Re: Anderson on registration
I concur, Jack. It'd be hard to slip by pencil marks on me, but who knows.
I, too, was surprised at how Kasebier's gums were not...stellar.
Unfortunately I did see misregistration in some but didn't record whose gums
showed this. But in Anderson's they were pretty perfect, and the reason I
noticed is that I was shocked to see that I would like his work because the
book images that I have seen have been TERRIBLE. It wasn't like Camera
Work photogravures or anything.
Also, I noticed a lot of soft focus stuff, which is a bit easy to register
:)
The wonders of the internet--do you know, I might have told you all that I
was so excited to find an article in an index by Ravell about his gum
process. WELL, it was cut out of the GEH journal, so I requested a xerox
copy through my university library from another library, and, to some of you
this is a "Well, DUH!" they sent me an electronic scan of the article!!!!
It goes to Interlibrary Loan, where I can download it and print it out
myself. No waiting, hardly, no paper waste (well, I did print it out). How
incredible this day and age is.
Chris
Judy,
The subject of "faking it" was interesting in what I saw at MOMA. The
Kaisibier (sp) gums were spotted in many places with brush and presumably
watercolor (very probably commercial spotting colors, see below). There
were
often as many as a dozen retouch spots in each print and each one stood
out
like a sore thumb. Unlikely that she saw these prints as they are now. The
pigment she used in her gum must be fugitive but not the pigment in her
spotting paint. The other gums by prominent printers of the time seemed
flawless in spotting. Either they printed so well that they didn't need to
spot (multiple layers would tend to cancel out errors) or they spotted so
well that even with holding the bare, unglazed, print at angles to the
light
I couldn't see any additions. Neither paint or pencil showed with close
examination (I was looking like a real dork with two pair of reading
glasses
stacked on my nose and hunched over the prints).
Jack
From: Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com>
Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:48:13 -0500 (EST)
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Cc: alt-photo-process-error@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Anderson on registration
There's a chapter in Anderson's book on Pictorial Photography about gum
over platinum (or other combo, tho I think it's that), where he says
register the face and fake the rest of it , that is, fudge it by pencil.