DOES DIGITAL MEDIA SPELL THE DEATH OF 35mm FILM AND ITS AFFORDABLE ACCESSIBILITY TO POOR AND MARGINAL ARTISTS AROUND THE WORLD?
June 6, 2004 (Press Release) --
(Reston, Va.) Last year in the United States, for the first time in the history of photography, camera retailers sold more digital cameras than traditional 35mm film-based cameras. Within a few short years many film photographers think it is very likely that film will vanish from your local camera supply store. The current sweeping revolution of DVD replacing VHS as the preferred consumer standard has clearly established the supremacy of digital media in the market place. As digital technology rapidly replaces conventional film techniques and equipment, an experimental artist from Mississippi, doggedly resists the temptation to “go digital,” and in a style worthy of a New Orleans jazz funeral actually celebrates the death of 35mm film.
Artist James W. Bailey calls his violent style of photographic art “Rough Edge Photography.” He buys damaged cameras in thrift stores and mutilates his film and prints. Lenses are scratched, holes may be punched in the film canisters with a needle, and prints may be burned and torn, along with the original negatives. “I push found and discarded equipment to the extreme. I like the radical imperfections, the accidental quality that can be found in mistreating the equipment, negatives and prints,” Bailey says. “For me, classic photography had become too weighted down by its own rules, conventions and practices. This, combined with the impulse among so many photographers to abandon film and rush toward digital, made me want to explore 35mm film in a radically brutal fashion. ‘Rough Edge Photography’ is the result of my wanting to hang on to film until the bitter end.”
An emerging artist from Mississippi, who has created an underground firestorm of controversy among many fine arts photographers with his outspoken criticisms of digital photography, Bailey has been juried into the 47th Chautauqua Exhibition of American Art. Organized by the Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts, the 47th Chautauqua Exhibition of American Art will take June 20 – July 11, 2004, and will feature 75 contemporary American artists, including Bailey.
Artist James W. Bailey calls his violent style of photographic art “Rough Edge Photography.” He buys damaged cameras in thrift stores and mutilates his film and prints. Lenses are scratched, holes may be punched in the film canisters with a needle, and prints may be burned and torn, along with the original negatives. “I push found and discarded equipment to the extreme. I like the radical imperfections, the accidental quality that can be found in mistreating the equipment, negatives and prints,” Bailey says. “For me, classic photography had become too weighted down by its own rules, conventions and practices. This, combined with the impulse among so many photographers to abandon film and rush toward digital, made me want to explore 35mm film in a radically brutal fashion. ‘Rough Edge Photography’ is the result of my wanting to hang on to film until the bitter end.”
An emerging artist from Mississippi, who has created an underground firestorm of controversy among many fine arts photographers with his outspoken criticisms of digital photography, Bailey has been juried into the 47th Chautauqua Exhibition of American Art. Organized by the Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts, the 47th Chautauqua Exhibition of American Art will take June 20 – July 11, 2004, and will feature 75 contemporary American artists, including Bailey.
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