What Are iPhotos Missing?
Some of today’s top photographers are ditching digital for the magic and mystery that’s only possible by using old techniques. We’re talking really old.
Dear Friends,
Thanks to the digital revolution of the 1990s, the art and craft of photography has evolved at the speed of light, just in a few decades. There was a time, as photographers from the pre-digital era will remember, when uncertainty was an expected part of the process: The darkroom was a place of discovery, and every image carried the weight of time, serendipity, and intention.
In today’s featured story, Laura Fraser takes us behind the scenes in a largely forgotten corner of the photographic world, where a few photographers are employing 19th-century techniques (and a level of patience) that modern technology has all but edited out. What emerges from this slow process is more than nostalgia. It’s the quietly radical idea that the imperfections and unique demands of these older methods create an important level of depth that’s absent from all our ubiquitous, AI-perfected digital images.
We hope you’ll enjoy reading “What Are iPhotos Missing?”, written by Laura Fraser. The featured photographs are by Russell Monk and Daniel Borris, except where noted.
This story is free and accessible to all on the main Craftsmanship website. We hope that you’ll enjoy it greatly—and share it widely.
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Sincerely,
Todd Oppenheimer
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Craftsmanship Magazine
Preview our new photo essay:
What Are iPhotos Missing?
written by Laura Fraser, with photography by Russell Monk and Daniel Borris, et al
Three years ago, at the Torrente Galería in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I noticed a photograph with an unusually sharp but unearthly quality. The photo, of nothing more than a cactus field, had the light and atmosphere of a silvery, partial lunar eclipse.
In order to create this image, the gallery owner told me, the photographer had gone back to antique photography methods. These involved using a tent as a camera; he’d even given the tent a name—Saturno. Suddenly the photo, already prickling with mysterious energy, took on another dimension.
I immediately bought the piece, and every time I look at it, I feel as if I’m wandering in an ancient, cactus-studded dream. After walking into that dream over and over, I decided last year to visit the photographer, a Spanish expat named Tomás Casademunt, who lives in Cuernavaca, a mid-sized mountain town just south of Mexico City.
Instant Gratification vs. Precision
To make sure I understood Casademunt’s work, and that I asked the right questions, I took along two veteran photographers, Daniel Borris and Russell Monk. Like me, they live part-time in Mexico, and both had tinkered themselves with antique photography. Both had also spent their careers exploring exotic places (via helicopter, pickup truck, tuk-tuk, or first-class flights) to shoot celebrities, shamans, refugees, guerrillas, and musicians for national publications ranging from Rolling Stone to The New York Times.
In those days, given the constraints of celluloid film, pros like Borris and Monk (who often work together) would leave their shoots not knowing whether their work had been brilliant or they’d blown the assignment. As wild as their adventures were, both photographers said their greatest excitement often was getting home and waiting to see how their images emerged in the darkroom.
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ICYMI…
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It’s interesting to think about the difference that arise from imperfections in a piece of work that are due to actions out of our control because of friction in the process of making vs imperfections in a piece of work that are intentional and added in as a way bring our own human voice into the work. This piece coveres the first beautifully.
This is beautiful writing, and it brings home how much the embodied dimension matters even in visual media. The whole wet-plate and the physical uniqueness of each piece makes the image feel alive. There's a reason the digital version of the same scene doesn't do the same thing.
I recently came across Laura Marks's book The Skin of the Film, which makes a case for what she calls "haptic visuality," images that work more like touch than sight. And that's the case with these photographs, you feel the time in them.