Re: Pond-moonrise (was: Re: Steichen image in April's 'Vanity Fair'

[Jack Brubaker <jack@jackbrubaker.com>]

I wonder if these prints ever looked all that much alike. These folks were searching for the most compelling version of each image and printed experimentally. I suspect that the differences were intentional.

jack

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 2:02 PM, Katharine Thayer <kthayer@pacifier.com> wrote:

Thank you phritz, for the tiny URL!

Yes, I agree there is a very faint blue in the sky, but  all accounts (and by the description of the applied pigments as yellow and blue-green) this print was once more brightly colored and more similar in appearance to the other two than it is now.   Steichen was experimenting with different ways to produce the same effect, with the goal of finding ways to reproduce more labor-intensive prints with a simpler and faster process, according to the Met analysis of his works.   I don't have time to trace down a timeline of the order in which these prints were done,  but the hand coloring appears (if we can trust the Met's representation of this print) to have been the least permanent of the three ways he produced the three prints of this image that are known to still be in existence.  It would be interesting to know what pigments he used for the applied coloring.

@ Don:  the fact that these three prints are different in coloring has nothing to do with a non-color-managed browser, and everything to do with the fact that the three prints were made with three different processes, and that the intervening hundred years has apparently taken a different toll on the different materials.

Katharine

On Mar 18, 2009, at 9:02 PM, phritz phantom wrote:

faded or not, i think i can see a slightly blue color in the print from the met (the middle one) just above the moon in the sky.

here's the url to the image in the online catalog of the met. tinyurl'd
http://tinyurl.com/dyarrc

phritz