Friends recommended going to see Chris Berens’ show The Only Living Boy in New York on the Lower East Side, noting that it seemed to be some combination of photography and digital work. So we went and felt underwhelmed at first. The cute and dreamy images of squishy animals, melancholy brunettes, and NYC landmarks surrounded by 19th century objects were appealing, but we assumed they were just digital prints with pieces of more prints added on top for the rectangular texture. This seemed like a gimmicky, perhaps even a lazy way of adding interest where it wasn’t really needed. The pieces ranged from the thousands to the tens of thousands in price. While quietly debating the possible details of his technique, we continued staring at them.

A couple of women came in who knew the gallery lady up front, and we eavesdropped long enough to hear her describe Berens’ technique, which actually involves painting every single image by hand on archival photo paper, waiting days for it to dry completely, and then peeling away the transparent layer from the paper backing. He then layers all those painted transparent pieces on top of each other creating that hazy depth. Seriously. Basically his process is on the exact opposite of the meticulousness scale than we determined with jaded eyes.

This is what you get as a viewer tired from at-times-excessive digital manipulation: the abashed feeling of having assumed "Photoshopped!" when it’s actually a complicated, non-standard technique.