Photography is dead! Long live Photography!

"From today, painting is dead!" exclaimed painter Paul Delaroche upon first seeing a daguerreotype in 1839. However, many in the 19th century, the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, for example, dismissed photography as "foreign to art," a "material science" that required none of the skill and vision of painting. As it turned out, both Delaroche and Baudelaire were wrong. Few would question nowadays that photographers have earned the rank of artist. And painting most certainly did not die ­ but it did change forever. The appearance of photography on the scene removed the pressure on painters to recreate nature, paving the way for a redefinition of painting as art.
History repeats itself. As digital imaging technology grows increasingly sophisticated, its use increasingly widespread, we confront similar questions about the impact of the computer on art and artists as well as society. This web site, part of my master's degree program at Barry University in Miami, is a response to these questions. There are two things that interest me: One is the revolutionary changes the computer has brought (and will bring) to modern culture, on par with the development of language, or the invention of the printing press. The exponential growth in information, and access to it, is changing our definitions of community, giving rise to fears of impersonalization, fears of insignificance, fears of change itself. It is only natural that artists, who struggle to express the essence and spirit of humanity, would reflect such tensions. The second is how the rise of the computer as an artistic tool is changing the art itself. The artists featured here are people who are using the instrument of the computer to express themselves, in the same way a photographer uses a camera, or for that matter a painter wields a paintbrush or a great violinist, the Stradivarius. We don't all agree on what is art, but most of us recognize that art is about vision, not the tool. Yet digital technology without question has changed the relationship between artists and their work. It also has led us to reexamine the nature and purpose of photography, as our longheld understanding of a photograph as a "real" moment in time has been shattered.
Digital Renaissance, the web site, proposes to explore all these issues, most importantly through the eyes of the artists who themselves are at the forefront of this new frontier. The Renaissance Masters section features artists who are the vanguard of this new movement. The artists of the Inspirations section represent certain schools of thought that are influencing the artists working with digital technologies. The Gallery is a collection of artists on the cutting edge of technique and imagination. Essays exploring all aspects of the relationship between technology and art can be found in the Writings section. Links will connect you to some of the best Web resources for the digital art community, and the Workshop section focuses on techniques, tools and creative development.
In the final analysis, we as visual artists are still making marks on cave walls because we are driven to express that we are and we are unique. Our humanness and our culture are responsible for what art is. Technology is a tool, not the author of our new world. Fear not the death of photography or painting, or sculpture or music or dance. When photography came along, painting did not die. It flourished, it redefined itself, not as it was a reproduction of the splendor of nature, but as a new voice. If it were not for photography, would we have Impressionism, Surrealism, Dada, Bauhaus, Art Nouveau, Abstract, Post Modernism, or Pop Art? Photography unshackled painting from its limits, in the same way the Digital Age will, and is, unchaining photography. Photography is dead! Long live photography!

Rick McCawley-1999

I would like to dedicate this site to my wife and parents who have always been there to guide my thoughts and believe in my dreams. To my children, may they inherit our ideals. To the artists who remind us what is to be truly alive.

Thank You