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Photography’s Path Toward Extinction, After an Era at the Forefront of Art
Photography is said to be going extinct. And when it comes to gelatin silver photography, which relies on chemical materials and optical processes, that claim does not feel far-fetched. The cost of everything from film and photographic paper to darkroom chemicals has soared, while many of these materials are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain.
I studied photography at art school in the early 2000s, just as photography and moving-image practices were transitioning from analog to digital. Even then, there was already a sense that gelatin silver photography was beginning to fade. Still, photographers had a range of papers to choose from, including Ilford, Fujifilm, Kodak, Agfa, and Mitsubishi’s GEKKO. When making work for exhibition, it was almost taken for granted that fiber-based paper, with its richer tonal range, was preferable to the more convenient resin-coated paper.
Color darkroom printing was considerably more demanding than black-and-white, but it was still something you could manage on your own. You could order photographic paper directly from manufacturers and even hand-print photographs well over a meter wide.
There were also prominent platforms for emerging photographers, such as Canon’s New Cosmos of Photography and the Hitotsubo Exhibition, a competition for emerging artists held at Guardian Garden and later renamed 1_WALL. Guardian Garden itself has since been relaunched as BUG. These competitions were widely recognized as launching pads for young artists, with HIROMIX, Rika Noguchi, Mika Ninagawa, and many others getting their start through these platforms and going on to build major careers. There really was a time when photography stood at the forefront of contemporary art.
Personally, though, I found large-format cameras such as 4×5 and 8×10 models cumbersome compared with the speed and flexibility of digital photography. Back then, I couldn’t wait for digital cameras to take over. I even thought photographers much older than me who remained attached to gelatin silver photography were being overly nostalgic. It was also around this time that several photography manufacturers came together to launch the Gelatin Silver Session, a project aimed at preserving and passing on the culture and techniques of gelatin silver photography.
Looking back, those frustrations now seem like an incredible luxury. With that not-so-distant past in mind, perhaps photography really is going extinct.
