Lenswork - Ouch!

[thebanana]

I can look at an awful lot of photographs online.

But those images aren't available in my "library", ie the room in which I do most of my magazine reading

[Ian Leake]

I like Lenswork. Don't get me wrong. I look at images on line, as well, for my twenty bucks/month, but I'm not fooling myself that it is photography. They are images, facsimiles of photographs. The net, or a fine photo magazine is a wonderful way to peruse and expand ones understanding, especially if one lives where real photographs can't be readily viewed. That's where it stops for me. Some cold glowing phosphor, plasma, or LCD, or ink sprayed on paper isn't a photograph. A real print by a master photographer/printer is something entirely different to behold.

This is a very important point. The ultimate experience is seeing a fine print "in the flesh" without glass. (On the wall behind glass is a close second.) Everything else is a reproduction. While some reproductions are very, very good, many are very, very bad (and none of them are the real thing).

Digital images viewed on a screen often look nothing like the original. They have a different size, different tonal range, lost detail, processing artifacts, etc. Plus they're lit from behind the image rather than using reflected light.

I wish I could see more original prints, but most of the prints I see are reproductions. So I try to find the best reproductions I can. One of the big benefits of LensWork is that Brooks finds interesting portfolios and sends great reproductions straight to my door. They're not the real thing, but they're a whole lot better than most, if not all, online reproductions. Yes, they're an editor's selection. But that's the job of an editor: to edit. And on the whole I think Brooks does a great job at editing.

[Lee Shively]

I agree that Lenswork presents photographs as well or better than any other magazine available. I subscribed to it for several years. One thing I wanted to do in those years that I was a subscriber was to buy some of the limited editions photographic prints they used to sell. There were some classic "real" photographic prints available--one I particularly admired was the Wynn Bullock "Navigation By Numbers". They offered these prints at reasonable prices but I was too damn poor at the time to afford them. By the time I could afford them, Lenswork wasn't selling photographic prints anymore and was concentrating on the online magazine subscription.

I don't get to see many photographic prints other than my own. My way of seeing great photography has always been in magazines and books. Since magazines have to present a broad range of photography to appeal to a broad spectrum of subscribers, I've found I'm just not interested in the vast majority of what is published there. I let all my subscriptions lapse. I buy books by and about photographers. That way I can concentrate on the photographers and the types of photography that interest me the most--and that runs in cycles.

[Rob_5419]

This is a very important point. The ultimate experience is seeing a fine print "in the flesh" without glass. (On the wall behind glass is a close second.) Everything else is a reproduction. While some reproductions are very, very good, many are very, very bad (and none of them are the real thing).

Interesting opinion. The 'Ultimate'??? experience?

Naaa.....admiring the negative and refusing to print second rate from any of them is an even more ultimate step

I think you miss the point about photography: photography has a long history of reproduction. The more a photographer/printer tries to divorce photography from reproducibility, the more he unwittingly moves into the field of commerce and fine art pretensions.

The real thing is never the print. The real thing is never the negative.

[airgunr]

I've been subscriping to the extended edition with the DVD disk for a couple of years. I'm happy with it.

[bjorke]

http://acomplaintfreeworld.org

[bjorke]

Okay I will pick on Brooks a little bit.

There is usually a small pile we reject because every single blasted image is dead center. Bullet composition. Boring.

[JBrunner]

I think you miss the point about photography: photography has a long history of reproduction. The more a photographer/printer tries to divorce photography from reproducibility, the more he unwittingly moves into the field of commerce and fine art pretensions.

The real thing is never the print. The real thing is never the negative.

The reproducibility isn't the point. Not at all. If you speak of the essence or spirit of a photograph, then I understand what you are communicating, but articulating a perception between a web based image on an LCD screen, and a physical print (the photographers exact intention), as different experiences, is hardly a commercial or fine art pretention.

[jd callow]

Interesting opinion. The 'Ultimate'??? experience?

Naaa.....admiring the negative and refusing to print second rate from any of them is an even more ultimate step

I think you miss the point about photography: photography has a long history of reproduction. The more a photographer/printer tries to divorce photography from reproducibility, the more he unwittingly moves into the field of commerce and fine art pretensions.

The real thing is never the print. The real thing is never the negative.

I guess real is a subjective term. There is a real difference between seeing a scan, halftone, dupe etc and seeing an original print and a projected transparency has no peer with regard to reproduction. There isn't any pretense it is simply the reality of generational loss and or the deficiencies associated with reproduction. It may be that an image's content is such that reproduction quality is not an issue, but I think this is generally the exception and I'm hard pressed to believe that the higher quality of an original does not improve the viewing experience.

[bjorke]

I guess real is a subjective term.

Well, sure. BUT:

If you are doing work for magazine reproduction, don't fool yourself about the "purity" of the print. Irving Penn didn't start with platinum prints, he built a fabulous body of work which reproduced well by the millions. The magazine page, the newspaper, the web page -- THESE ARE JUST AS REAL AS ANY OTHER PRINT. Penn found that many of his negatives could also be used to make fantastic art objects for display on rather expensive walls. But anyone who claims that photography is implictly "art" and that mass reproduction is somehow a lesser thing either doesn't know what they're talking about or they're blowing thickly pretentious smoke.