U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: black fingernails, et al, was Re: Paper - baby oil Digi Negs

Re: black fingernails, et al, was Re: Paper - baby oil Digi Negs


  • To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
  • Subject: Re: black fingernails, et al, was Re: Paper - baby oil Digi Negs
  • From: Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com>
  • Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:10:28 -0400 (EDT)
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On Sun, 13 Sep 2009, SteveS wrote:

Don't understand this, and all the time I thought you were senior in this game, Judy :)

Imogene Cunningham was a chemist, majored in the university including the Sorbone, minor in boteny (hense the flower pics); Stichen commanded piro into the military where he did the chemistry on board ship . . . Morley Baer was one of his supbordinates; and Stlieglitz was one of the labratory pioneers of color processes.
Listen Steve S., if yr gonna lecture me on details of history, could you kindly try to get it right? I mean....

boteny !!! (yuck !!)

hense !! Ow, ow ow !!

Stichen !!! Oh dear lord !

Sorbone... some kind of disease, with backaches?

supbordinates : ouch ouch ouch (unless that's a new kind of drink???)

piro: What's that... a California dance?

Where you been girl? Library's down to the left and uptown 'bout a dozen blocks.
Oh my dear boy, if yr telling me 'bout "the library uptown 'bout a dozen blocks" -- I don't know what kind of library they have in podunk, but if you mean the NY Public Library, that's more than 40 blocks, or 2 miles, uptown from here and east about 4 avenue blocks -- equal to 12 street blocks. But anyway, so what?

You have both a dictionary for spelling regular words & a photo history for spelling Steichen, et al, half a room or 10 steps away. For all the good it did you.

Also, my dear, one of the reasons I know so much is that I can prioritize. I'd never been in a darkroom before I was 48 years old, but before then knew (from reading, among other activities) how to spell "hence," a few facts and blessings of "botany," and that not even I could pronounce "Stlieglitz." I daresay I've read the bios of lots of photogs, including Cunningham, who sat her hubby (or was it her son?) on a cake of ice (a provocative thought either way), tho the fact that Cunningham was a chemist seens irrelevant. In fact I'd guess that chemists did NOT believe that real men put their naked hands in the soup: They knew better.

PS. One of my best early works in photography was a solarized dye transfer of a bouquet of flowers... Did I have to know their brand names? So call them asters.

love & kisses,

Judy

S. Shapiro

PS
Cunningham printed for Curtis . . . those orotypes of Indians. She inspired/invented the curtistype of brass instead of gold .
----- Original Message ----- From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: black fingernails, et al, was Re: Paper - baby oil Digi Negs



What I'm wondering is.... did folks like Stieglitz, Steichen and Imogene Cunningham do their own darkroom work? I'm also thinking fame may have been more likely for those with a long life... they not only lived to do their "mature work," they were around to hustle it. (I also know folks who printed for famous photographers, for instance, for Helen Levitt-- and where the printing process isn't part of the image [as in "alt" & maybe sometimes even then], I'd count that a consumation devoutly to be wished.)

Meanwhile, the only name that came to mind right off for early death was Gary Winogrand (and that only because photography's best sneerer, AD Coleman, sneered at him in one of his books for having left -- hundreds? thousands? -- of rolls of exposed film unexamined at his death)... Winogrand was 56.

In any event, I doubt that the figure about increased cancer among photographers was baseless... Tho now that I think of it, a friend of mine took David Vestal's class in fine printing at Pratt.... I'll check with her about his stand on hands-in ... & also check his books to see if there's a caveat.

I also point out that I never in my life had a sign of allergy of *any* kind -- not hay fever, not ragweed, not bee stings, let alone bananas and chocolate that torture me today (sob!). I suppose, therefore, that it was the years of intimate contact with turpentine in a closed room that brought it on... I also note that in a painting class in those days (maybe still today ?) before acrylics, each student had a butcher tray of oil paints squeezed out and mixed in the center, that is, about 25 trays sloshing with turpentine in a closed classroom.. Any "fine art" student was likely to have had several such classes, as did I.

cheers,

Judy




On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, Joseph Smigiel wrote:

Imogen Cunningham at 93 died the same day as Minor White on June 24, 1976. Perhaps Imogen used tongs.

Joe