Detail in photography is a whole philosophy unto itself, with ideas that are really juicy to think about (the aggregation of signifiers, for example, and the limits of a physical photograph to “really” capture a moment without additional qualifiers and technical evidence). But the vernacular usage of the word “detail” on the internet refers to something very technical. So, when it comes to talking about details in a photo, most everyone is only talking about resolution, contrast, and sharpness, and you either have your photo down to pinpoint perfection in those terms or you’re spitting in the face of these gear heads.

Popular Expectations

Detail down to grain or pixel level is what this new general audience of photo enthusiasts wants to see. Often in order to satiate their appetite for detail, a sort of technical clarity is forced on an image that doesn’t really require it. Sharpness and local contrast are two popular methods enthusiasts use to hone detail in their work, perpetuating the bias towards exaggerated detail. Local contrast, which is the distinction between similar sets of pixels next to another, can be digitally exagerrated to increase the perception of detail, but it usually has a tell-tale effect of creating a glowing or traced-over look when you overdo it. What I see in a lot of recent online portfolios is that, for my taste, there is way too much over-sharpening and local contrast all for the sake of accentuating detail, particularly in the shadows, and to achieve a vibrant “pop.” It’s as if when there isn’t enough contrast people are afraid of their photo being labeled as “flat” and lacking professional appeal, or hearing “it’s dead.” Which, again, is to taste. It’s part of the same nonsense that keeps insane hobbiests searching for a super sharp SLR lens when they should really be trying out large format photography.

When a negative or a digital picture gets transmitted to paper, or even reduced for size on average web pages, it forces a slight reduction in detail. Ansel Adams worried about this famously, to the extent that he meticulously described the Zone system he used to manipulate the expected differences (exaggerating detail in his prints rather than lose it).

“My genius, if I have any, is in the slideshows, in the narratives. It is not in making perfect images. It is in the groupings of work. It is in relationships I have with other people.”
- Nan Goldin, interviewed at fotopeta.

However, luckily everyone still agrees that there have been successful images that weren’t apologetic they lost detail due to a poor lens or bad printing technique that resulted in fewer fine details. I think of some of my favorite grainy Nan Goldin shots, or anything from the best photo journalists. But these are becoming exceptions to the rule. While even a faint tin print could get away with being commercially successful 150 years ago, it would struggle today now that we’ve elevated the expectations of the camera, lens, and printer’s acuity. A tin print and Polaroids today seems artificially gimmicky or blatantly commercial in their retro-appeal. The heightened expectations are coming not only from hobbiests, but within the art market, too. Mitch Epstein’s ginormous prints have famous clarity down to 600 pixel per inch level. In fact, I suppose that was a part of the appeal for me in seeing the Cartier-Bresson scrapbooks. They were decidedly lo-fi. And that’s the issue at hand: the only reason to go lo-fi today is to create the illusion of vintage appeal and “classicism.”

Above: The sky on the twilight of Philippine’s suicide. Winterthur. Switzerland. By Nan Goldin, 1997.

The amount of preserved detail in the print is historically/journalistically very important, but it’s not really going to make or break a good photo, no matter how much everyone at Flickr or Smug Mug talks about detail’s necessity. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in lack of detail or unnatural contrast when it’s used as a complimentary aesthetic. Yet, despite what Nan says about not trying to make a “perfect” image, what is expected from a photo in terms of strong local contrast and detail is often the popular litmus test for its success to laymen, because this is something that is easier to judge than subjective meanings.

How Did This Happen?

Thanks to years of exposure to advertising photography that’s crackling sharp (except for what’s airbrushed smooth) and their own inkjet printers at home, people now have grandiose expectations. Amateurs can afford quality what was nearly impossible 20 years ago for professionals. They share tips and gadget lust together in online communities. When they do get out, they’re getting up close to gallery prints, almost pressing their noses against the paper to judge the quality. They want to be wowed by the technical difference between what they can do themselves with off the shelf cameras and printers. And with that in mind, they are looking closely at the artwork’s fine details. As a terrible outcome, in galleries there is a cruel and popular expectation now that a large print is primarily meant to be digested for observers keen on discovering tiny physical details and subtleties, that degradation of detail is to be avoided. Thanks to the growing consumer appetite for technology, educated viewers are losing the battle for popular acceptance of ambiguity and our agility to formulate critical hypotheses about what ambiguity represents.

