Unfortunately, we can also expect a plethora of bad work from either approach, which brings me to my starting points about digital. A computer is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. A camera is a tool. A darkroom is a tool. A paintbrush is an artistic tool. A pencil is one, too. A computer will not turn the average person into an artist any more than any of the other tools will do so. It’s the mind behind the tool that creates art, not the tool. Those who think they will make an artistic breakthrough by approaching photography through digital methods, are in for a tremendous surprise. It would be like thinking that by going to a pen you’ll become a better writer than you have been with the use of a pencil.
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