The Negative and The Positive

I have been thinking a lot about presentation of images. As my workflow becomes more and more analogue, I still see a use for digital. The ability to share with people not in my home feels important, even if you lose the tangible quality of a print. However I've noticed a few things happening in the digital spaces of photography. People are mimicking film, the qualities of film stocks can be downloaded as Photoshop actions. I've also seen people present their images with white borders as if it was a print. In the most rare but agrregious of these mimics, I've seen people add a border that looks like a film negative, even putting “Kodak Portrait 160” on it.

Broadly speaking, If you cannot trust a presentation is authentic, I think the value in doing it authentically is cheapened. So how do you present a film image as a film image, what is one thing a digital photo can't mimic? The solution I've come to, present the negative - flaws and all. Show the ingredients to your work. Show what you started with and where you ended up. The physical negative is something no amount of Photoshop can create. Sure, you could make a fake negative that exists only in the digital world, but I will still have my physical film as evidence - which cannot be faked - at least not without an exceptional amount of resources and skill.

Going forward, on this blog, and on social media, this is how I will be presenting my analogue work.