{"id":5577,"title":"Pioneers of Digital Photography","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/pioneers-digital-photography","version":"c098d317e414e23e035557d0029b06c69d96313fa76e30d3479e829a20b7120d","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:04.4394922+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Mary Ross"},{"role":"Curator","name":"Mary Ross"}],"authorKeys":["Ross, Mary"],"subjects":["Texts by Author"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publisher","value":"Open Space Gallery","url":null},{"label":"Place","value":"Allentown, Pennsylvania","url":null},{"label":"Organizer","value":"Open Space Gallery","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0773","url":null},{"label":"Curator(s)","value":"Mary Ross","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Pioneers of Digital Photography.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/pioneers-digital-photography.","publication":"Mary Ross. Pioneers of Digital Photography. Open Space Gallery. 1998.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/5577.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC0773","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"},{"label":"http://www.geocities.com/maryross_art","url":"http://www.geocities.com/maryross_art","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null},{"label":"https://www.culturefront.org/culturefront/speakers.html","url":"https://www.culturefront.org/culturefront/speakers.html","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":15930},{"name":"abstract","source":"recorded publication abstract","generated":false,"characters":795},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":654},{"name":"archive_summary","source":"existing ETC archive summaries: ETC0773","generated":false,"characters":731}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"This essay first appeared in the catalog for Pioneers of Digital Photography, an exhibit at Open Space Gallery, Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1998. With support from the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts and private foundations, curator Mary Ross explores this transitional period in the history of fine art photography through the work of twenty artists whose electronic and digital images from the 1960s-1980s are rarely brought together. In a lecture and slide presentation at the Video History: Making Connections conference at Syracuse University on Oct. 16-18, 1998, Ross examined the connection between digital photography\u0027s precedents and the early history of video art. \u0022I actually feel that in the next few years---it won\u0027t be very long--- the electronic image is really going to be the medium in photography\u0022. Ansel Adams, 1980 (1) This quote from America\u0027s most recognized photographer came at a time when a number of fine art photographers and visual artists were already combining photographic processes with electronic media and imagery to create new forms of expression. Their early work with photocopier, medical and electronic imaging, communications, video and computer technology helped change the notion of how photographs and art can be made. While it would take more than 15 years before imaging technologies existing in 1980 would combine personal computing and photography into a digital photography within reach of the general public, understanding the experience of these first generation artists provides a coherent view of the development of digital photography as a whole. Pioneers of Digital Photography explores this transitional period in the history of fine art photography by examining digital photography\u0027s precedents. More than 60 two-dimensional works by 18 artists have been assembled including exceptional vintage work from the 1960\u0027s, 70\u0027s and 80\u0027s. Photography and early electronic art were both shaped by the social, political and cultural climate of the 1960\u0027s and 70\u0027s. The mood of the time was to reject the past, the influence of powerful institutions and mass media in particular. \u0022Television has attacked us for a lifetime, now we strike back\u0022 said Nam June Paik, one of the first artists experimenting with television technology. (2) While technical mastery and fine print quality remained a powerful force in creative photography, influential teaching artists like Robert Heinecken encouraged photography students to think beyond traditional silver-print techniques. Many of Robert Heinecken\u0027s images were taken directly from mass media, manipulated with traditional and/or unconventional techniques, and recomposed into social commentary. (3) Photographers were experimenting with mixed media, photo sculpture, non-camera and \u0022appropriated\u0022 imagery from a variety of sources. Older photographic processes like gum bichromate, cyanotype and platinum printing were rediscovered and employed in new contexts. In 1974, classic photographer Walter Chappell revived the Kirilian process (also known as electro-photography) to create high voltage photograms of living plants for his Metaflora series. Artist Mary Jo Toles adapted the Kirilian process and has been extending the concept of high-voltage photography in her work since the early 1980\u0027s. With experimentation in the arts so characteristic of the times, it was inevitable that the New Photography and new technologies would soon converge. (4) New technologies typically evolve from the needs of government and industry then eventually spread to the rest of society. Pioneering artists were often able to access equipment before it became available to the general public. Since emerging technologies were prohibitively expensive for individuals, they collaborated with technicians and scientists at corporations, had residencies at universities or research centers, or established their own cooperatives through which they could share expenses and apply for grant money. Once they accessed equipment, artists typically began to expand the machine\u0027s original purpose. They would modify equipment, adapt it for use in a larger system, or design new tools that were more \u0022user-friendly\u0022 for art making. By the late 1960\u0027s black and white copy machines were the most accessible means of altering images electronically and artist Sonia Landy Sheridan among the first to exploit their creative potential. Just as exposure, processing temperature and other variables affect photographic images, light source, dyes, electrostatics, magnetics and other factors affect photocopier output. When 3M Corporation invited Sheridan into their color research labs in 1969, copy machines were mere facsimile producers. As she began taking copiers apart, exploring how they made images and identifying the ones most useful to artists, Sonia Sheridan discovered still-imaging, graphic capabilities that went far beyond their original purpose. For Sheridan and her students at the Art Institute of Chicago, photocopiers eventually became just one device in a larger system of image-making tools that would include video, computers