Re: alt exhibit
Thanks, Chris. I was trying to find the original entry form myself,
because I also remembered it as being fairly "loose" under that
"alternative" theme.
Still . . . while I can more easily view silver gelatin prints as
being an "alternative process" these days-- or, at least, I can be
convinced of that-- I do not view digital color prints, most likely
manipulated in Photoshop, in this same way. And I was also surprised
(and somewhat disappointed) to see so many included. I think the
blurb said that they had ~700 submissions, too. Not sure what that
implies about alternative processes in general . . . but, yes, nice
to see so much work represented from this list.
I'm also surprised your dept kept the color printers as long as they
did. Where I teach, they got rid of those some years ago, without
much fanfare-- one day they were there; the next day they were gone--
along with the person who taught those courses-- all disappeared--
seemingly overnight. They're still holding steadfast to the
traditional darkroom/b&w enlargers, though . . .
Diana
On Sep 6, 2007, at 10:03 AM, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
Oh, Don, don't get me started on this....
Oh well, I will.
We've suffered this issue a long time. The class I teach has been
called Non-Silver forever and yet I teach iron/silver processes and
silver chloride processes. We changed it a couple years ago but it
only made it to now in the MSU catalog as Alternative Nonsilver
Photography!! Don't ask me why.
In the entry form for the Alternatives show it says "Theme:
Alternatives .. All subjects welcome. Images derived from
alternative image capture and printing, such as Holga, pinhole and
other cameras, photograms, scanograms, holograms, Polaroid
transfers, etc. So it was pretty loose to begin with. I only
entered mordancaged prints...
But I am very pleased at the number of people from this list that
are in the show, regardless of how loose the definition!
As a related issue, another thing people get confused about is
Experimental Photography, especially when they are going to buy
either one of my books--Alternative Processes Condensed or
Experimental Photography Workbook. To many there is no difference.
To me it is very clear--APC is all contact printing dimroom UV
processes, in EPW it is all enlarging darkroom tungsten stuff.
Hence bromoil, essentially what people call an alt process, is in
EPW. Even my students when signing up for the Experimental class
do not know what it is about.
In May we finally "retired" the huge color print machine in our
department. This was a huge decision--parts are becoming
unavailable, chemistry is becoming unavailable, and, frankly, there
were only maybe 3 students (out of 130 majors) per semester who
were color print junkies. You have to run prints through the
machine constantly to keep it "seasoned". This now means that I
probably will have to revise EPW, chapter by chapter, to include
the digital equivalent of what I taught with the color machine! No
more direct projection photograms on color paper--infinitely more
interesting than BW direct projection. No more paint spattered
cliche verres with negatives exposed through--again, far more
interesting when the paint spatters act as colored filters to the
paper and produce opposite of what you'd expect. On and on. I
mourn the loss, though I agreed to it. And, frankly, doing color
posterization in the darkroom is infinitely more fun and beautiful
than a press of a button in Photoshop. But Camden, who did this in
college, and who is also digitally savvy, may disagree :)
Chris
Well I think it sucks that inkjet prints are allowed in the Alt.
Process
show. Also I don't understand why a photograph made with a Zone
Plate Camera
is considered alt.
My 2 cents,
Don Bryant
-----Original Message-----
From: Diana Bloomfield [mailto:dhbloomfield@bellsouth.net]
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 8:01 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: Re: alt exhibit
Wait. Maybe that would be thanks to who ever did that, not whom
ever. Is it whom or who? I think the correct use is who. Not sure,
but thanks anyway.
On Sep 5, 2007, at 7:43 PM, Daniel Williams wrote:
zphoto@montana.net wrote:
Hi all, There are a number of people on this list in this show--I
was offlist for a bit while at Penland and don't know if
someone announced it, but here is the link that shows the
exhibit.
Chris
http://www.c4fap.org/exhibitions/2007Alternative/index.htm
I see the page has now been altered to show the process used.
Dan Williams
|