I saw this photo of the Day from PDN Pulse and was in awe of its sheer presence and beauty. It also reminded me of the book I have called the Antiquarian Avant-Garde.

The images from Joni Sternbach’s series on Surfers, are deliberately using the associations, surrounding the technique used to create them, to imbue the photos with an added sense of meaning and depth. Through deliberately adopting an old process she has added a very different quality to the images. One description could be that they are “Victorian looking” despite the modern clothes and styles of the subjects portrayed. Using the tintype technique Sternbach is keying into the emotions, perceptions and feelings that we, as a viewer, associate with those times to give added weight and feeling to her work.

Sally Mann, Eva Series, Lexington, Virginia

Is this bad? No, not at all, but to me it represents an interesting paradox to the boom that photography has enjoyed through the digital medium. The Antiquarian Avant-Garde is a compilation of work by photographers using a range of older photographic techniques, and these photographers have adopted the methods of the past, in the hope of reinventing the process and final outcome of the art object. The likes of Sally Mann, find the process of picture making to be part of the magic; through their use of specific techniques their connection to the subject matter is increased, as they are investing much more of their time, emotion and empathy into the scene. Consequently, we as a viewer can read more and bring more to those images.

Sally Mann deliberately allows defects in the image, caused by the process, to add to the emotion and message of the image. This can be seen in her What Remains series with the pictures of her dead pet dog, the use of technique, with all its imperfections and pictorial leanings, has added an ethereality to the images, giving weight to the narrative about transience and death.

Why adopt these techniques? Well the Antiquarian Avant-garde really took off in the 1990s and into the 2000s a time when digital was beginning to emerge as a very potent force in the photographic world. It emerged as perhaps a counter point to the mass of imagery that assaults us today.

As a society we are bombarded with imagery, like no other has been, with both moving and still imagery filling our TVs, newspapers and computer screens. The many diverging uses that photography is put to can only serve to diminish the impact of other photography that follows and photographers have to struggle to better or reinvent the images they produce to compete. James Johnson covers this a bit in his essay discussing the book Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (which is a book worth reading).

Whilst digital has been a revolutionising force in the photographic world, it has also affected the relationship between photographers and their images a great deal. The reduced number of images actually getting printed (by photographers) has an effect on how photographers view and relate to their images. A physical print of an image carries so much more weight and emotion than a screen based image can; either in a gallery or in the comfort of your own home you can hold, move and interact with a printed image so much more than you can with a screen based image. So, by adopting these older techniques that have a much stronger aesthetic than the more uniform one of digital, the photographers are stepping above the masses of photographers today. The technique itself also demands that prints are made, that the image becomes a physical entity creating that greater interaction and connection with photographer and viewer.

Jerry Spagnoli, Untitled, New York 2007

As well as setting themselves apart these photographers are also embracing the foibles and random nature of the process to imbue increased meaning and value, it creates and embodies emotion, something that adds to the viewers experience and allows them to interact more with the image than if it was a straight digital (or even a modern film) image.

What is the extension of this? Well ironically it could be the very thing that lost out to the negative and its unparalleled reproducibility. Fox Talbot sealed his place in the history books with the development of the negative/positive process. As a photographic process it superseded the daguerreotype because it was ultimately reproducible. Ironically the reproducibility of photographs is part of its current dilemma. Take September 11th for example, one of the most photographed events in current history, Jerry Spagnoli’s daguerreotype of that moment is a unique view on that day, one that is so different to the millions of others that exist.

Since Talbot’s invention photographers have strived to bring in added value and meaning such as Ansel Adams, who played a large role in the introduction of limited series in photography, therefore limiting access and adding value. A daguerreotype by its nature can not be accurately reproduced, they need to be seen in the flesh to get their true nature and interacted with and as an art object it is these their very flaws against the reproducible negative that are perhaps it’s strongest asset today. Unique, physical and very different, they can offer something that no digital camera can.*

*Yes, you could “do it in Photoshop” but then we’d have to send the boys round.

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