U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: Fresson question

Re: Fresson question



On January2008, at 9:26 PM, Judy Seigel wrote:

but still I ask: How did those folks, without a computer or a sensitometer or a 21-step, let alone an MFA, devise a process posterity cannot match? Or is that simply nostalgia, a longing for temps perdues (the feeling, not the chickens), & the main difference is lack of the commercial distribution of Mouret's time?
AS our list so oft proscribes (and shares), it is the test-test- testing to achieve ALL the fine aspects of nuanced shadow and highlight. Once that was done my presumption is the artist worked under similar conditions most of the time. Rather than using the process it might be thought the process (once perfected) used the artist. To a lesser degree perhaps, the adjustments of exposure and development created by the 'Zone' system often intrigues one to
become involved with dramatic light situations near Wagnerian in proportion.
Though I'm a full practitioner of the digital environment there is still the great beauty of and marvelous wonder, and even some magical aspect, the hand-done historic process brings to the artist. There is an intimacy afforded by such methodology the digital environment does not match. It is sensuous and slightly erotic to struggle with making a print . . even a silver gelatin or chromogenic one . . that is intriguing. In the local drug store 'tuther day, a Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix was 'on sale' for 98¢ but it will never, ever, match Diane's (my wife) recipes . . in particular her carrot cake, which is sublimely and sumptuously delicious. It is psyche-logic, the companion of eros.