Reading the Accidental Masterpiece today and a passage stuck with me, a passage considering Sol LeWitt, the conceptual proposition for images only found in translation by other people into drawings or sculptures, and “The Art of Making Art Without Lifting A Finger”… Kimmelman writes of LeWitt:

“He didn’t care about making precious one-of-a-kind objects for posterity. Objects are perishable, he realized. Ideas need not be.”

It made me think about the way that technology / technique / product /presentation and reproduction all effect the “modern” photograph. In the end – to aim for a lasting impression – to make a photograph able to form an after-image held in the mind when you close your eyes. Perhaps the best way to show modern photography is to project it on the wall – to have it exist only for the duration of the moment of looking? And test whether an after-image lingers…

Do we need prints only to remind ourselves ?