|
Arcane knowledge... |
|
|
|
19-01-2005 |
I sometimes feel some resistance from artists who use a unique technique to share their knowledge. The argument goes like this : "I produce unique pieces of art, with a unique technique known only to me, if I share this technique everyone will start copying me, I won't be unique anymore, and people will get tired of seeing the same stupid trick and stop having any interest in my work, thus I will die poor and forgotten, which is not the reason I got into art in the first place..."
Now, while I understand fully the reasoning, and share the fear of dying poor and forgotten, I think that arcane knowledge is not a good thing. My side of the argument goes like this : "My art needs some technical support, lenses, cameras, films, that I could do myself if I had my whole life to do them, but which I don't, and many people around the world are potentially much better at grinding the front element for a Plasmat, or at machining the front standard of a 16x20 camera, or at brewing the emulsion to make FP4+, than I will ever be."
Sure, photographer did it in the 19th century, build their own cameras, coat their own glass plates, but frankly, while I could (I think, and I'll try my best to do it...) try to build a simple box-bellows camera, I'm pretty sure that Ron Wisner, Kieth Canham or Dick Phillips are better at it than I am...
What does it have do to with acranes ? And why am I going down the same path as my post from yesterday ? Well, because that's where I'm going with my current photographic projects, that's why I spend hours working to build the Mamut Photo website.
The photographic industry has, like any other industry, only one thing in mind : getting more money, and it's a fair goal, that's what the whole global economy is built upon. The problem is that the ULF market is a niche market that very few companies serve. And none of those companies can depend on the ULF market to survive. Camera companies build hundreds of 4x5 cameras for every 11x14 or 12x20 that comes out of the assembly lines. Lens manufacurers have been catering more and more to the digital market. And the only move in the opposite direction in recent years has been by Schneider, with the introduction last fall of two lenses aimed squarely at the ULF market : the Fine Art XXL 550mm and 1100mm lenses. 
This here is the 550mm f11 XXL lens. It goes against pretty much every tendency in the photographic market in the last 10 years, and that's why I'd like to send major kudos to Schneider-Kreuznach for even thinking about this and putting it though the costs of developpment and research and pre-production, etc... With their current price tag, I doubt that they will sell a lot, but the simple fact of putting a product like that on the market today says a lot about the commitment of Schneider to the photographic community...
Now, we were talking about arcane knowledge, isn't it ? I think that one of the reasons why Schneider has made such a bold move is that there is a growing international community of ULF photographers, who share knowledge about their photographic passion. If every photographer who got his hands on an ULF camera kept to himself and didn't want other photographers to be interested in shooting larger formats, pretty soon he'd be alone with a camera for which he wouldn't be able to find film, lenses and support.
I'm a scientist first, so maybe that's why I believe so strongly in the sharing of knowledge... |
|
