Man In The White Suit

Being something of an ‘outsider’ in the art/photography world - outside the gallery system, no formal training, working largely on my own - I don’t know where Brooks Jensen stands in that world, but this article really rang bells for me.

For thirty-five years now, I’ve been a strong advocate of the virtues of gelatin silver photographic prints. Until 2005, all of my prints have always been fiberbase gelatin silver, archivally processed and toned in a traditional wet-darkroom. Even as the publisher of the LensWork Special Editions and LensWork Folios I’ve used language like “No inkjet compromises!” and “Nothing can replace the depth, tonality or presence of fiberbase silver photographic paper.” We used such language to clarify that the LensWork Special Editions were not the “inferior inkjet prints” we feared people might assume they were. Our mistake was thinking that the inkjet technology of late 1990s was not going to evolve. Boy were we wrong!

Jensen goes on to argue that ‘inkjet’ is the wrong term in any case - the inkjet is the process not the medium - and settles instead on ‘pigment on paper’.

I am now offering inkjet images – the correct terminology is actually “pigment-on-paper.” I refuse to call these giclée – a term I’ve always thought was meant to disguise rather than to elucidate. Gelatin silver and platinum/palladium prints are so designated because they indicate precisely the nature of the imaging chemistry and/or substrate. Neither of these are defined as their mechanical means of production – “projection prints” or “contact prints” although these would both be technically accurate terms that are occasionally used as supplemental descriptions. Similarly, “inkjet” is an accurate term describing the mechanics of delivery used, but pigment-on-paper describes the material – chemistry and substrate – and is a better equivalent for comparison to “gelatin silver” or “platinum/palladium” prints.

He also has some interesting things to say about pricing and editions that chime well for me .

While I don’t limit my prints, I do know that a clear and precise provenance is important to some people and may have historical importance long after I am gone. All of my prints now specify the date of their production, the source (negative or digital file), the precise number of copies I made that day, and which is the number of this print. Here is an example of that text.

A typical First Edition, First Printing will be three to five copies, sometimes as few as two, on rare occasions as many as thirty. Time marches, we change, our creative vision does, too. It is not uncommon for me to see new ways to interpret an old image. I am not opposed to improving an image when I see a need to. Each time I fuss with the digital file, usually to change it a bit to more closely match my creative vision, I call this a new “edition.” It’s a different interpretation of the raw data, so to speak - a new “performance” in Ansel Adams-speak. Sometimes that might be a little tonal adjustment, sometimes a contrast change, sometimes a dodge here or a burn there, sometimes I’ll crop something or digitally remove a bothersome spot, occasionally I go all the way back to the negative and re-scan or back to the original in-camera file and start over. In one way or another, the new “edition” is a new artistic rendition of the image.

Contrary to the contemporary zeitgeist, therefore, the later editions are the ones I would generally consider the more valuable because I perceive them to be the more mature interpretation of the image. Having said that, additional editions may also be a result technology improvements.

The designation “Third Edition, Second Printing” would mean that this is the third time I’ve worked this image from a creative point of view and the second time I’ve printed a batch of prints from this third rendition. The print # is simply a count of how many prints I’ve made from that digital file on that day.

I produce and sell my prints on a first-come, first served basis. Orders are filled in Edition/Print Number order. Obviously, editions are not reprinted except where identified as a later printing.

I also reserve the right to withdraw from sale any image at any time.

Some general things from around the web, with links to film of varying tenuousness…

1) From Jerry Nevin’s “Readings” Page this interview with Garry Winogrand.

2) From O.C. Garza’s site, his recollections of being taught by Winogrand.

Winogrand is fascinating to me because of his ideas about context (it doesn’t really matter) and his ambivalence to directing the viewer (see the first link particularly).

I have these ideas at the forefront of my mind recently because of a comment I saw on flickr, along the lines of someone liking a picture because compositional rules were broken “consciously” and not in “blissful ignorance”. I can’t help thinking that the first, and most appropriate reaction to an image should be “Do I like it?” Whether the author of it intended the outcome or not seems entirely irrelevant, and to only like those where the outcome is a result of conscious decision seems to me the worst sort of unthinking snobbery.  Winogrand’s conception of the photograph as something that exists separately to photographer, subject &c fits my current ideas, although he goes somewhat further than me.
Anyway, with spleen venting over, I have two things for you from Alec Soth’s Blog;

1) Why Bother?

In which the author muses on vernacular and found photography, and wonders if he’ll do anything with that impact - the comment thread after the article being almost as revealing as the article itself.

2) Photography Careers

Ever wanted to make money from your hobby? This guide will show you how.

A post at Ron Diorio’s blog describes his working methods. Ron of course works digitally, but even so this is well worth a read.

So the use of photography is different. It is not the decisive moment frozen. It is a more measured purposeful encounter - the creation of the physical object. This is what I consider to be the “art”. The screen image or the photographic print is the object, the document of my process where the image becomes an image of itself. An event takes place but the viewer doesn’t experience that. They experience the idea of that. And ideally the viewer will have an experience where they will respond to the pictures - think about their own memories, perceptions and premonitions.

What I love is this process that you can go outside right now and capture something and then transform and present them as an idea, my imagination of the experience rather than the experience itself. There is a lot of imagination in reality. You just have to look for it.

I don’t know how many of you read Colin Jago’s interesting Photostream Blog, but if you don’t, you’ll have missed this.

It’s an interview with Simon Galley, one of Ilford Photo’s directors.

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…