I like to tell myself a little white lie: we’re returning to the old ways in photography because we’re realizing that they’re best. The truth, of course, is a deeper conversation around a lack of originality and self-rediscovery. And so the work of photographer Frank Ockenfels is enough to make any portrait photographer searching for ideas and inspiration want to dive into the darkroom. Photographers these days yearn for more than just the cold digital experience. There are sensory needs greatly missing from digital photography that make us an eye floating in space with no other senses to give us information about the world. At Fotografiska, NY, photographers will experience the crazy conversation that photography has with itself. And for only a little while longer, you can dive into some very difficult questions about photography.
The exhibit showcases mixed media, an idea that art buyers tried to bring back a few years ago, only to die to online algorithms. So, I like to think of the exhibit of Ockenfels not as a resurrection of this idea but as a reanimation. The idea is dead — and we’re just playing with it like a puppet and plaything. We are Frankenstein — and like Ockenfels, we’re picking and choosing the best parts for our creation until we give it life. And once it has life, it needs to be treated with the kindness that every being deserves.
Those ideas are given life in the exhibit as we see notes that Ockenfels wrote to himself originally and later incorporated into his final pieces.
Ockenfels’s work, I believe, brings up a very important conversation about photography today. The following questions were ever present in my mind while visiting the exhibit:
- What is a photograph?
- How do we make a photograph?
- What is the difference between an image, a snapshot, and a photograph?
- Can AI make a photograph if so many made collages before us and called them photographs?
- Are composites photographs? If so, then does it really matter if they’re made by a human or not?
- Do labels matter in a world where photographers have been fighting for so long to be recognized as artists?
Looking at much of Frank’s work, one wouldn’t think they’re photographs. Instead, they’re mixed media composites done in the darkroom manually, with every painstaking part done by a human. In the darkroom, one couldn’t summon the force of AI in the cloud to magically put a leopard into a photo of the jungle. One also needed to find ways to blend the lighting together through exact toning. None of these things were done automatically — they were all done by hand. To that end, the technology has reached its peak in the analog world.
For the creation of his work, Frank has an entirely different conversation around gear. It’s not about the cameras, the sharpness of the lenses, etc. Instead, it’s all about the paper, working with peel-apart Polaroids, alternative processes, and compositing the photos together.
All of this brings up an even bigger question: does the process matter? If an AI can make all these things within an image, why are we saying that what it’s doing is not a photograph? If a person makes the entire thing by themselves digitally, does that make it a photograph? Are all the composites of star trails on social media put over random night scenes to be labeled as composites or photographs? Does doing this digitally in a day when all this work can be quickly done for us make the process less artistic? How can we find evidence in images made with authentic artistic intent against those made with a few clicks of a button?
I think the idea of the artistic struggle is common among so many photographers. Authentic photography often falls into two segments: creating or documenting. When creating, there is often some sort of artistic struggle being put forth in the making of the images. The artistic struggle can be a beautiful process that merges the artistic and creative minds together while the two try to converse in a second language.
These are thoughts that I believe every self-respecting artist who calls themselves a photographer should be asking themselves when visiting the exhibit at Fotografiska NY. More importantly, Frank Ockenfels might have the answers to what might separate us from AI.