Sebastiao Salgado, Lynn Davis in Madrid, Spain

[javimm]

There's a multi-exhibition here in Madrid at the time. It's called Photoespaña 07, and our city is hosting 20 main exhibitions, and 60 alternative exhibitions until 22nd July.
Yesterday I went to see some of them. The two I liked most were the one by Lynn Davis and Sebastiao Salgado.

- The Lynn Davis exhibiton: Pictures from her trip to photograph icebergs and some other pics from Iran. I must say, great shots. Ice landscapes, beatiful detail, amazing. Shot in MF or LF. Impressed by her ability.

- Sebastiao Salgado. This man is one of the best ever, period. The exhibition shows 50 something pictures from his travels in Africa: Ruanda, Uganda, Sudan, etc. What an impressive work!!. I haven't seen such a gorgeus pictures in a long, long time. The people's faces, the atmosphere. WOW. These pictures freeze my heart. If you don't know his work, I highly recommend it. Shot with Leica and Tri-x, the pictures where huge enlargements. Tons and tons of grain, but it integrates in the picture in such a way, it makes the pics even better. I'm impressed by this man. This exhibition has been awarded as the best of all Photoespaña 07 exhibtions by the public. I'm going to see it again before it closes.

- I went to some other exhibitions, one very interesting, called Unforeseen photographers. It shows works by people you wouldn't think of them taking pictures: Yul Brinner, Richard Gere, Lou Reed, Pedro Almodóvar, Jeff Bridges, Zola, Cocteau, Magritte, and many others. It was quite a nice surpise. Richard Gere has an eye for photography, very nice shots. Jeff Bridges shooting with a pano camera, very good shots too. I liked this exhibtion a lot.
I went to see another one, called Victims of Stalin, showing police pics of people killed by the Stalin regime, all accused for being spies, and killed afterwards. They were charged falsely, as many others, and the pics shows their expressions of anger, irony, grief... very interesitng.

I have to see some more exhibitions. There is one from Man Ray and another from Zang Huan, one from Bruce Davidson that I've been told are great too.

Madrid is a great city now if you like photography!.

What is great about this exhibitions it's that they're free too. No entry fee.

Hope you find this info interesting,
Javier

 

[javimm]

Well, for those of you who have read it, thank you. Here's an update of what I've seen.

- Zang Huan: This man is not a photog, but an integral artist (painter, sculpterer, etc). What is in this exhibit is pictures from his art works, and a video of his activities. The exhibit itself is quite strange. Not for everyone, I think. Watching the video helped to understand his vision. He has a huge group of collaborators, who work in his directions, getting done what he sees.

- Man Ray: One word to express this exhibit. YUCK. What a waste of time. Either the exhibition is not on par with the greatest works by Ray, or maybe he's style is not my cup of tea, or he was a total poser. I really disliked this exhibition. It had photography, sculpture and painting. The sculptures are so-so, the paintings are not on the same level as the people he knew (Picasso to name just one), and the photos were little contact prints of portraits and very few enlargements. The enlargements were not good either. Of course there were a few of his most famous works, but I doubt the pictures are famous for the pictures themselves, but for the people in the pictures. Actresses, artists, ... but the pictures weren't great technically or creatively.

- Italian Noerealism: Fantastic and huge exhibit there, depicting post WWII pics of rural and little villages of Italy. There is a certain look to them that I dig. Those remind me of HCB's pictures of Valencia, Spain in a way. There were marvellous italian photogs in that time. All in all, I liked it a lot. Pics of the almost post war destroyed Italy, and the people who lived there. Very dramatic and human at the same time.

- Surrealism in Reina Sofía Museum: Very short exhibition, by various artists, including Man Ray, and HCB (one pic by him). Not a bad exhibit, but very short. Anyway, it was worth it, as going there was a nice excuse to go seeing the Guernica by Picasso, that is exposed in the contiguous room (I've seen it so many times, that I know it by heart, but I don't get tired of admiring it).

