I very much enjoyed the essay - both for content and the engaging presentation. Thank you.
It did give me pause for thought, however. (And I'm surprised it hasn't generated more comment here.)
And that thought is that, as regards the subject matter of the essay, photographers in some fields often work at cross-purposes with their colleagues in different fields. While some of this is due simply to different perceptions coming from different backgrounds and approaches to photography, some of this is also due to large dollops of self-interest hiding behind a desire not to confuse the "general public" about the purported nature of photography, which almost always seems to somehow suit the self-interest of the photographer concerned.
As Alain has so ably pointed out, the eventual fine-art print has substantial input from the photographer at every stage from the occurrence of the idea to the production of the print and the standard of presentation and framing it is supplied with. With all acknowledgment of the best of intentions, however, you must also acknowledge that the scene in front of the camera bears a substantial resemblence, in many regards, to any its appearence to anyone who happened to be there, photographer or not, and to any photo taken at that place and time, reproduced (well or badly) by means of more-or-less mechanical reproduction. If this weren't so, photography could hardly sustain its separation from painting as a form of art, which has been there from its inception. After all, if mechanical reproduction is nothing, and a pure representation of the artist's vision is all that need be there, then painting (and it's digital equivalents) are indeed a more pure form.
Conversely, there are those who wish to pretend the photographer has almost no role in the eventual print. This may sometimes be for genuinely professional reasons, but can also be for entirely self-interested ones). Photojournalists, police photographers and others would have it that the photograph is a neutral, perhaps even objective, document of things as they were or are in front of the lens, and the photographer is irrevelant or perhaps even an encumberance. After all, if the photographer has a great deal of influence on the eventual photograph, might it not be that the photographer uses this influence to push his or her own point of view? Perhaps a difficult and somewhat nuanced question: best to simply pretend that the photo is a mechanical and objective record. (This viewpoint, I think I can confidently predict, will be most heavily pushed by those who use the "artistic" side of photography to knowingly publish deliberate propaganda - while pretending it is simply nothing more or less than a depiction of reailty. They would take that view, now wouldn't they?)
And I think that's part of the problem Alain describes: people believe its the camera that "takes" the image, rather than the photographer who "makes" it, because many people (including photographers) have been telling them so, at length, implicitly or explicitly, all their lives. Their own experience with family snapshots may reinforce this: as technology has improved, snapshot cameras have taken "better" photos with no change in approach by the person using them. The actual processing from latent image (film or digital) through to final print is opaque to them, so someone who applies intelligence and judgement to these processes to achieve high-quality output will not be acknowledged as their work is unknown. Or, worse, they may be seen as being manipulators of a process that "should" be purely mechanical.
I think that's where much of the confusion Alain describes comes from: no matter what those making artistic use of the medium may tell them, other photographers are telling them that photography "is" or "should be" a matter of using the camera to record "what's there", relegating photography, at best, to a position of "found art" which many don't see as truly creative. In any dispute on the matter, its easy to understand why the general public gut-reaction is to side with the "objective record" view, and the view that its the camera that matters, because that accords with their own experiences using cameras.
...Mike
