As mentioned in another thread, I had a long, ...special conversation with my father yesterday. One of the topics was his decision to resign from his job (he’s a photographer, but working mostly in development).
And some of his thoughts… well, I just wanted to share them.
“I wanted to learn a craft, I wanted to work with my head and my hands. And as a photographer, I could do that, I could make beautiful pictures. But it’s no longer the profession that I learned. With digital photography, all I do nowadays is sitting in front of the computer. And that’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to spend 8 or 9 hours a day in a windowless room, typing and clicking. What my boss needs, and what he wants me to be, is a printer. And that’s not what I am.”
“I remember a photographer who took a shotgun and fired it at a roll of film. It made amazing pictures, with the light entering through the shot holes and spreading… And now you’ve got people with a digital camera who tell you they’ve shot a picture.”
Even to me, photography has lost its magic. I remember, when I was little, I went to work with him sometimes, and he took me into the darkroom and stuff, and it was all very special and wonderful. He’d take pictures of us, or of special things and develop them himself, play around with them…(I love the wrong-colour pictures of the orchid he and Mama got at their wedding. I’ve got two of them on my bedroom wall.)
But now? Now I’m taking pictures myself and put them on my computer, and if I want them on paper, I can either print them myself or send them to the shop to have them printed there. Printed.
No more magic.
(And I'm kind of scared that the same will happen to me one day. There's not much in a market garden that can't be automated. Sowing, watering, potting... there are machines for all these things.)
I think we've just proven that our greatest power
is silliness!
- cyan
babbling about books and plantsmy crazy customers