Category: overnight notes

John Chiara: Process

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, on photographers, overnight notes, Prints, Theory: landscape

American. b. 1971, in San Francisco, California

 It’s rare for a photographer to push the technical edge of the medium. And rarer still to reanimate corners of the world seen and forgotten by hundreds of thousands of eyes every day. — Ian Bourland

After dedicating an extended period in 1995 to making contact prints from his 2-1/4″ x 2-1/4 inch negatives, John Chiara decided that too much information was lost in the darkroom enlargement process. Over the next six years he developed his own equipment and processes to make first-generation unique photographs without using film. 

Chiara developed a process that is part photography, part sculpture, and part event. It is an undertaking requiring invention in his tools and patience in using them. [from his bio]

Process isn’t the same as procedure. Mr. Chiara has extended his process to such an extent that it has become a featured point in discussions around his imaging.

Large. Tonal inversion. Color inversion. Put paper in the wrong place. Expose paper to the wrong light-type. Use the much seen, the much ignored. Take as much time as needed. These are the procedures that he uses.

It is easy to overlook these works. Easier for those of us who can readily understand the means and methods, the mode of this process. We shouldn’t. We should take his work on his terms, trying to get to where he has gotten — not in recognition of his work, but so we can use it to open our own work… or, for some, renew our efforts.

Find your process within your procedure.

Bookmarks

Posted on Posted in overnight notes, the Lab

Factors of failure — 

forumula
-- factors of failure clumping
fixed or malleable minded, knowledge
--- the magnus reads; separations [sep anxiety]
is it skill beyond what anyone has... pencil, doodle, drawing, draftsman

am falling behind in posts, not in notions — I posted about a bookset and brovira, not knowing I’d also put up a draft of that; that draft has become this overnight. No brovira at all.

Instead more about small food fights on the large format site (LFF).. Doremus was called out by the doormouse, revealing how small his imagination; limitations he maintains are strengths.

The exchange prompted my searching Doremus. His website doesn’t have contact info, even though it has a page saying to contact him. So it goes. And that makes me wonder how to contact me…. many do. so they knows

what was noted is a separation, just not what those with lower imagination learned…

the filter does separate the exposing light. in the case of the yellow, it makes it into 2 distinct groups: the Y and the B.

To assemble the image would require transmitted light, rather than reflected light. The image would also appear to lack Reds.

AND … making prints from separations of long ago — the secret is in the light source the seps were made under. Change the exposing set, and the printing set will be in error, looking much like a cross-over, or subject failure. To get a (wide) neutral balance, you loose key, or edge color clarity. By changing the assembly color-set you regain a semblance of balance. That seems to be what was done in the

color carbon printing
on the edge of awareness