I will confess to you a secret, painting and drawing are my first loves, and photography is my second. There is something about the experience of using my hands to create line and mix color that is engaging. I love the immediacy of painting and how it involves the majority of my senses-I can see the marks I am creating, feel the soft lead under the pressure of my hand on the texture of the paper, and hear the sounds of marks. I respond to the rhythm of music I am listening to, and smell the paint.

I am in a quandary. I also love using my cameras. I love to be outside exploring and visually problem solving. I love the sound my shutter makes as it snaps close, and its weight in my hands. (I don’t like the carpal tunnel I got last summer from shooting long hours without a break) Often times when I am shooting, I feel disconnected to the actual image that I am creating. I dial the correct numbers in the camera for the aperture setting and shutter, I compose the image, I release the shutter, and science takes over. It doesn’t matter if I’m shooting film or digital, there are still several steps that must happen before the finished image is produced.
 
During the industrial revolution in Germany,  Walter Benjamin wrote about the transition art was making moving from the handmade image to one that was created with a camera or machine. Benjamin believed that art was ultimately beginning to loose its “aura”. He believed that this aura was almost magical or even spiritual, and accompanied a piece of art that was an original. A painting, for example, with energy in the brush strokes and the presence of the pigment sitting on the canvass pointed directly to the artist.

Cameras and film became increasingly popular around the 1930’s, and artists began experimenting and using the media more often.  Benjamin believed that using the technologies of reproduction, thus resulting in the loss of an “original” left the viewer with an altered and flattened experience, void or shattered of the “aura” that he believed was terribly valuable.

Benjamin’s criticisms didn’t change the direction art was shifting, but made a compelling observation that the process of an artist can greatly impact the viewer’s experience of the art giving it life, or creating a distance. Now, the process of the artist can become even more important at times than the work that is created.

To bring this full circle, I have begun a new series of drawings on vellum layering up to 6 drawings to create the original. I am illuminating the drawings from behind, and photographing them. The final form the drawings will take will be a photograph. I am considering Walter Benjamin’s thoughts as well as my own process and it’s outcome. Benjamin, I’m wondering what thoughts you may have on digital scanning and laser prints?