Category: the fora

all that stuff people say online

Last Dyes

Posted on Posted in art biz, dye transfer, on photographers, the foraTagged , , , , , ,

The last dyes are like embers from the fading analog engine. The revivalists are rushing to ride the final fashion like Lauren Lauren’s Leica slung, long lean strappy dangling from her pampered bridal shoulder. Both, she and her camera, accessorizing his success.

Dye transfer prints will decorate many a wall. Some may hang for most of the year.

THE REAL : The show — meaning from the real world. The gallery world seeming more connected to factual effort.

Dye Transfer had an early glow, mystery of process, mystique of object value. The process was time and material consuming, making it in the fuller sense something for advertising, appealing as Veblen Good to the Haute Bourgeoisie.

“I was reading the price list of this lab in Chicago and it advertised ‘from the cheapest to the ultimate print’. The ultimate print was a dye-transfer…. The color saturation and the quality of the ink was overwhelming. I couldn’t wait to see what a plain Eggleston picture would look like with the same process. Every photograph I subsequently printed with the process seemed … better than the previous one.” —William Eggleston in conversation with editor and writer Mark Holborn, 1991

:

CVI, Color Vision Imaging laboratory, Manhattan, 1981. Guy Stricherz (b. 1948) graduated from western Washington University in 1974. He went to New York city in 1977 to work for Frank Tartaro who was one of a dozen masterful printers. Even at that time the process was falling out of use. It had peaked by 1980. Irene Malli (b. 1964) graduated from Cooper Union; after graduation she worked as a printer before answering an ad for CVI in 1989. CVI was moved to Vashon Island from NYC in 2004. Some of their recent clients: Larry Burrows, Bruce Davidson, Thomas Demand, William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Ernst Haas, Hiro, Evelyn Hofer, Graziela Iturbide, Zoe Leonard, Arnold Newman, Irving Penn, Christopher Williams.

Frank Tartaro was another user of the idea of “tone zone” masking.

The best memory is based upon your experience. Make your own.

THE IMAGINED: Unfortunately The Last Dyes show brings out the zombie experts of the hobby forums. Killers of a process they view from sideline. The show provides opportunity to talk as tho they had a privileged seat; bring out their old bar counter stories, a chance to repeat their prejudices of process. This is the use for the brag boards.

Question the tale of the salesman. I didn’t call him on his bullshit, so you have been left with his constant crap for a decade. Mea Culpa.

They don’t learn enough because they don’t ask, they aren’t curious. They don’t do enough because they lack courage. They fear failure more than they crave doing.

The false information is imprinted onto the naive minds. False tales aren’t questions, even though he is doubted. Why trust any part of his complex tale if the beginning direction is in error. Part of his ongoing commitment to his fantasy story of his skill is due to my being so bored with him at the St. Regis meeting, I fed him his own ignorance agreeing in order to escape. No one used Tanning Bleach in a commercial practice past 1952 — the mats weren’t sharp, nor durable enough for the uses of commercial printing. There was one use of tanning bleach: schools doing Pan Matrix film– this was rare, caused by group darkroom restrictions. AND the Army never made Matrix Film; they did buy it, while after Korean War, the Department of Defense sold the surplus materials. K&L (Len Z.) bought thousands of sheets which gave him a price advantage for several years.

The Army doesn’t make sandbags nor shoelaces. Not even CCA made their materials; they did have a need for large “trans” materials which Kodak refused to make. They couldn’t. They didn’t have the ready knowledge, so CCA tried two different coaters; NG was able to make the materials using a design provided them by Robert M. of Defender.

