Photography Beyond Technique: Essays from F295 on the Informed Use of Alternative and Historical Photographic Processes

IMAGINARY WHOLE-PLATES

OR, NOTES TOWARDS THE REINVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Alan Greene

Upon publication of Primitive Photography in 2002,¹ the fresh, liberating knowledge obtained from my personal study of the subject had led me to the conclusion that the contemporary alternative-process and pinhole movements were suffering from a kind of collective malaise, characterized by the same set of procedures and methods being endlessly repeated. If I was not desirous of making a break with these movements at the time, I was, at least, trying to present a different approach. And on many occasions, this approach involved letting voices from the past speak for themselves.

Setting my technical manual aside, I now would like to talk about what I call “the reinvention ...