"You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era"
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Hockney is doing what he’s always done: refusing to treat a medium like a religion. In that one long breath of a sentence, he demotes “photography” from destiny to detour, a “mere episode” inside a much older story about how humans project images. That framing matters because it punctures the romance of the camera as truth-machine. If photography is just one chapter in “optical projection,” then the authority we grant to the photographic look starts to feel contingent, even provincial.
The sly pivot is “when the chemicals ended.” He’s pinpointing the shift from film’s alchemy to the frictionless logic of digital capture and display. Chemical photography implies a physical trace: light hitting emulsion, time embedded in matter, the image “fixed” as an object with limits and delays. Digital images, by contrast, are not fixed so much as endlessly re-rendered, copied, filtered, and circulated. The subtext is less nostalgic than diagnostic: the end of chemicals ends a certain kind of belief in the photograph as stable evidence.
Contextually, this is pure Hockney: the painter who embraced Polaroid collages, fax art, iPad drawings, and the Hockney-Falco thesis about Old Masters using optical aids. He’s arguing for continuity across tools, while quietly staking a claim that artists, not cameras, define seeing. The intent isn’t to bury photography; it’s to strip it of supremacy and remind us that every “new era” is really a new interface for an ancient human obsession: making light behave.
The sly pivot is “when the chemicals ended.” He’s pinpointing the shift from film’s alchemy to the frictionless logic of digital capture and display. Chemical photography implies a physical trace: light hitting emulsion, time embedded in matter, the image “fixed” as an object with limits and delays. Digital images, by contrast, are not fixed so much as endlessly re-rendered, copied, filtered, and circulated. The subtext is less nostalgic than diagnostic: the end of chemicals ends a certain kind of belief in the photograph as stable evidence.
Contextually, this is pure Hockney: the painter who embraced Polaroid collages, fax art, iPad drawings, and the Hockney-Falco thesis about Old Masters using optical aids. He’s arguing for continuity across tools, while quietly staking a claim that artists, not cameras, define seeing. The intent isn’t to bury photography; it’s to strip it of supremacy and remind us that every “new era” is really a new interface for an ancient human obsession: making light behave.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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