Normally, I try to transcend borders, but borders are sometimes necessary. The problem with borders is when one person or group of persons create it and everyone else follow it without reflection. The border I’m going to reflect on here is the one between a photo and a non-photo. At what processing stage will my photo stop being a photo and become something else? I think it has to do with simulation.
A photo is a simulation of something. Let’s say I’m on a walk. My eyes is drawn to a beautiful tree. I’m starting to think about the tree as a photographic motif. I raise my camera, compose, measure the light, chose an aperture, shutter speed and ISO. When I’m home, I import it into Adobe Lightroom or another raw converter. Since I am shooting in raw format, the image isn’t really developed in the camera but in the raw converting software. Lightroom display my photo of the tree with default adjustments of exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation etc. I increase the the contrast and saturation with the curves tool and export it to Photoshop for some fine tuning. I’m starting to make some parts lighter, some darker. The motif is still in my mind and I’m trying to create a realistic or artistic simulation of it. Perhaps it has gone a few months. I really don’t remember the motif any more, but i estimate it from the photo, based on my knowledge of “reality”.
But at some stage the motif is blurred out. The image becomes something other than a simulation. It becomes something in itself. It becomes its own world with its own rules. Evaluating the image from the rules of the photography tradition infallible leads to one of two conclusions: it’s a badly (or too much) processed photo, or it’s not a photo at all. If I display it the image in a photography community, or in a photography exhibition, the image is going to be experienced with ‘photography eyes’, photography values. If I display it in an art exhibition, the evaluation criteria are different.
Perhaps “simulation” would work as a border concept for texts also, when thinking about realism and non realism in literature for example.
