DariusHimes

After posting my interview with Stephen Shore a few months ago, I’ve received comments from several photographers along these lines:

“I’ve never seen the reasoning behind using large format laid out better than in this interview. Of course, to achieve the effect Shore talks about, today you can use a high resolution digital camera of considerably smaller format as well…”

This comment in particular made me think about how the tools we use affect our results. I’m talking about the relationship between craft and art.

There are several ways that any tool—here, a large format camera—affects the way one works and, by association, affects the way one envisions and thinks about one’s surroundings. The first, and perhaps easiest to grasp, is the physical interface required by the tool. When Shore stated that he’s “pretty much” put the 8×10 camera away because it’s a lot of work getting it out, he’s talking about the physical interface. It’s a heavy object; it requires a tripod; it’s bulky; there are a lot of attendant tools—level, loupe, dark cloth, shutter-release cord, something to stand on, large lenses and large film holders—required to make a single photograph. All of the physical activity required to make an image becomes part of the process in an intimate way and creates parameters that your body must accommodate and work within.

This physical activity bleeds into the mental activity of making an image with that particular camera (and this is the second way in which one’s tools affect the way one works). The methodical precision required by the 8×10, I’m arguing, leads to a methodical precision on the mental level. Because a relatively large amount of time is required to simply deal with the equipment, a corresponding large amount of mental time goes into the image—the type of image—that one makes. The camera physically and mentally slows you down, makes you more attentive in certain ways.

The converse is true of using a hand held camera; the different physical interface with the tool leads to a corresponding different mental interface with one’s surroundings. Walking around with a 35mm SLR is simply physically different than walking around with a tripod and an 8×10. We also mentally adapt how we look at the world based on the camera we’re using at the moment. And on an even more minute level, different types of hand held cameras make one think and view the world differently. The physical interface between a point-and-shoot (like the Ricoh* GR1, for instance) and a 35mm SLR (like the Leica* R8) is quite different.

This can also be understood when it comes to “thinking” in color or black-and-white, and represents the third way that one’s tools affect the way one works. I’ve heard (and am intimate with the experience myself) many photographers talk about “seeing” in black-and-white or color. With certain tools—in this case cameras and film/pixels—you assess the world in one way, and with different tools, you assess it another way.

The comment the photographer made that one can “achieve the effect” of Shore’s work with a high-resolution camera is false on all three of these levels. Walking around with a hand-held medium format camera is both physically and mentally different than walking around with an 8×10. The last element, which has to do with the materials of the tools, also comes into play here. The way light reacts with film and chemistry is also different than the way light is registered digitally on sensors. It’s not better, just different. Perhaps the best analogy here is the difference between oil and acrylic paint. They simply look different because they are different.

Granted, some of the differences are extremely subtle, but to the trained eye, they are just that differences. (For example, place a sheet of text printed with letterpress next to a sheet of the same paper printed with the same text from an inkjet and the majority of common folk won’t register the difference. Show any one familiar with printing presses and they will see the wide differences.)

Just as there are radical differences in the look of an albumen print and a Polaroid print, or the look between a Cartier-Bresson photograph and an Irving Penn, my argument is that not all of the difference rests on the creative vision of the artist. Some of the difference—and how we value or judge or critique those images—is because of the tools, their materials, and our physical interaction with them.

Any thoughts?

[added 8/14: I'm not concerned with placing a value judgment on any one group of tools/cameras. If anything, the 20th century has amply shown that great images and works of art can be made with the humblest of tools as well as the most complex, technologically advanced of tools. My main concern was to map out some thoughts about the mere fact that our use of certain tools will affect us in ways that are specifically relative to those certain tools. Some people will find that they are most creative with one particular tool used over and over while others will find themselves able to flow from tool to tool. Again, my point is that with each different tool and its variables, they will "picture" things slightly differently. Thanks for all the comments!]

* I’m not on the payroll of any camera manufacturers.