Sep 06 2007
The computer as a studio
When I complained to dear Sylvaine that I missed my photo studio, she simply answered that her computer was her studio. She had me thinking about that for days. The studio is a place where I control light and background. Photoshop can do that too; so she is absolutely right.
Lately I was asked to participate in Harvest 2007 where I will be one of the very few photographers who worries about the physical integrity of a photograph. The show is in Atlanta, Georgia, right in the middle of the US Bible belt. I was not allowed to show genitalia in my work and I was shocked to see how many of my pictures do, but looking at the works presented on the web site I had to admit that there is absolutely nothing wrong with composing or recomposing images with the help of a computer. My camera is a small computer too, so why should I make that distinction?
A digital camera does all sorts of things with reality; it changes the perspective, it fucks with histograms at the owner’s convenience, so why all this nostalgia about an old fashioned camera with a negative? I do not know anymore. I thought I did a few years ago when I posted a few rants here about photographs being manipulated too much and too often to be called photographs any longer. I guess I am just getting old.
Three days ago I posted my short movie Smoke on the MySpace site of the Rome Film Fest to see if my work would come through the first selection. In order to do so I had to create my own MySpace site first and I did so after a lot of cursing over Microsoft’s approach to web content.
I tried to do some networking for AMEA while I was at it and I was amazed about the creativity of artists producing erotica while at the same time not being allowed to post real nudity. I soon found out that a naked behind is not considered nudity, breasts are also okay as long as there are no nipples visible. What’s the fun of breasts without nipples? And what is so obscene about breasts in the first place? They completely lost me. For a moment I considered photoshopping two nipples on an ass to see if my site would be censored because of that.
Instead I just went on with life.