and sound. (5) Intrigued by similar possibilities, photographer William Larson began using early Fax equipment to combine and transmit photographs, graphics, text, voice and sound by telephone. In 1965, SONY Corporation introduced the first portable videotape recorder and camera. Nam June Paik, who had been turning TV sets into art objects for some time, was among the first artists to buy one. Considered state-of-the-art, the Portapak weighed 20 pounds, recorded black and white video, and cost a few thousand dollars. While this new technology made personal, portable video recording possible on a limited scale, it was still too expensive for many individuals. By the early 1970\u0027s, pioneering video artists had set up a number of independent, not-for-profit media centers. The Kitchen in New York City (founded by Woody and Steina Vasulka), Ralph Hocking\u0027s Experimental Television Center (ETC) in upstate New York and other media centers (including some public television stations) scattered around the United States provided artists with access to video technology and a place where the public could see independent work. Paik and other video artists, and designer/technicians affiliated with these media art centers, individually and collaboratively built low-cost versions of broadcast video equipment or created new video tools specifically for artists. One invention, the video synthesizer, was a limited edition, hand-built machine that used electronic circuits and devices to manipulate the TV signal. It enabled artists to mix video images, generate color, stretch shape, and create other effects at the flick of a switch or turn of a dial, and see the results immediately on the TV screen. The style of video art that resulted was called \u0022image processing\u0022 or \u0022video synthesis\u0022. (6) Pioneering video artists like Peer Bode and Woody Vasulka used photography to document and promote their work, as part of video installations or as source material for videotapes. (7) Since many of the earliest examples of video art that were made on reel-to-reel videotape have deteriorated, documentary photographs from these tapes have become an important part of the historical record. While many artists were exploring video\u0027s time-based characteristics, photographers Mary Ross, Carl Geiger, Julius Vitali and Laurence Gartel used the video synthesizer to produce still images on film. (8) For these photographers, the video synthesizer functioned as a kind of electronic darkroom. Any and all photographic tools and techniques could be integrated with video image processing. Positive and negative images could be made instantly. \u0022Keyers\u0022 created high-contrast effects similar to Kodaliths. Colorizers added color to black and white negatives or changed the original color of slides or prints. A computer could \u0022grab\u0022 or freeze-frame an image from a playing videotape for further processing. As they manipulated images electronically with video and audio synthesizers, early digital prototypes and a computer, they could see the effect of each change on the TV screen. The result would be photographed from the TV screen onto color or black and white film, then printed onto photo paper, or manipulated further in the darkroom. Their experience in the image processing studio at the Experimental Television Center (ETC) and other media centers is a fairly representative example of the early convergence of photography, video and computer technology in the 1970\u0027s and 80\u0027s. More than twenty-five years later, contemporary artists still bring their source material (videotapes, photographs, drawings, sculpture, live models, etc.) to the Experimental Television Center for image processing. A younger generation of artists brought up with personal computers and digital technology seem to find the unique and unpredictable quirks of analog video fascinating. The fact that these vintage synthesizers and digital prototypes can be combined with contemporary media and technology to manipulate images manually, mechanically, electronically and digitally makes them still viable for creative work. Collaboration with technicians was especially important for artists working with computers during the 1970\u0027s. While simple computers could be assembled from kits, powerful mainframes were initially in the hands of government, academic and research institutions. For example, Sheila Pinkel\u0027s Monument Valley Transform, an appropriation of the Ansel Adams\u0027 photograph, was realized at the University of Southern California School of Engineering Image Processing Lab. Programming was done using the card punch method of instructing the printer. Various shades of gray were simulated from ten symbols on the printer belt whipping across the front of the paper, making thousands of impressions a minute. Nancy Burson\u0027s composite photographs are a product of many years of personal collaboration with engineers and software developers. In addition to meeting her artistic needs, the collaboration resulted in numerous software programs including pioneering work on a technique now known as \u0022morphing\u0022 and various imaging programs used by law enforcement and surgeons. (9) Linda White and Joan Truckenbrod\u0027s work demonstrates the hybrid techniques often employed by artists combining digital and analog media with photography in the late 1970\u0027s. In Electronic Patchwork, Truckenbrod used mathematical descriptions of phenomena in the natural world to develop a computer program that creates a series of patterns (a rather cumbersome process), turns the computer monitor upside down on a color copier to make a print of each pattern, then transfers the pattern to fabric with a hand iron. Linda White used television imagery as a \u0022window on the world\u0022 and real-time source material for photographs. Appropriating the style of bordered Indian paintings and their depictions of everyday life, she replaced the edge of the TV screen with a computed border programmed on an Apple II computer. As an award-winning Life magazine photographer, Howard Sochurek spent considerable time covering the aerospace industry and advances in medical imaging technology. Sochurek envisioned adapting these new imaging technologies into a system that could turn ordinary photographs into \u0022electronic paintings\u0022. Eventually, he was able to buy the necessary video/computer equipment, and have it customized to his specifications. In 1979, he set up his own company to explore the liaison between camera and computer. (10) It took years of work, and $25,000, for Sochurek to acquire the first digital workstation offered to the general public. It wasn\u0027t until 1984, with the introduction of the Apple Macintosh, that computers became affordable and accessible with enough graphic power to make them useful art making tools for many more artists as well as the general public. For artists using the latest advances in e","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":15930,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}