Actual Products Intensify Print Quality

Today I attended an afternoon workshop at SF Camerawork led by Ariel Goldberg, sponsored by Nonsite Collective. This is what happened to me:

This trip was fraught, as it was only a picture in a picture in a picture, and no one knew who would ultimately be looking at the photos, the final images from the outside. Only we know that the print quality gets better when the product is in the image, or rather when there is a product, not just an imagined one or a referenced one, but a real 4 color product. Its either that or it’s a sense of responsibility that will help the image quality improve. Take ownership of this experience and get into the photo’s shoes, try to sympathize with the paper quality or the texture of the vinyl, and have the self discipline to understand how hard it must be to print on such a low thread count. Feel how impossible it must be to exist with so much tooth that even the simplest image gets distorted when it is merges with you.

The distracting part of all this is that from the get go, no matter if there is ever paper or vinyl, there is or was a photographer, or we hope that there was, and they will never experience texture. But what if the camera was just set on automatic, and if it even cleans its own lenses? What if all the cameras now clean their own lenses? If the lens is always clean, and the photos are always taken at the right time, or every time, on a schedule, then is there nothing behind this photo, is it just a trace of the automation? And the self healing, self sufficient, selfless photographer who never has to take a picture, who can’t even properly dirty the lens? If looking at photos is a mechanical process, which seems to be the case, and taking the picture is too, and they clean their own lenses, then what are you doing? If we enjoy the look of taking photos, the ethos, the freedom of association, the inside jokes and the body language, then we would also probably really enjoy the cleaning of the lenses. It’s good to be needed, you know?

I would like to step up to the podium. I would like to propose a camera club, where we all focus on the maintenance of the camera. We turn off the auto clean function and we enjoy the cycle of the dirtying of the lens, and then of course we enjoy the cleaning of the lens, which we do by hand, with two hands and a handkerchief, just like before time. The lens is so transparent when we clean it, and it could be totally self satisfied, but the truth is that you can’t stand to leave it alone. Don’t let it clean itself, because once it is clean, it becomes everything it could ever be, its total potential is maxed out, and then where else does it have to go? There’s nowhere but up to go until you’re at the top, and then you are pure, clean, alone. And it’s just a lens, and that is not the life worth seeing through. This clean lens obsession and maybe eventually the camera needs to consider whether the lens is a healthy part of its body, or if it should be removable. Its amazing what goes into an automatic image of chance, the lens must be so clean, it must almost not be there.