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The method of production does change the environment in the art studio, however, and creates a tension between new methods of production and more traditional ones, leading, I believe to the impulse to distinguish digitally produced work from more traditional production methods in naming for exhibition. Although medium descriptions in exhibition are changing as the culture at-large changes to accommodate new technologies, it was less than two decades ago that two-dimensional images produced using digital tools were only exhibited as “computer graphics” or in exhibitions made up solely of digitally produced, two-dimensional framed work shown under a “computer” related title. Digitally produced two-dimensional work today is often still described in exhibition by the production tool rather than the traditional medium.

I contend that any two-dimensional digitally produced work hung in exhibition is more accurately described as a digital photograph or a digital print than a computer graphic. Although there is overlap between photography and printmaking—just as there is with mechanically reproduced prints and photographs—the characteristic that most distinguishes one from another is the “capturing” of an image. Images created by hand and scanned into the computer or images created on the computer and output in multiples for exhibition are digital prints. Images which are captured by a lens, whether manipulated or not, and output for exhibition are digital photographs. Although some will argue that the nature of such manipulation of captured images is changed by digital production, I do not believe the nature of manipulation is “changed” as much as the time it takes to create such manipulations is considerably compressed when using digital tools. Photography has a long history of manipulated imagery and has grown as a discipline to include even heavily manipulated images under its umbrella. Perhaps a more relevant point of confusion between photograph and print is related to paper support. As photography has ventured out of the traditional wet chemical darkroom and into digital image making, photographers have tested the confines of scale and paper support with Iris prints and archival ink jet output that resemble traditional prints in scale and in the use of traditional printmaking papers. In any case, however, whether the image is digitally captured or created, manipulated or not, output to resemble a light-sensitive photograph or to traditional printmaking papers, the use of the digital production tool does not change the exhibition quality of the print or photograph.

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