Man In The White Suit

Something that I realised shortly after seeing my first medium format negative, is that if there’s anything better than film, it’s BIGGER film. The formats above 120 roll film fascinate me, and I once had the privilege of chatting to someone who routinely (or as routinely as one can do such a thing) shot 10×8 transparencies. I was in Adorama trying to decide whether to buy a Nikon F90x or not (I did), and she was buying 10×8 darkslides. It was quite a long chat, because the darkslides were in that bit of the stockroom that exists in all such places, a place everyone sort of remembers, but can never find again, or at least not within half an hour.

Rather typically I forgot to ask for contact details, or offer my own, sadly.

In any case, I wanted to offer a couple of links related to large format and view cameras that have crossed my path recently.

The first is this post at Mrs. Deane’s blog, concerning

“some tests with the 8×10 camera and a collection of superheavy portrait lenses we collected for the sole reason that they were cheap, fast and no one else seemed to want them at the time.”

That sentence alone confirms them as our kind of people, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Secondly, this short series of youtube videos, showing an interview with Alec Soth in which he talks about how he works, and the way he uses his large format camera in portraiture.

It all seems a bit distancing to me (although for Soth, that’s part of what he’s trying to convey),
and if I’m absolutely honest, rather a faff. But then, 10×8 transparencies…

THIS is England - Originally uploaded by outallnight

I love this picture.

I love the tones, I love the wonky flag, I love the background that you know is a beach but you can’t quite see. I love the fact that it’s a polaroid.
I find it amazing that this, a little square image of something most of us have seen or made ourselves countless times, contained on a piece of paper, created by the action of light upon certain chemicals can stop you in your tracks and take your breath away.

A couple of unrelated things for you;

1) The World’s Oldest Darkroom?

Apparently, when Joseph Fortuné Petiot-Groffier (known as one of the pioneers of photography) died in 1855 - his darkroom in Chalon-sur-Saône in Burgundy was simply abandoned and the door closed. His heirs and successors never did anything with that part of the house and just left it locked up. Upon the death of the last of his family two years ago it was eventually found that the whole darkroom was still fully intact - complete with bottles of chemicals, apparatus and everything a photographer in 1855 needed.

( Article from the muse-ings blog.)
2) The Power of Context

An interesting article at Gallery Hopper on something that troubles me, namely whether to allow the viewer to use the context they bring with them to form an opinion on a photograph, or to give them a push in the direction you want them to take.

I’d urge you to view the photograph before reading any of the text, and ask yourself these questions;

“Take a look at this portrait by Timothy Archibald and imagine what sort of man this is. What is the photographer saying about him? What is he trying to say about himself? What does he do for a living? Why is he holding that gun?”

The article is here.

My answers were way off, if you’re interested.

Leaf

Originally uploaded by John the Monkey

I’ve often thought of film photography as being a wonderful series of happy accidents. There are cameras, lenses and film stock that we know better than others, that are more predictable to us, and thus give results that we can be more certain of.  However, the outcome of our shutter release, uncovering of the pinhole or application of the other means we use to convey light to the emulsion remains hidden from us until the film develops.

Just as this unpredictability can be diminished by using gear we know well, in controlled conditions, it can be increased by using “toy” cameras, expired film stock, or by any number of alternative processes.

One interesting project I’ve seen lately is Stephen Gill’s “Buried”. From the artist’s own description, photographs were taken

“in Hackney Wick and later buried there.

The amount of time the images were left underground varied depending on the amount of rainfall. The depths that the pictures were buried at also varied, as did their positioning. Sometimes they were facing each other, sometimes back to back or sometimes buried singly.”

The results are intriguingly textural - I wonder if there’ll be a photoshop action along shortly to replicate the “look”?

The illustrative photograph is one frame from a roll of Superia 400 colour print film that was torn inside the camera, accidentally exposed to light, and then processed in B&W chemistry. It’ was taken and processed by me, and is nothing to to with Mr. Gill’s work.