Photophilosophy

Sometimes the journey from image to print is long and convoluted. This is a shot of East Head in Chichester Harbour. I took it using a film 35mm camera, developed the film and made a print as part of a course at Chichester College, scanned the print into digital form, transmitted it over the internet to a printing company to spray onto canvas which was then packed and shipped back to me.

So the original set of photons that caught my eye were chemically captured via my camera onto a polymer film matrix and fixed in place using a series of chemical washes. More photons were then shone through the film onto chemically-treated paper causing a photochemical reaction, the results of which were fixed in place with another series of washes. This was then placed under a lamp and the reflected photons were captured by a charge-coupling device, converting the image to a series of electrical pulses which were "read" by a computer and stored as a series of binary digits. These digits were transmitted over the internet as a collection of packets using IP protocol and received by a computer at a printing company. This computer converted the data into on/off instructions for an inkjet nozzle moving over a canvas. Which was then sent, physically, to me.

Or, to put it simply: photons > silver-based photosensitive chemicals > electrical pulses > digital data > internet packets > ink pulses > shipping networks > my wall.

It's a simulacrum of a copy of a representation of an edit of an image. Data copied and manipulated and altered many times over.

There is no objective truth in photography.