Is anything photographic 'real' anymore?

(First of all, I haven't disappeared or died in the last month, just been busy on various new things - the header on this blog mentions that I'll show up and post something 'when I have something worth your time to read'.. and sometimes that takes a while.)

I've heard a lot of creative types say pretty much the same thing about digital(& photoshop):

'The best thing about photoshop is that you can do anything.
And the worst thing about photoshop is?...that you can do anything!'
(and get totally lost in what can seem like infinite possibilities).

(Didn't Charles Dickens write 'it was the best of time, it was the worst of times'? - not much has changed, has it!?)

Anyone interested in the changes the new technologies have brought us in photography should definitely read this article published in the May 12 edition of The New Yorker magazine, about the work of Pascal Dangin - retoucher to the stars of fashion photography, it's titled 'Pixel Perfect'.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_collins

I am not even going to attempt to comment on this, someone else has said a lot of what I have been thinking much better - check Mark Morford's column in the SF Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/23/notes052308.DTL

I highly recommend both the above.

'I'll be back' (to quote the Terminator), real soon.......with some 'darkroom'...
and wouldn't ya just know it ;-) some pixels, too.