I came across a studio tour type of art show recently that specified that the photography had to be traditional film based and wouldn't accept digital. I know there are photographers still shooting film, but is the 'art' world reluctant to display digital photography for some reason? Is it not art if it's digital?
Mike, Did they advertise the "art" show as "traditional" or film photography?
English is a wonderful language but it tends to have too many words that try to do too much: for instance, "hot" for spicy and also for an excess of thermal radiation. Thai discriminates with "pet" for spicy and "rawn" for thermal radiation. Spanish discriminates with "picante" for spicy and "caliente" for thermal radiation. "Art" is one of those unfortunate English words that, like "love" tries to cover too many diverse things.
So English tends to be a contextual language. You need to know where a word fits in order to understand what it means. In this case it's obvious that the show's organizers didn't understand the context of the word they were tossing around. Ten years ago there were plenty of "art" photography venues that rejected digital processes, but the folks you ran across are like Rip: not yet awake. Just bloody amazing!
Best to just move on.