Lasting Lie Transfers: turning sales speak into history. The story is now being told by people who didn’t even participate until the story was over
eggleston show brings out stale fish stories; stolen valor from the photo fantists

  • “he was a machinist ” — about Eliot Porter; he wasn’t a machinist. His mode of making DTs didn’t require him to have “made his own” transfer equipment. He was a long time woodworker. He discovered the “black box” printing system. His self-made items are all wooden. No metal, no punch-pin system.
  • ” soft image– dye bleed” — the reason Condax was brought into Kodak was because of the improvement of Tanning Development over Bleach Tanning. Two immediate improvements: sharpness of transferred image, and improved color clarity with existing dyes.
  • ” don’t hold highlights well” — hmm, how about all those suds and softgoods ads? Or, Eggleston’s White Ceiling Fan.
dye diffusion effect

a piece of the elaborate custom equipment made by Eliot Porter for his dye transfer lab.

Google has found my post from 2013, titled: The Last Dye Transfers .. coincidence a long time coming

For those considering another possible use of matrix film– think it as a mask. I did. See this patent which I’d discovered around 1961: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2371746

Fishtales, Campfires, Photography

Posted on Posted in art biz, da net, meaning, the foraTagged , , ,

Hosting campfire tales among the analog boosters.
The Greeks believed that fishing was the harbinger of prosperity; easy fishing a rich season . Small fish bring large fish.

A TALE: it is as though I’ve come across a campfire. There are young and old gathered around it; fishing poles, fishing tackle, some people in fishing vests wearing hats with lures stuck in them. A cover for some brochure, except the people aren’t suitable.

There is some fish, although not much; they’ve either finished, or they didn’t have a good day fishing. Telling stories keeps them from thinking of failure –how many bad days. — neither worms nor ties worked.

I stay aside and listen for a moment, a couple of tails and then I’ll be on my way. The old seem to be trying to outdo one another, each elevating the story, having more knowledge, having greater insight ,having more experience, having caught more fish. The old telling the young how much better fisherman the old were when they were young; the old were better fisherman when they were young, and better fisherman than these young; also, fishing was better back then. More types, tastier too.

Their stories make fishing better back then: the reason for this, for their reasoning, their motive isn’t stated– likely unknown, nonetheless, I’m going to tell my tale, my explanation of what and why they’re doing this: they’re doing this to gain position at the campfire, to have their story retold by the Young, to make their story the Young’s story even though their story, it’s just a fish tale

These ancient fishermen, they lived off store-bought fish, more likely, beef at the drive-through on their way back from Camp.

I am offended, I do do not mean to offend, but I am offended since I lived off fishing. These gossip groups are thieves stealing a past and a future.

They tell their tale to drown out the tales of the young; these elders tell their tales so often the young believe them. They’ve told their story so many times they start to believe it, So many tales have been intertwined there isn’t any thread of origin, of truth– the film is fogged beyond use.

  They told the tail so many times they forgotten the truth of it they no longer know the true parts the small part became so big that the fish turned into a whale

It’s not that they’re bad storytellers, instead they’re good liars… dissemblers of information. They met someone who knew someone, becomes: they were the dear friend of that one.

Their story doesn’t matter to my tale ,not a flicker.– It doesn’t stop me from fishing, and it doesn’t stop me from enjoying the fish I catch.

Of course, like all fish stories, this has nothing to do with fishing.

Matte paper. Reflection density. Callier Effect. Woodburytype

Farnsworth [wikipedia]

To know a story, read their story.

Gossip is always wrong. And prone to false memory; featuring yourself as the center of the circle, the fountainhead.

Magnolia

Although there are some glimmers of the truth in these {DW post) none of the facts or numbers are correct and no one working at Magnolia can recall the jigsaw portrait that is mentioned… [Jan,2021 private communication]

HIS claim: The most interesting project I was consulted on involved a giant jigsaw puzzle color self-portrait using 22 species of exotic hardwood. After the scan, this was laser-mapped, but could not be either laser cut or CNC done. I won’t gone into details, but their labor charge was 40K, and they lost money at that! But they did it for the challenge, and just shrugged their shoulders and said they’d make up the difference on the next Chuck Close project. Most of these pieces sell for over a million apiece to museums or civic installations. NYC has quite a few

Two additionals: Dmax is less valuable, as well as being prone to measurement error for papers than is L* —

AND : Happy Andre Breton Day …