- Bruce Davidson: An exhibit of his photos of Central park. Very nice, and moving. Pics of CP landscapes, and poor people, gays... well, all that lives in CP. Almost all shot in pano of square format, B&W. Very little grain, so I suppose he uses slow film. I liked this exhibit.

- I went to a lot of alternative exhibits, but they are not worth mentioning. Very few pics in all of them (5 or 6 per exhibit).

Hope you enjoyed my report. Conclusion: Film is not dead. 95% of the work Ive seen is B&W film, and 99% is film, colour and B&W. Very few digital pictures there, and IMHO, the enlargements didn't look good (jitter, plasticy look, fake colors,...).

My favourite exhibits were Salgado's, and the Neorrealism.

javier.

 

[Socke]

Conclusion: Film is not dead. 95% of the work Ive seen is B&W film, and 99% is film, colour and B&W. Very few digital pictures there, and IMHO, the enlargements didn't look good (jitter, plasticy look, fake colors,...).

How do you know what was digitaly printed and what not? I don't think I could see it, although I have some background in printing (various offset processess, not film).

 

[Todd.Hanz]

Thanks for this report, sounds like you had a good time.

Todd

 

[javimm]

How do you know what was digitaly printed and what not? I don't think I could see it, although I have some background in printing (various offset processess, not film).

Well, I was talking about the look of the prints. I don't have the background you have, of course. Maybe I got fooled in some pictures. There were pictures where it was obvious they were printed digitally. Inspecting the transitions and the grain of color pictures I could see the pixel-saw pattern there, and the colors didn't look "natural". The Central Park exhibit is the only one that didn't showed the grain you can expect from B&W film. Even by close inspection they had little to no grain. but they have the disinct look of film. Not so in other B&W pics I watched in an alternate exhibit. They were B&W, but they had the distinct pixel-saw pattern in the borders, and the look was different from a classic B&W print.

The ultimate proof was the footnote of every picture in every exhibition. If it says it's "digital printing", well, it's digital and if it says "Silver gelatin-bromide" (or however it's spelled), it's not 😀. Almost everything was done with the "silver" method, and not digitally printed (at least the foot notes says so).

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but I can see the differences from digital prints and classic enlargements even before looking at those footnotes.

Please, if I'm saying something wrong, I wouldn't mind to be corrected, so feel free to do so.

Thanks for this report, sounds like you had a good time.

Todd

Yeah, I had a great time. I went to see very exhibit with my father, and we had a great time together.

Thanks,
Javier.

 

[Socke]

Ah! I think it's called "jaggies" in english, this happens when you don't have enough pixels for a given print size, say a 3x4 meter panel made from a 2000x3000 pixel scan.

That is one thing I can see, too.

In 2002 we had a problem with a 3Mpixel picture from Canon D30 which should be featured on a magazin cover. We had a 5x7" fuji frontier print made which we scanned on an Agfa Horizon scanner, the scan was perfect for the magazin, the original file wasn't. What where pixels in the original looked like grain in the scan 🙂

 

[javimm]

Yes, jaggies is what I was talking about, but I didn't know the correct term 😀. Anyway, apart from the jaggies, the B&W work, I'm quite sure was shot with film, and maybe printed digitally. It's that or the photogs have taken a lot of time to add a grain pattern in Photoshop to their digital files. A lot of pics seemed to be shot with a very grainy film.

There were some alternative exhibitions where I couldn't tell. They seemed to be unnatural regarding to colors and effects, but there were no jaggies. That happened mostly with almost square or square pictures. I think that those were shot with a Hasselblad and a monster digi back, that can print good at those extreme sizes. What tells me if a print is digital or not is if the image is too "unnatural". People seems to overdone the effects in digital, just because they can. I attended to a photography sale, were a lot of pictures were overdone in Photoshop, and it showed. Just one guy shot with film there, and it was clear just looking at his pics. He told me after that he shot with Hasselblad Xpan and printed in darkroom.

One question for you. What kind of printer can give identical results of a classic B&W wet enlargement process?. Is it normal to shoot B&W film, then scan, then print digitally to achieve the same results as enalrging in a wet darkroom?.

Thanks,
Javier.