In a new book, “From Darkroom to Daylight,” Harvey Wang interviews fellow-photographers and other renowned photo-world professionals about their experiences navigating technological changes in the medium. Some, such as Sally Mann, have continued to rely on early photographic processes; others, such as Stephen Wilkes, have eagerly embraced the possibilities of digital. Below are excerpts from Wang’s conversations with those and other artists, accompanied by images that embody each of their photographic practices. The aim in initiating these dialogues, Wang writes in the book’s introduction, is to find out “if other photographers’ worlds were turned upside down when they stopped mixing chemicals and isolating themselves in the dark.”
Harvey Wang was a young photographer when he moved into a fifth-floor Chinatown walk-up in 1979. It was an easy bike ride from the East Village clubs where he took pictures of strobe-lit dance floors and bohemian debauchery — and besides, rent was only $140 a month.
