Magnum and the Dying Art of Darkroom Printing

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Sorry Chris, but I have to disagree. You see, being a creative photographer is not mutually exclusive to being a talented darkroom craftsman, (and because technical manipulations carried out in the darkroom are based on an eye towards ascetics, it can be considered an art in and of itself.)

It's like the tried discussion on old RFF, that you are either a collector OR a photographer, when reasonably one CAN be both. Not mutually exclusive.


Also, I've been considering, as a working concept, the idea that art IS in the process.

But art is so idiosyncratic and personal, that any general comment made will find a plethora of valid exceptions.

Chris, it seems from your experience, you were forced to abandon wet printing due to health considerations. Would you have continued with that process if this didn't happen!

Frank, I don't think you actually read what I wrote. I never denied that it takes skill to be a good darkroom printer. What I said was that those who make idiotic statements about darkroom prints being the only 'real' photography are using process as a crutch because they have nothing more to offer in their work. Ultimately, it is the image that matters. Some people's work, you see the process before the subject. I think that such work ultimately is a failure.

I also said that photographs cannot, by their very nature, be handmade. No matter how much one sticks ones hands in the chemicals, you're still using machine-made materials with factory-made equipment whose technology is beyond the ability of 99.9999% of photographers to replicate themselves. Photography is a completely modern art, reliant on the machine and the engineer, like virtually all that makes the modern world what it is.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Oh, boy! Just last week I purchased my first Ilford multigrade paper pack of 100. I hope, I'm not too late.

 

[FrankS]

"I also said that photographs cannot, by their very nature, be handmade. No matter how much one sticks ones hands in the chemicals, you're still using machine-made materials with factory-made equipment whose technology is beyond the ability of 99.9999% of photographers to replicate themselves. Photography is a completely modern art, reliant on the machine and the engineer, like virtually all that makes the modern world what it is."

It's a matter of degree of involvement in creating the final product. There can be more or less of the artist inherent in a piece of work.

I know that in the history of photography, there have been many masters who did not do their own printing, leaving that to others. But there are also examples of photographers who would not let anyone else print their film. The non printing photographer can give directions to the printer and has final approval of which prints are accepted, it is not the identical situation to a photographer who prints his/her own work. The process is more complete and coherent, without the disconnect between the photographer and the printer as different people.

 

[semilog]

Adobe Illustrator shows how crude pencil drawing or oil painting is too, but that does not make oil painters want to bin the Grumbachers and buy a new Mac Pro with a Wacom tablet. We all want different things out of life, I want to sell my customers the best photograph they can get from me and that is real hand crafted photography, not anyone-can-do-it Compu-prints. You will do your best work with what you love to use the most. For me, that is black and white film expertly printed on silver gelatin coated fiber based paper, one print at a time, individual character traits and all...

And no, it is not a dying art, it is dying as a technological mainstay and now being allowed to become a true art form.

^------ YES. THIS. +1. COULDN'T AGREE MORE.

(And the color gamut of a D800 is wider than Matisse's paper cutouts, too.)

 

[FrankS]

The process can not be the legitimizing factor, I agree. There needs to be a product (or performance).

As for the second proof, like I said,its a matter of degree.

 

[FrankS]

I should say maybe, that I'm just expressing my opinion, not proclaiming here that I have the one and only true answer.

There are all different kinds of art: performance art, conceptual art, etc, and then there is the individual expression by each artist. Process/product will have varying importance/relevance in each case.

 

[FrankS]

And ultimately, people can render their work in any way they like. The shortage of film is a trope, and chemistry is available for those who care to look. But for me, since 1970, film and paper were at once joys and frustrations, always coming between me and the thing-ness of what I was looking at.

"This prison...." indeed. For me it was a detestable box. I'd rather a root cellar to keep good food in and enjoy the luxury of being able to do my editing in a "well-lighted" place.

Cheers,

Shane

And that precisely is the difference between us, (and that's okay) and also between other artists. For me, and some others, the frustrations/challenges of the wet darkroom is a huge part of the satisfaction when it all comes together in an image you have created. It's almost like: the greater the effort, the greater the reward. For me, anyway. YMMV

 

[gns]

Adobe Illustrator shows how crude pencil drawing or oil painting is too, but that does not make oil painters want to bin the Grumbachers and buy a new Mac Pro with a Wacom tablet.

1. I don't think drawing and painting are crude at all. They allow for a great deal of precision and control.

2. One cannot output an illustrator file to oil on canvas or graphite on paper. Inserting something like photoshop into the photo process allows you a different way to adjust the image and still end up with the same final medium. It's a no-brainer which is why galleries are full of "Digital C prints" and the like.

3. Would you bet money that there are no painters who have turned to computer/digital imaging processes?

 

[FrankS]

Come on, Shane. You have to admit that the digital workflow is faster, more convenient, and yes, easier, perhaps not in talent/skill but certainly in effort. Surely you remember the set up, mixing of chemicals, and clean up involved in a printing session.