Maybe this is an effect of “Holy Grail” imaging, the continued search for a medium that captures with God-like precision every detail you could ever hope to use, which slowly prejudices our respect for cheap/old technology by holding us captive to the dream that more is better.

When we lose our collective taste for lo-fidelity, (cassettes, polaroids, VHS) I wonder what happens to that part of our imagination that used to fill in the blanks. Our critical vernacular is certainly effected. George Lucas felt that impact of digital detail had eroded pop culture audiences imaginations so significantly that he digitally revised Star Wars so it wouldn’t fail the new level of visual muster in the same way albums get “remastered.” The difference is that emphasis is moved ever so slightly in new directions, frequently towards the most commercial attributes.

The Language Is Unclear

The words we use as critics confound the issue, because of the difference between our intended meanings and what the viewer has come to expect the words to mean is now very far apart. If a print lacks a certain amount of contrast or detail it risks failure by becoming “too subtle.” I’m referring here to the language of “lacking” or “adding subtlety” that amateur photographers use, when really they’re confronting unwanted ambiguity in their prints and they’re trying to add commercial value. And we’re getting habituated to see loss of detail or contrast (or too much contrast) as gimmicky, contrived, and amateurish. However, I’ve actually found myself dialing down the contrast in digital photos more often than not, which frequently opens up dark areas with better veracity in print than forcing it open with curves or “Fill Light” commands, but at the expense of detail.

A phrase I hear often in describing good work is that there is “subtle tonality and fine gradation,” which means there is a high fidelity of minute detail. This phrase irks me, because I think if it were used properly, the critique would be implying the opposite: there is less visible detail overall, because it’s understated. The word usage for most photographers seems to be that “subtle” refers to nuance in tone and detail that is still objectively visible, and the word “fine” implies that it takes a sensitive eye to spot the difference. This reinforces the photographer’s privilege as authority over the detail they’ve captured. I would argue that given the right subject there is much to find appealing in the very, very subtle gradations of a low contrast image where the eye doesn’t easily mark the shift in a tonal gradient. In this way, “subtle” is meant as “not obvious.” Granted, the image will be softer and more ambiguous, more “fine.” It calls upon the viewer to really analyze the photo to make sense of what they are seeing, to cogitate on the interference of lens, camera, and print.

Perhaps it takes repeated viewing of famous bad prints that look good for us to recognize that we’re too prone to accept sharper detail because it serves us a more easily understood surface. I prefer some mystery. A photograph isn’t reality, no matter how close the approximation. It’s the small nuance and hints that bring a picture alive. That’s my way of saying an image is more subtle with less detail.

Above: An example of subtle contrast in a monochrome painting by Richard Poussette-Dart. However, as a Pointillist painting I hope you can see it isn’t really monochrome. Are most male photographers biased against low-contrast images?

Low contrast images are easy to make, but when contrast is lost in printing, often detail that was once there in the negative disappears completely on paper, as if erased. Whether it’s intentional or not, it never scares me and causes me to go back and boost the contrast of the negative. It’s amazing to me how great a concern any potentially lost detail is for other photographers, particularly Zone system fanatics. Thanks to them, the imaging industry will never run out of schemes to help aggregate more resolution with new camera or printer technology.

High Contrast, Sharp, and Angular = Male

I feel very self-conscious of being a male observer, because when I was studying color theory at university I learned that it’s a very masculine trait to reinforce tonal contrast (we males tend to like starker contrasts, which was useful for hunting) and that women, by virtue of different eye genetics, can more easily distinguish contrast between hues than men (unfortunately, ethereal washed out contrasts are often seen as stereotypically weak or feminine). For example, the complimentary contrast of green and red (with the same tonal value) is apparently something women perceive more clearly than men. As are other color combinations that nature has given women a terrific advantage in seeing as more complex (think about the wide difference between peach and salmon).

