I have just re-discovered  the low-tech  Leicaphilia blog of  Timothy Vanderweert and his personal writing about film and digital photography. , what Vanderweert I learned  that  Vanderweert died in July 2023 from cancer, but  thankfully,  his wife has kept his Wordpress blog online so we can still read it.  Leicaphilia's combination of image and text that reminds us  yet  again of  how few are the blogs by photographers that interweave good photographs and insightful writing about photography and are in it for the long haul.  

A number of Vanderweert  posts on Leicaphilia are concerned with various  experiments to compare  digital black and white  photos  to those made with  fast and grainy b+w film, such as Kodak Tri-X films and  various digital attempts to emulate the  Tri-X  film look or  emulate an HP5 negative. I personally think that is going down a rabbit  hole.  Why try to make digital look like film for though these are  the same (photography)  they are also  different. The uses of photographs  are different, the cultural impacts are different, the way they're made is different.  Why not  accept the differences between the film and digital technologies and the historical differences between the two  eras/centuries and get on with digital photography?  

The industrial world that  film photography was a part of is long gone. That means turning away from the legacy ecosystem,  then accepting and working with what Vanderweert characterises as the transparent, ultra-lucidity of digital files, their noiseless purity, lack of grain  and  what some see as a  certain lack of presence or sterility.  We have a new,  albeit flawed photography.  

No doubt, the technology of  a digital B&W photography will improve as the  resources of the industry are applied to overcoming that plastic look too often seen with digital B&W files. Eventually,  the resources will  pay off  with  an appealing  graduated tonality  emerging in digital B&W photography.

Reading Vanderweert's  blog  made me wonder if there were any other similar Leica blogs on the internet, that is ones involving writing  about photography.  Unfortunately, there are no links on the legacy Leicaphilia blog for me to follow up.  It is very much a stand alone blog. The similar blogs, if they existed,  probably have come and gone --- 99 per cent of new blogs die within their first year,  primarily due to their  failure to attract a significant number of readers. Even Still Searching, that was backed by Fotomuseum Winterthur,  has packed it in. 

Most of the current Leica blogs  are about equipment and these are  situated in an online  photographic culture with its  recycled press releases,  sycophancy,   shrills selling product,  or the hucksters  looking to making a fast dollar. This is a world of Content Creators and Influencers selling workshops, memberships, subscriptions, and advertisements with their promise  to help you become somebody who stands above the herd.   

What is notably lacking is a writing about photography within the wider culture with some critical thinking. It is a lost object--ie., forgotten land so lost.   Exceptions are the Leica-Camera-blog,   the Leica Barnack Berek blog run  by Heinz Richter,  and  ULTRAsomething by Gregory Simpson. The latter, for instance,   does include camera reviews,   it is long running  (it started in 2009) and  is about photography, but not just photography.  Simpson doesn't just write for photographers. It has  evolved into being more centred on creativity. What's more Simpson has been to, walked and photographed in Tokyo. 

In the new digital  era of photography  in Australia  we have an  impoverished. critical apparatus for photography as we are seeing little to almost nothing that counts as actual art criticism of photography.  In the second decade of the 21st century  anyone can be a photographer, the  single use digital photo they make is ephemeral image on the internet  where it is  clicked, glanced at and ticked on social media.  The online world is a fractured image world of impressions.  

Timothy Vanderweert will be sorely missed. He really did  hang in there with Leicaphilia even when blogs definitively became yesterday's thing and Leica just ignored him.  There is nothing like the low-tech  Leicaphilia in Australia. It would be wonderful  if there was.