I Hate Zoom

 

I hate Zoom.

This nonsense of sitting in front of a computer and staring at artwork on a screen instead of staring at the real artwork is getting pretty old.

While I’m at it, I hate sitting in front of a computer looking at a face in a little box instead of looking at a real face .

Moreover I hate looking at art on a screen, Zoom or not.

One of the pundits said that the history of art as you see it in a textbook is really the history of artwork that will reproduce well in a quarter-page illustration.  Michelangelo's David is the same size as a Japanese netsuke.  My addition to that is that all artwork looks the same represented by a 1024x960 pixel jpeg created on a computer screen with unknown color balance and viewed on another computer screen with a different unknown color balance.

A friend was the judge for a show at a not-quite-local gallery.  He chose about 125 prints out of the 2000 or so that were submitted -- by jpeg -- from all over the country.  He told me that when the actual prints arrived about 20 of them were so different from the jpeg (and not better) that he didn't want to hang them.

All that said, just today I watched a lecture by Todd Hido (photographer in the Bay area) arranged by the art gallery of the University of Kentucky.  About 100 people attended from all over the western world.  I regularly attend a critique hosted by a Portland (Oregon) photographer — with attendees from upstate New York, Tennessee, Burnaby BC, northern California, Chicago, Calgary. 

Tonight I have a Zoom meeting with a local group of photographers with whom I have met in person for about 20 years -- sitting around a table with actual prints strewn over it, looking at them and at each other.  

I guess that Zoom and it’s ilk have a place, an important place.  But, dang!  It’s not the only place.

Back to the real world ASAP