And what do we do, as male photographers, but frequently place more currency on tonal contrast and B&W. So when we work hard to make a little detail stand apart in print and we resort to boosting contrast, however tiny the increment, why are we conditioning ourselves again and again to say that it’s better than with less contrast, as if we don’t trust the communication of the image without it? Why is this frequently more important than hue/chroma contrast and something that we take up in technical discussion more often than color? Which example of subtlety is better? I honestly can’t say, and I don’t think there’s an answer even in most situations, but it’s something I think about.

What’s worse is that blurring detail is often synonymous with the stereotype of femininity as “soft”, or yielding and submissive. The trend of hyper-detail and strong contrast, is conversely, very much one of exercising a male dominant vision. This goes back to ideas of classical portraiture where a rule of thumb has been to portray the aggression and strength of character using hard contrasts to exaggerate lines and wrinkles, while the women were to be smoothed and given a more sensuous curving profile, all in keeping with how the male gaze wants to see things. It strikes me as quite obvious that the fame of Walker Evans and Dorothy Lange underscored a sensibility for realism that was still grounded in that male ethos. Even the photographs of Stephen Shore still collude with that stereotype, with dominant lines and spacial contrasts, despite the nuanced color.

And now, with almost 20 years of Photoshop and 10 years of decent digital cameras, that both make the aggressive sharpening effect even easier to accomplish, the problem seems to be that hardly anyone wants to go against the grain (or back to grain, if you will).

Keegan from Lise Sarfati’s recent work in NY Magazine’s article “The Waiting Room.”

I was in a waiting room a few weeks ago, leafing through the magazines, when I saw Magnum photographer Lise Sarfati’s name printed at the bottom of some really good editorial work. It also made me stop to read the article. Lise’s sensibilities have made her one of the people I most admire in photography today, ever since I first looked at her book The New Life and read about her process in Aperture. And whether it’s Alec Soth in W, Katy Grannan in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, or Lise Sarfati here, I like seeing my favorite art photographers lend their voice to writers or new subjects in magazines for a wider audience. I assume it’s more open now than ever before. In the heyday of print, there certainly were big names who worked both sides of commerce and art (Arbus, Penn, etc.), not to mention the more famous documentarians and editorialists who blurred the lines over and over (Frank, etc), but lesser known artists have traditionally had less access to mainstream media before the digital era.

Which is why, even though she’s a member of Magnum, Lise is one of my favorite hybrid outsider/insiders. Her editorial photos are first-rate and almost traditional; more than illustration, they are meant to be a counterpoint or an illucidation for the text, like with “The Waiting Room” and Lise’s pictures of claustrophobic sensuality and forced emotional stasis. However, they also glow from her unique personal attention to the individual subjects and their soft-shells of purposeful inhibition, but with nothing too saccharine or, contrarily, indemnifying. Like Hellen van Meene, she has an outsider’s eye for the spirit that lurks within a timid or awkward subject and an excellent sense for complimentary ambient lighting. That’s rare. Typically, small story editorial photography in magazines demands an off-putting and blunt manner (I think of the endless redundant Esquire from the 60’s imitations), so the temptation is to just add to the glut of similar iconography that’s already out there or cop out with a forcefully mannered concept piece. Lise jumps off the page in contrast-for now. I think New York Magazine is very aware that they need to co-opt outsiders. As marketing goes, the best pandering is to appear as if you aren’t pandering, knowing that we all tend to react better to subtle underdogs with a comercial outsider’s perspective. The marketers can keep this up as long as there are outsiders that are inclined to survive the hybridization process. That’s the process where commercial clamdiggers look into the tidal zone (between too-outsider and the accessible fringe) and they carry back their findings to sell us for the supper table.

And yes, the title of the article was also a bit funny to me because I was sitting in a little room being force fed a diet of new age music.