Computography

The term "Computography" was first used by the photographer Robert Young in the early-1990s to describe work output with Adobe Photoshop. It is the combination of COMPUter + phoTOGRAPHY. The work output of COMPUTOGRAPHY is called a COMPUGRAPH.

Originally the term was used when photographic paper prints were scanned into the computer and manipulated to create output to print or screen (see examples at
http://web.mac.com/computography/bob/The_Compugraphs/Pages/Fine_Art_Styles.html).

Then using early low-resolution digital cameras, Young's work grew into prints that could never be achieved in the darkroom because of various artistic filtering methods employed to achieve good fine art work that compensated for the very low-quality resolutions. The first known public use of the terms was for a presentation to an acquisition committee from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)circa 1994-95.

Robert Young's works today are called compugraphs — the marriage of classical photography with the computer. Nevertheless, Computography is still based on the original tenants laid down by the great photographers of the last 150 years.

Go to http://web.mac.com/computography/bob/The_Compugraphs/The_Compugraphs.html to view an extensive folio of various compugraphs.

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