17-8-14

Shades of Stan Douglas' Hogan's Alley. But everything is derivative, right? And his is a computer generated 3D model, a photograph of something that never existed, with such exquisite detail and perfect exposure. Every black is just perfectly black, every highlight is a tenth of a percent away from being blown out. The file is mammoth, as in, I've stood in front of the original and it's bigger than a sheet of plywood. And you can stand with your nose touching the surface and not see any fall off in the details. I might be exaggerating, but that's how I remember seeing it.

This image isn't computer generated, though I guess it is, since it's digital through and through.

There's something disturbing about the Douglas "photo" in that it's just a little too perfect. The other aspect of it that's off is there is nothing living in the photo. No people, no trees, no grass. The ground is smudged dirt with blobs of different coloured dirt on them. There are no weeds growing up along the fences. It is lifeless. I don't know if that was intentional or if they just forgot to add them in, or if just wasn't possible to do as effectively as everything else.