The artist lecture of Cheryle St. Onge was quick thought provoking to me. I went to her talk based off the fact that she is a photographer that uses mainly large format cameras and she is a resent recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. The talk was well presented and informative but one subject stood out above the rest; how she talked about the process in which she photographs. Her creative process was great, her idea behind framing, camera manipulation, as well as the subject being very simple and clean. The issue was that I felt was, when asked about the technical side of her work she did not have much to say. She stated that she was not one of those technical photographers. She set up her shots, takes the pictures, and has the film processed and printed, rather than developing and printing the film herself in a darkroom. I understand that she has control over the outcome of the final product but at the same point the skill needed to print is a large part of art photography. This caused a debate in my mind over how this changes the value of the work. Although there is a long history in art of artist using craftsman to produce art I feel that it takes away from the final peace knowing that the artist name on the work does not reflect how made it. This is still an issue that I am working out in my head because if outsourcing does not change the outcome then is it irrelevant. For example if I am developing film with a particular process and I show someone how to go through the steps so they can do it in volume but it does not change the outcome does it matter? I feel that if you turn over any creative control then the craftsman becomes just as valuable as the artist.
