Kodak Dye Transfer Paper

Posted on Posted in The Biz, the Lab, minimum daily requirement, econocaste, dye transfer

a old stock roll of dye transfer paper was sold on eBay. congrats to both the buyer and seller.

a good price for the seller. good for the buyer too, if…

If the buyer knows how to use this; if they have conditioner and Kodak dyes, they are set to go. If they don’t have those things, they can mix both, if they know how.

I’m going to assume they do know how — I don’t know who bought it, nor do I know the seller. I’ve checked with the bakers and picklers in both printing groups — no one raises a hand. Those at OIC said they’d made an offer which was rejected. So it goes.

This paper is the mordanted type — two mordants. They are designed to control the Kodak Dyes, although the DuPont alternate set works just fine’ish. Meaning, the Greens will be too yellow. I guess that’s better than being orange’ish — making prints seem as though they were from ‘mixed’ window-light.

Oh, lets hope that whoever had this for so long stored it not on the flat. Oh, that curve you see, that is so the paper can feed into the very olden days Omega dispenser that Treck sold.

bookshelf: Critical Notes

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, book shelf, overnight notes

books I’ve taken from the shelf many times. Fewer times these days, this century. We’ve much more to read; work of equal depth as these early ones — these are things to read so that you’ve a foundation to react to this century’s writings.

They fear that writing, thinking will clarify their work, making it less creative. That they are also the ones who talk for years about techniques they have never done; they have a bucket list that could fill a pool. Hating art school goes along– too expensive; I already know how to use a camera.

By Non-photographers… does that make them useless, irrelevant — wrong?

  • Camera Lucida / Roland Barthes ::{1980] the “spectrum” He moves from the objective to the subjective. he book develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it.
  • On Photography / Susan Sontag. essays that appeared in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977. [1977] establish within people a “chronic voyeuristic relation to the world.” 1998 appraisal of the work, Michael Starenko, wrote in Afterimage that “On Photography has become so deeply absorbed into this discourse that Sontag’s claims about photography, as well as her mode of argument, have become part of the rhetorical ‘tool kit’ that photography theorists and critics carry around in their heads.”

By photographers.. are these more useful. Has writing ruined their photography. Why didn’t they just “let their photographs do the talking”

Minor White … reviewing
  • Photographers on Photography, Nathan Lyons,[Abbott, Adams, Bruguiere, Bullock, Callahan, Coburn, Demachy, Emerson, Frank, Lange, Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Robinson, Siegel, siskind, Henry Smith, Eugene Smith, Steichen, Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, White]
  • Circles of Confusion, Hollis Frampton. 1983
  • The Photographer’s Eye, John Szarkowski,1966. The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, and Vantage Point
    “This book is an investigation of what photographs look like, and of why they look that way. It is concerned with photographic style and with photographic tradition: with the sense of possibilities that a photographer today takes to his work.”
  • Looking at The Photographs / John Szarkowski, 1973. 100 Pictures from the Collection. [features Linda C, I was her first TA at SFAI. thanks Margery]

Words can’t take away from a worthwhile image anymore than they can bolster a worthless one. Fearing words is a crutch of someone unable to think. It is certainly not a requirement that a visualist also be an author, or philosopher. It is just unlikely that they are also unable to engage the history without using engaging their mind.

… an endless topic..