Despite the initial limitations, many artist-
photographers had begun experimenting with com-
puter technologies in the early 1980s. Some worked
with consumer-level equipment, ‘‘grabbing’’ low-
resolution images from video cameras, processing
them on low-cost but graphically capable Commo-
dore and Atari computers and printing them on
‘‘dot matrix’’ printers. Others, such as Nancy Bur-
son, obtained access to programmers and high-
power academic computers, and began creating
truly photographic-looking work, often with inter-
esting conceptual aspects. One of her pieces,Man-
kind, 1983, blended the faces of typical individuals
of each of the world’s major ‘‘races’’ in proportion
to that race’s portion of the world’s population. The
resulting—quite believable—face, looked most
strongly Asiatic, but had distinguishable traits of
each race.
In 1991, an Eastman Kodak/Apple Computer
partnership created the Center for Creative Imaging
inCamden,Maine,wheremanyartistswenttolearn
the nascent technologies—and even occasionally get
access to a Premier System workstation—until its
closing in 1994. Nash Editions, founded in 1990 by
musician/photographer Graham Nash and his
associate Mac Holbert, with the help of expert print-
maker Jack Duganne, modified Iris inkjet printers,
originally designed for commercial print-industry
proofing, for use as high quality fine-art photo prin-
ters. Printing options for photographic artists work-
ing digitally began to expand exponentially.
By the mid-1990s, desktop computers were begin-
ning to have enough processing power, memory, and
storage to accommodate truly photographic images
of moderate size. Desktop scanners and printers
were greatly improved and were becoming available
at prices affordable to individual photographers
(photo-resolution ‘‘dye-sublimation’’ printers, for
example, came to be priced under $10,000). In
1992, Kodak introduced its hybrid ‘‘Photo CD’’
technology that would allow photographers to have
film images scanned at relatively high quality and
low cost and returned to them—up to one hundred
per disk—on the same kind of recording media that
had previously been used primarily for music. Also
being developed were systems for digital image
‘‘color management’’ that would allow some control
over the accuracy of digitized color information and
its consistency through the various stages of the
digital photography process (capture, manipulation,
storage/transmission, and presentation).
During roughly the same period, professional-
quality scanning backs capable of near-film resolu-
tion and color fidelity had been developed for use
on view cameras. Their application was limited,
however, to subject matter that remained perfectly
still for several minutes at a time, and the camera
had to remain tethered to a computer. The same
was generally true for digital-capture backs devel-
oped for medium-format studio cameras. Some
very high-end digital SLR cameras could capture
instantaneous images acceptable for reproduction
in newspapers, even magazines; Kodak’s DCS-460,
introduced in 1995, raised the image-resolution bar
for self-contained camera systems to 6 megapixels.
These high-quality digital camera technologies re-
mained very expensive, however, and subject to
rapid obsolescence.
One artist who quickly adopted emerging large-
format digital capabilities was Stephen Johnson,
who married a 45 inch field camera with a
scanning back, a laptop computer, and a van, and
took to the back country, updating Ansel Adams’s
practice for the digital age. Johnson eventually
received official recognition from the National
Parks Service and engaged in a five-year documen-
tation of the parks system, from 1994–1999, using
increasingly capable digital equipment whenever it
became available.
On the professional/commercial side of photo-
graphy, one of the areas to embrace digital techni-
ques both in the studio and post-capture was that
of fashion and glamour. This area had always
relied heavily upon highly-staged photo shoots
and heavy retouching of images to improve the
perfection of its illusions of beauty. Digital tech-
nologies made it possible to put less effort into the
initial staging, since the images could be easily
manipulated in post-production, and made perfec-
tion—or even hyper perfection—in the final image
more fully attainable. Their contemporary use is
typified in the work of Patrick Demarchelier and
David LaChapelle, who often push their fashion
images into the realm of visual fantasy.
Through the rest of the decade, digital imaging
equipment became increasingly powerful and
increasingly affordable. Computer processing
speed—crucial for the massive calculations required
in handling high resolution images—doubled
roughly every eighteen months (a pattern predicted
by the well known ‘‘Moore’s Law’’ in 1964). The
other components of digital imaging systems—from
cameras and scanners through computer worksta-
tions and storage media, to monitors and printers—
kept up a similar pace of improvement. The stan-
dard for quality amateur-level digital cameras
moved from ‘‘VGA’’ resolution (roughly one-third
megapixel) to one megapixel, to two megapixel,
to three megapixel. Professional instant-capture
systems (for medium-format studio cameras)DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY