Category: meaning

Why Didn’t You Make Dye Transfers

Posted on Posted in art school, creativity, Getting Stuff, meaning, studio table, the Lab, The WhyTagged , , , ,

Everybody loved dye transfer. Nobody made them. Why? This century, this time span one and all bemoan the death of a friend they never knew. Never even visited.

  • supplies were a phone call away
  • documentation was available free, or for minimal charges
  • workshops were held at getaway photo shops.
  • several colleges held courses
  • trade schools were in major cities, or by mail-order

A simple enough question . with likely very few answers — honest, introspective responses.

The obvious response: there aren’t any materials . What about when there were — why didn’t you buy the Efke film? Assuming you were an adult in 1990, why didn’t you buy Kodak dye transfer material ?

And for those of you who did buy the materials: why didn’t you use them ?

Continuing along this expansion, for those of you who bought Materials and took a workshop, why didn’t you use dye transfer as your print process?

If you were drawn to dye transfer enough to buy the materials and take the training, why didn’t you expand your skills and become a die transfer printer?

Why do people buy beyond use : compulsion vs obsession. The ownership vs the authorship. Do they believe themselves stewards?

Catalog prices for some Dye Transfer supplies. These are the retailer list price. Labs paid much less.

Consider: Giffen vs Veblen goods. The professional depended on the supplies. The hobbyist didn’t. 1981 was a break year for Kodak’s process. By 1986, the decision had been made to let the process run out the clock. During this time, the larger labs had a decreasing dye transfer business. It was maintained as a prestige factor attracting interest but resulting in few projects. Small specialist labs grew in the eighties; even the best known added other processes to their sales brochure. “Now, the finest Black and White from the finest Color Lab.” — 1987 —

Kodak chose not to license, nor sell the process[ 1981,2] . Wonder why? In their final run of product, the only supply sold completely was Tanning developer. Nope, not even all the matrix film was sold. Not even the Pan Matrix. So it goes…. much of the film and paper was held in store for years.

and then it was recycled. The Fotokemika branded Efke matrix film also saw few buyers.

Maybe there is a market for the Coffee Mug, the Trucker Hat, the Film Vest… not the film… Sell the tchotchke, maybe the tattoo, no need for the mats and blanks.

camera lucida duet 

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, meaning, studio table, TheoryTagged , , , ,

The real and the spiel.
The Joycean eyepatch–of AI. What finds we find when the word becomes the key. What hides behind the unopened doors. My searches begin closed, become openings. Sadly, the googs and googlers have reached an end state: commerce.

All travel makes more connections than we are prepared to take. Words become phrases which, in turn produce more phrases. In early periods of a field more variety is brought in as possible sets for the new setting.

Camera Lucida was one set. Visual Studies Workshop was a fertile ground. Consider the words chosen as totems for that new place in Rochester. Visual. Studies. Workshop. It could have been called: SUNY Buffalo Extension. No sauce. Nathan got it right. From that place came people. They maintained contacts as is the case in most fields. In new fields, those connections are stronger than in old fields.

Camera Lucida, a device, book, journal. The camera lucida was a drawing aid with which Talbot failed. This failure became the path of photography. The book by Barthe became the errant irritant in criticism, producing more puss than pearl. Nevertheless, it was productive of thought when it was needed.
Barthes’s Work: Barthes’s “Camera Lucida” explores the nature of photography, the relationship between the photographer and the spectator, and the concept of the “punctum” (a specific detail in a photograph that evokes a strong emotional response). 

Further:

Talbot –dated his efforts to invent photography to his disappointing results using a Camera Lucida as a drawing aid at Lake Como in Italy in 1833?

But alas, it only seemed simple, he later recalled, “for when the eye was removed from the prism—in which all looked beautiful—I found that the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold.” The would-be artist was William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877)

Bringing me to my searched items. The Journal of… I have the volumes. They’ve lived in boxes of similar sized publications.

MUFFOLETTO, ROBERT, EDITOR Milwaukee: Camera Lucida, 1979. Milwaukee.
Ceased publishing after Number 7, 1983
A complete set (Nos. 1-7) of the influential early journal of photographic criticism. Contributors include A. D. Coleman, Claudia Wolz, Bill Jorden, and Michael Simon, and topics include photography and therapy, an anthropology of photography, perception and photography, and more. The last issue is a double number written by Arnold Gassan, a photography instructor turned psychiatrist and student/devotee of White. It is titled, “Report: Minor White Workshops and a Dialogue Failed.” Date: 1979. Baumgartner [US]

The box traveled on its own.. Buying from dead critics photographers estates and the oughts of this century I both discover and re-discover influences if not on me directly on the world around me the immediate world of art of the dark-room entering the white room…

phrases I uttered that others published.. The world that lasts is always the world that someone else collects you need a collector an editor a publisher.. so that what you say and what you have selected is preserved by someone on some shelf…

Two parts to an ides:

  • inspriation, first idea, an initial question which may come as a doubt.
  • next, the reason for re-examination and the resulting drive


“Is history not simply that time when we were not born?” writes Roland Barthes in the very beginning of the second chapter of his book — Camera Lucida. I