U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | RE: Truth Beauty book

RE: Truth Beauty book



On Mon, 11 May 2009, Don Bryant wrote:

What I cannot understand, though (forgive my opinion here), is that
generation's fascination with the Michallet paper that had strong vertical
lines.  You can tell it a mile away in a book.

Michallet paper:

If I recall Judy Segal mentioned this paper several eons ago on the list.
Wow, Don... I think we all need to be REALLY careful around you. WHAT A MEMORY ! (I almost forgot it myself.) Yes, I got the Michallet from NY Central Artists Materials, tho I don't remember which medium I used on it (cyano comes to mind, but that means nothing. It could have been VDB or even gum. This is a stab in the dark, but I get the thought that if it was gum, it re-registered easily -- maybe all those lines sucked up the slack.)

What was great about it, was that it printed like a charm & held its shape. What was bad about it was that the texture was intrusive visually. I had the thought that a dry mount or book press could diminish that texture, but that might also diminish the printing qualities. I didn't notice the texture that much in the book (only in a couple of prints -- but then I wasn't looking for it). On the 3rd hand, I do recall seeing small reproductions in old books (I think of Heinrich Kuehn, "Technik der Lichtbildern") that could have been on that, or similar textured paper. But if something is the custom of the time (say, like nose rings) you don't notice it so much.

I AM, HOWEVER, GOING TO ROCHESTER NEXT TUESDAY TO SEE THE WORKS IN THE FLESH, SO TO SPEAK, so I might have more to report then.

And that's Don Bryant's doing (thank you very much, she said in honest irony) ... I went to the website he cited, and the fellow or one of them said the show was at Eastman House until the 31st. If I'd realized that Jet Blue would quadruple its rate in the half hour it took me to confirm date & time, I might have hesitated, but by then I'd spent so much time figuring time, dates, mileage, connections & sainted husband had volunteered to drive me to the morning plane.... how could I not?

However I took it upon myself to lecture the info man I finally reached at Eastman House, because their website gave only instructions for getting there by car, via "thruway." I explained to the fellow that nowadays it's more virtuous to travel by mass transit than solo on the thruway (tho we make an exception for the trip to my morning plane), to little avail. He didn't have a clue which airline might go from NYC to Rochester, until I'd badgered him enough that he said, oh maybe something like Jet Blue or whatever...and they did. But that killed the afternoon before I could call to find out why the evil Network Solutions hadn't resurrected my domain name as promised so I could forward attachments to the resident mail program -- among a few other performance failures (other than my own).

TBC,

Judy