Photography - Bill Carter

At the turn of the millennium photographer Bill Carter was in the process of setting up a chemical darkroom when the digital revolution happened almost overnight. He immediately cancelled the building plans and turned the room into a spare bedroom instead. So what was it about the new technology that made him so quick to change his practices after thirty years of taking photos? I ask Bill down the line. “Its mainly the scope”, he tells me. “I can take literally hundreds of photos on one compact flash card whereas on a 35mm you were limited to 36”. And it comes cheap. “The cost is not even comparable. You can just wipe things out and start again if you want to. You can take so many more risks”.
What about the potential for digital manipulation? I ask. “I don’t like to call it manipulation because that makes it sound as if there’s an undertone of dishonesty”, he says sharply. “Its just part of the editing process. And there’s plenty of editing in chemical development too. I think making any image is honest creativity. It just means sometimes you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and that’s got to be good”. Bill says that he would ‘never go back’ to 35mm now. “There’s just no point. You can do so much more with digital. In my opinion film photography is a dying tradition”. A selection of Bill’s landscape photographs will be shown at the Thebes Gallery until the end of June. ER