I visited the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth the other day. They had some wonderful Singer Sargent paintings hung, including one of my favorites: “Smoke of Ambergris.” They also had five stunning 30” X 40” photographs by Elliot Porter, who is also one of my favorite artists. Standing at a normal viewing distance, their luminous colors were heart-stoppingly beautiful. When I got up close, however, they were not perfectly sharp and the grain of the film was obvious. Rivers of discussion have been poured out on numerous photographic blogs about the topic of whether the new 36 mp Nikon 800/800e has killed medium format cameras. Apparently the most important thing in photography is to put your nose up to the glass and concentrate on the difference in detail between a 22mp, 36mp and 80mp image printed at 30” x 40.”
The Porter exhibit, however, points to the total irrelevance of this kind of discussion. Why do we make images in the first place? Is it really to display the highest resolution technically possible? The sharpest detail? To determine who has the biggest print? Praxis is not purpose. I could care less about how the Porter images were created (although dye transfer method he used could produce some luscious colors); I only wanted to stare at the miracle of their existence and the greatness of heart that created them. We create images to speak the unspeakable, to capture the divine, to move the viewer who stands in the presence of beauty (at a normal viewing distance!).
No. 38: Elliot Porter and “Pixel Peeping”
I visited the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth the other day. They had some wonderful Singer Sargent paintings hung, including one of my favorites: “Smoke of Ambergris.” They also had five stunning 30” X 40” photographs by Elliot Porter, who is also one of my favorite artists. Standing at a normal viewing distance, their luminous colors were heart-stoppingly beautiful. When I got up close, however, they were not perfectly sharp and the grain of the film was obvious. Rivers of discussion have been poured out on numerous photographic blogs about the topic of whether the new 36 mp Nikon 800/800e has killed medium format cameras. Apparently the most important thing in photography is to put your nose up to the glass and concentrate on the difference in detail between a 22mp, 36mp and 80mp image printed at 30” x 40.”
The Porter exhibit, however, points to the total irrelevance of this kind of discussion. Why do we make images in the first place? Is it really to display the highest resolution technically possible? The sharpest detail? To determine who has the biggest print? Praxis is not purpose. I could care less about how the Porter images were created (although dye transfer method he used could produce some luscious colors); I only wanted to stare at the miracle of their existence and the greatness of heart that created them. We create images to speak the unspeakable, to capture the divine, to move the viewer who stands in the presence of beauty (at a normal viewing distance!).