If it is created with a camera is it "Photography"

[ic-racer]

I was looking at the work of J Beever (http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/index.html)and was curious how he made the drawings.

Without knowing how he did it, I figured he used a projector at night and drew from that, but he states that he uses a camera on a tripod to mark out these drawings as they are created.

[Greg Davis]

Do a google video search for him. Here is one I found (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfn8Dz_13Ms).

[PBrooks]

The simple answer is no.

[Mike1234]

Maybe he's using a camera obscura (??) to make traces.

[Greg Davis]

It is a contemporary use of anamorphic perspective drawing similar to Hans Holbein the Younger's The Ambassadors (http://www.apug.org/forums/forum50/forum50/www.math.nus.edu.sg/.../teaching/holbein.html).

[dwdmguy]

Go to Michaels Craft store on line and check out the Photo to wall projector and you will then see.

[Marco B]

Do a google video search for him. Here is one I found (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfn8Dz_13Ms).

Great video! Loved to see this.

From the video, it just seems he uses the camera to do quick checks from a fixed point, so as to have the perspective completely right from a single point.

For the rest, I just think he has great skills and experience and a great feeling for perspective. Yes, some people do use projectors to make drawings, but like this guy, there are others who can do without.

In this very short video of the Italian artist Luciano Ventrone, who makes photo realistic oil painting, you can at the end in a very short shot, see him tracing from a projection on his canvas, based on pictures of still lifes he made before. The last sentence he speaks reads: The picture is the starting point, to go elsewhere...

http://www.galleriaforni.it/trailerventrone.htm

This drawing is by myself and I made it just sitting in front of the scene with nothing but a pencil and paper:

http://www.boeringa.demon.nl/pencil_drawings/slides/haarlem_st_bavo_bartoli.jpg

[Q.G.]

Is tracing a photo (with pencil on paper) photography?

[Greg Davis]

Here is one of my fellow faculty member's work (http://www.popbaroque.com/) using this technique in the classical sense.

[keithwms]

I actually think that Vermeer's work with a camera obscura is one of the earliest forms of photography. If the scene has been put through a lens, and thus has lensing effects... an apertured perspective, in/out-of-focus elements or overall pinhole diffraction softening etc., then it is a photograph.

So, yes, I do think this is a form of photography. But it's not worth debating, really- I can imagine plenty of valid arguments contrary to mine.

[Marco B]

And there is of course the famous "The Ambassadors" painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, that includes an anamorphic scull detail:

http://www.linesandcolors.com/2006/05/09/the-ambassadors-hans-holbein-the-younger/

http://www.linesandcolors.com/images/2006-05/ambassadors_450.jpg

[keithwms]

But the anamorphic skull could have been (and almost certainly was) done without a lens or camera obscura....

[Greg Davis]

The only reason the chalk artist uses a camera is to get a consistent point of view and then record the work when finished from that same point. Holbein the Younger did not use a camera obscura, just imagination.

[df cardwell]

If it is created with a camera is it "Photography"

If it is created without camera is it a photograph ?

Precedent is on the side of photographic process, not the camera.
So, if it is made with a camera, it is not necessarily a photograph.

Below, a photogenic drawing by William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Welcome back, df!

[2F/2F]

No. If it is created with a pencil or ink, does that make it a drawing? No. Plenty of other things are done with pencil and ink besides drawing. Cameras need not have anything to do with photographs. They existed and were used for various purposes long before photographs could be made with them, and then even longer before fixed photographs could be made with them.

As for the drawings mentioned in the OP, of course they are not photographs. They are drawings. A camera was used as a tool to draw the pictures. That is all.

[PBrooks]

I answered shortly earlier but will expand:

I answered no and here is why. In the old days I made serigraphs and used a process camera in the process but in the end it was a serigraph not a photograph. Here is something to think about, where I think the hybrid people are confused. If you take your negative and scan it into a computer then print it out on inkjet, it is not a photograph. Just because you use a photographic process does not make the final product a photograph. Now, if you print it on a light jet then it is a photograph. The point being that the final product must be made with light. There is no way to argue this point. By this a d... capture printed on silver halide paper is a photograph. Where a 7x17 neg, carefully composed and developed then scanned in, inkjeted out is not a photograph.

[ic-racer]

After reading the posts I would say that camera obscura drawings are not photographs. Basically he is doing the camera obscura thing and just drawing on the other side of the lens.

Another point; Due to the ephemeral nature of the drawings (chalk) and the requirement of a specified viewpoint, one could argue he is as much a photographer as John Pfhal (Altered Landscapes, 1974-78). That is, if we interpret his photographs as the final product (though the artist may or may not agree with that).

[ic-racer]

And there is of course the famous "The Ambassadors" painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, that includes an anamorphic scull detail:

Nice, Marco, I forgot about that one.

[Christopher Walrath]

Doesn't really match the original question. If it is made with a camera (recording light) then by definition it is photography. The examples proferred could be considered photography in some circles, denounced in others.