I heard the bibliophile interview on NPR - the point about paper being a perfect technology un-changed since its invention was wonderful.
Digital v. analog discussions are usually only signal-to-noise debates. Isn't it paradoxical that photographers are extremely concerned with resolving powers while at the same time are bent on removing information that they feel detracts from their picture's other formal issues? "It could be sharper and needs some cropping." Could painters better render what they see with smaller brushes?
I'm not sure about smaller brushes. I've peered into a Monet mural from as close as the National Museum would let me and was mesmerized by his pointillist brush work only to blown away by what I thought was a fifty inch photograph portrait but turned out to be made from finger prints in India ink.
I think the common feature remains with principals of composition (N.B., I didn't saw "rules"). One of the most basic of these is the need to simplify. Frank Lloyd Write (sp?) took the cliché form of it and made it practical:
Less is more unless more is better.
Or something like that. But then there are very many painters who use 3 inch brushes with great regularity. And very many photographers still use banquet cameras .... with film. And others use wet plate colloidian.
I guess some of us will never learn or keep in step with progress. Anyway, I'm still wearied by the crossed-signal noise of this debate.
Peace! Sidney
