Re: Pond-moonrise (was: Re: Steichen image in April's 'Vanity Fair'
On Mar 17, 2009, at 7:02 PM, Joseph Smigiel wrote On Tue, 17 Mar 2009, Katharine Thayer wrote:... But the bottom one, the cyanotype over platinum, it seems pretty certain to me that the cyan is printed with a reversed negative. I don't know if MOMA has analyzed this print the way the Met has analyzed theirs, but since I don't know otherwise, I'm taking on faith that they know for sure that this is cyanotype over platinum and not hand-applied color over platinum. I'd be willing to bet big bucks that he simply colored in the moon (notice that he didn't think to color in a reflection of it in the water).Fools rush in... Which is to say, it looks to me from the 3 images on Katharine's site, that the most (only?) truly beautiful one is the 3rd, that is, with the blue sky and the possibly hand-colored moon. Joe, I agree with your relative assessment of the images that I put on that page, with the caveat that they might not be accurate representations of the actual prints. The jpeg I took from the Sotheby's catalog was especially poor; I later found a more pleasing image of the same print and replaced it; maybe you'd like this one better. (Whether it's a better representation of the actual print, I can't say). The only thing I can vouch for is that the jpeg of the print from MOMA matches (on my monitor) pretty well the reproduction in the book I scanned it from, but whether that's an accurate representation of the actual print, who knows. Also, I'm troubled by the fact that that one that looks rather brown and uninteresting in the jpeg is the one that enthralled you when you saw it in Chicago, so I'd guess that the Met's electronic reproduction of that print doesn't do it justice. So, it's hard to tell. But just from what we've got to work with here, I'd agree that the bottom one is the most interesting one. Katharine
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