[mark]

Originally Posted by Katharine Thayer

Mark, I think you're overinterpreting my post. I said earlier in the thread that I have no argument with people who are more interested in creating negatives than in creating prints, and I haven't changed my mind in the intervening days.

My post of today was a response to a suggestion made earlier in the thread by someone else (sun of sand, maybe?) that the act of visualization IS the creative act; the creative process consists in visualizing an idea and it isn't necessary to bring that visualization into form. I'm paraphrasing here from my recall of the earlier post. I was simply saying I don't agree with that idea. But all I was saying was that visualization isn't worth much if not realized; I wasn't saying that the realization must be a print, or that a person who only takes the realization as far as the negative is deficient somehow; that's not what I was saying.

I don't think there is a correct answer to the question "which matters to you more, the negative or the print?" I'm not sure it's true that we have fundamentally different ideas of what photography is, and I'm not sure it matters. The print is 95% of the thing for me, but as I said, I've got no argument with anyone for whom the negative is even 100%; it's no skin off my nose if you never made a print. As I said before, I can't identify with that for myself, but I don't have a problem with it, if that's what floats your boat. Okay?
Katharine

Ok. I must have missed that post. I understand what you are saying and I have to say that I have definately made prints. ZI paid for a large part of my teaching certification classes by working in the darkroom of the college special collections. I got to print some amazing works for exhibition.l I think this is where I developed my idea that the print was another, different work of art. It was fun to be given a negative and then told to make an exhibition print. Then we would compare the original print from the photographer with mine. They were always different. My interpretation was mine. I enjoy darkroom work and went through serious withdrawls when I no longer had access. I started printing on POP and really liked it. I am just not in a rush to do it anymore. That may change someday, when the course work is done, and the boys are a bit older.

Thanks for making your post clearer.