 

[mfogiel]

If I did as much burning and dodging in PS as this guy does in the darkroom, I'd feel guilty of image manipulation 😀

 

[newsgrunt]

let's watch this and be thankful for the time we spend making prints and appreciate the beauty of one who dances in the dark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qz2dC5MXjSY

fwiw, I print much in the same manner Nathalie works

 

[FrankS]

😀

The time to completion of a print that passes is relatively the same. You have to remember, I work in colour. It's not a case of simply pressing a button. Preserving colour "fidelity", managing the differences in gamuts, profiles, tracking all the adjustments that are required (and they're different for each print)... It's all time. Something that each of us has less of.
More convenient? Yes. Less physically demanding perhaps. But I'm on the road for up to seven months of the year and so I spend a lot of time dragging a printer into hotel rooms. Setting up. Aligning. Head cleaning. Calibrating.
I soft proof up to a point but after that I hard proof.
Obviously there are advantages. The presence of an advantage - the basic one being that I can print in colour - is why I switched.

An advantage in process does not degrade or enhance the quality of the work. It just changes the process. Im still fully involved start to finish. That was the original point, I think, and, a corollary to Chris's.

I speak only of black and white which is all I do with film. For colour, dispensation is granted to use digital.

😉

 

[MIkhail]

Back to the article and the very interesting marked-up print.

Does anyone know the meaning of the markings? Obviously they are about dodging and burning, but what are the numbers?

I should think, those are the Kodak filter numbers. In other words, "give it 10 seconds with filter 2.5 here and with filter 4 there" kind of thing.
Thus, printer controls the contrast of the area locally as well as the values of light/darkness.

You can do exactly same thing in Photoshop, by the way 🙂

 

[MIkhail]

1) No one who matters gives a damn if you use film or digital, or what printing process you use. People will buy your work if they like the image.

Indeed so.

 

[FrankS]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chriscrawfordphoto
1) No one who matters gives a damn if you use film or digital, or what printing process you use. People will buy your work if they like the image.


Perhaps, but I give a damn. 🙂

 

[Ronald M]

I resisted digi as long as I could. But you can not buck sales numbers and that is what drives stores and what they stock and manufactures.

The ride started with just a Canon P&S. Fun but not great. D200 Nikon then D700, D3, D800 Leica M8 & 9. Added a Mac pro and Eizo monitor.

I can do the same as in my darkroom working short time frames if I wish. There is much more control in digital. Let me see you raise contrast on a color print without resorting to masking or saturation or adjust color balance differently in different areas of the picture.

What is miss is the quiet of the darkroom with music and the pride of doing the finished product from beginning to end. For this reason I have kept a few film cameras and the dark space is filly intact. It gets used occasionally.

 

[zauhar]

I should think, those are the Kodak filter numbers. In other words, "give it 10 seconds with filter 2.5 here and with filter 4 there" kind of thing.
Thus, printer controls the contrast of the area locally as well as the values of light/darkness.

You can do exactly same thing in Photoshop, by the way 🙂

You can locally adjust contrast in photoshop by selecting regions and locally applying curves - is that what you mean?

Is there a photoshop plugin that allows me to select a region of the image and locally expose for 2 sec using a number 2 contrast filter? And also use my hands to control the region exposed? ;-)

I mean, that would be doing EXACTLY the same thing!

Randy

 

[Roger Hicks]

I resisted digi as long as I could. But you can not buck sales numbers . . .

Why not? No-one forces you to buy anything. What does it matter what other people are buying? Today I used a bow and arrow for the first time in around 50 years. A proper, grown-up one, not a home-made one or a toy. Bows and arrows are still in production and I'm thinking of buying an archery outfit.

Cheers,

R.

 

[MIkhail]

You can locally adjust contrast in photoshop by selecting regions and locally applying curves - is that what you mean?

Is there a photoshop plugin that allows me to select a region of the image and locally expose for 2 sec using a number 2 contrast filter? And also use my hands to control the region exposed? ;-)

I mean, that would be doing EXACTLY the same thing!

Randy

No, I would not do that generally.
Most likely I would create layers and work in them, and then erase holes in upper layers with wide brush (low Flow) to insure the smooth transitions.


But wait a minute, you are not asking seriously, you are trying to catch me, aren't you?
Good luck with that.

 

[Dan]

The obsession with process is the last refuge of the intellectually shallow. The photographer with nothing to say, no vision, screams from the rooftop about how he's a "Real" photographer because he uses (insert process here). Let me clue you guys in on a few things:

1) No one who matters gives a damn if you use film or digital, or what printing process you use. People will buy your work if they like the image. If they don't, no amount of shaking your fist at the sky and yelling at the kids to get off your lawn will make them like your work.

2) There is no such thing as a "Hand-Made" photograph. Its a form of art where we use materials made in big factories by scientists and engineers. Same goes for our equipment. Sculpture, drawing, painting..those are done by hand. We photographers 'draw' using lenses none of us can make ourselves, and those lenses impose themselves greatly on the final image through their image forming characteristics (sharpness, bokeh, tone and color rendering, etc). The claim of selling handmade photographs is intellectually dishonest. If you have to resort to such chicanery to make your work look good, you might as well give up. You've failed as an artist.

In the case of Jerry Ulseman I think the process he goes through to create his work by hand within the constraints of traditional darkroom materials is very much part of the art/craftmanship people respond to (but not me).

And sculptors, painters? They don't make steel, glass, formica, twigs, branches, oil paint, encostic, linseed, canvas, stretchers, bristles: they manipulate those materials by hand. Same for photographers.