Category: The Why

Following Old Trails

Posted on Posted in olden ways, on photographers, the arc, The Biz, the fora, the Lab, The Why, Theory1 Comment

following another’s footsteps makes you a tourist not a guide

Arriving Late

You may miss the plot, the arc of what came before, and think the ending is the story.

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You begin in the footsteps of others; you walk behind them before you make your own path. you follow their path, retaking their footsteps, you learn how to do it: you follow the technical. the technical, if it’s amidol and azo, lead you into a narrowing market space; an expensive place in which you have to solve technical and  the economic, before you can set yourself free enough to solve your own problems; the problems that you define. This dalliance keeps the romance without requiring esthetic commitment. To keep yourself from realizing this, you rationalize the affair, calling it Printmaking.

The Printmaker Excuse

thinking that the problem to solve is just a printmaker one, your task becomes making yourself into a printmaker. this is codeword for saying you don’t have to have an image concept, an origin aesthetic; rely upon an aesthetic concept that’s been done. You can follow the prepared guidebook. Picture types come prepared with payment. you already know what you’re going to point the camera at. Maybe a rock, or sunset, a girl..

How bout a girl on a rock at sunset

massArtistsLF.001Unless you are a Carnie. Most long time participants in online photo forums limit their discussion to method and technique. They never understand this limits their growth. Carnie is one longtime dedicated participant. He serves as archtypical printmaker. As he notes: Now I just have to think of a subject.

 

Simple Complex

The simplified process of Weston becomes a complicated process without a manufacture. Mistaking the wand for the magic. No one bemoans the end of Weston’s light bulb, neither do they ask the type of contact frame used. Charis on a dune, with perfect drop shadow is more important than bulb, camera, developer, or paper. Translation is never better by reading a more accurate dictionary.

Take What You Need

Rather than taking from Weston the specifics, take the general, the bigger constant — work simply, but work a lot. Use what is at hand until it runs out. Then find another.

What Weston did was point his camera well. He, also, was first on the calendar; it was his footprint you saw on the dune. If you’re going to follow, follow the awareness, not the technical.  — that is the artist’s move, not the salesman’s gambit.

References & Notes

early printing was platinum requiring contact prints, which he abandoned when it became scares and expensive. He switched to Azo and Amidol in California. [Newhall 1984, p. 110.]

  • weston bad portrait studio .. retail portraits need retouching . big neg makes easier
  • contact prints on slow paper
  • paper no longer produced
  • weston switches paper, but keeps camera
  • improves exposure quickly adopting Weston meter. more single negative exposures. cheaper, easier field work.. more images
  • At Pt Lobos he worked on the edge of the coast.. a long distant horizontal — down was detail, up was the line — the distance marker.

webionaire links AMIDOL CHLORIDE PAPER

[3 of 3: Nov 10, 17]

Dispute Among Debutantes

Posted on Posted in art school, morning wood, The Why

The dispute being at the beginning was what made it matter; would the answer make it art.

PH or HP? High heels or Low heels at the dance.

Peter Henry Emerson (13 May 1856 – 12 May 1936) and Henry Peach Robinson (9 July 1830, 21 February 1901) were early photographers with divergent approaches to photography. At least they argued about it. Emerson, a writer who used photography to make records of birds, set the standard. He also came in after Robinson.

Emerson trained as a physician; Robinson as a painter. Emerson believed that the camera was the key to photography being distinct, therefore of value. He thought the camera was capable of science – that people in pictures should be wearing their own natural clothes. He also championed the mimicry of the ‘human eye’ – he taught that the camera lens must be made to reproduce human vision: sharp in the middle; blurring to the outer edge. Somehow, he missed the circular, upside down, etc. parts of human vision. But he was a doctor, not a philosopher.

Which picture is the ‘fake’ photograph?

Left
Right

The one on the left is a ‘pitcher portrait’ “Confessions” by Emerson – It is the real photograph. The one on the right, “Day’s Work Is Done” by Robinson is a multiple print, so qualifies as a fake, drawing the ire of Emerson.

Even in 1970, student photographers considered the distinctions stilted, anachronistic, irrelevant to their artistic principals or image considerations. They are both attempts at story telling. The story being told is generic, well established emotionally without device. The frames are used similarly, the tone ranges vary, but not enough to be claimed as superior presentations of story or fact.

For those who know painting of the time you understand some of the relationships, as well as the morals being promoted by the photographers. These weren’t their invention, not even their discovery; they were following the same paths, but using different steps. And like so many people striving to lead to the same place, they argued about the better way. They couldn’t see how much alike they were.

They danced to the same music — one on the ‘stage’ of the camera; the other on the stage of the darkroom. One made a negative, the other made prints from many negatives. As if one shot a single camera one take, the other multiple camera spliced movie. Among aesthetically accomplished photographers both approaches are handled easily.

It is unlikely that either of these images would be shown as new work without expecting some smiles, grins or even laughter. Cast, and costumed differently you may get a show; but not an argument.

“The Human eye is not even centered, the magnitude of the corneal eccentricity appears to be quite irregular and adventitious, and so on.” — Helmholz