RETROEVOLVE THE PHOTOGRAPHY - By Antonio Graell. January 2009


Pixels, bits, CCDs, CMOS, sensors, chips, RAWs, resolutions, binary language,hexadecimal language, megapixels, etc ... Photography has been invaded by technology, has been stuffed with hardly grasped odd words which are howeverused compellingly every time it´s one´s turn to speak on photography. We don´t talk about emulsions, developers, toning liquids or pushes any longer. As a matter of fact, there are young photographers that haven´t even seen an enlarger or watched how the image "raises" on sticking the paper into the developer tray.

All this technological breakthrough has made easy that a great number of people make up their minds regarding the capture of those instants by means of a digital camera or mobile phone, persons who without that technology wouldn´t have ever made a picture.Even, some of them have been able to see in themselves a talent which they would have never found in other way. And everything because of a pair of both plain and significant things: the cost thriftiness and the easiness conveyed by digital technology to photography.


It´s patent that taking pictures "old fashion style" has turned into a "pleasure" reserved for a few ... nostalgic ones? reactionary ones? artists? sybarites? It´s all the same either how they are called or their reasons. The significant side is not to forget that photographs were already made much before the silicium, bits and pixels. It wasn´t so easy as currently, since cameras and films "didn´t know" how to do the pictures. Neither was it so comfortable as presently when you sit in front of your computer, "develop" your pictures without staining yourself and handle them at will, but the most curious aspect is that the photographic industrydoesn´t withdraw from its persistance for launching programs "emulating" the appearance of those images made with emulsified silver halides, light and chemicals as basic ingredients, along with some such picturesque components as "metol-hydroquinone".

As far as I´m concerned, I must admit that I´ve let myself be carried by the "technological side" of photography, to some extent because of necessity and partly due to comfort, but I have always defended the "magic" I do perceive on developing and turning my images into positives, wrapped up by the dim red light of the laboratory, breathing in the scent of those chemicals and struggling against that inopportune speck appearing on the most inappropriate place, albeit I´m also the first acknowledging that this digital technology has enabled me to do images that would have been impossible any other way, so I won´t ever speak ill of eithertype of photography.

Actually, till recently, the digital technology has needed the "ancient" chemical photography, but it´s not that way any more. Both of them are self-sufficient and although the industry will attain a steady evolution of digital photography and increasing its "quality", I deem that it´s time to invert roles, to put digital photography in chemical one´s service. I´m interested in searching for the way to retroevolve the photography, taking those digital images overcrowdedwith pixels and deconstruct them running the inverse way, digitally capturing my images and treating them until getting an archive and shaping it onto a "classic" black & white paper, but without using printers, inkjet devices or any of the fixtures invented for such an aim, starting from a digital world so as to come back to the argentic origin of photography.