[Alt-photo] Re: APIS summary, beware, long

[John Brewer]

A great summary Chris! One day I'd like to attend but to travel from my side of the pond I'd need get a few things in such as meeting some of you guys, going to GE House, John Coffer's Jamboree &c.

John

Sent from my iPhone

> On 24 Oct 2013, at 15:20, Christina Anderson <christinazanderson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear All,
> We all now know about Bob's wonderful Uranotype presentation, but I thought I could give an APIS summary of "the rest of the story" for those unable to go. This might explain to Laura what APIS is as well.
> 
> I've been attending APIS since 1999, only having missed a couple, so the best thing about APIS is seeing some of the same faces I have seen for 14 years. We are a small niche community, aren't we? 
> 
> I was disappointed at the turnout, but these are less discretionary income times with lots of competing demands. However, I was surprised to not see more students at these presentations when there are TWO (not one) local colleges teaching alt! In fact, I was thrilled to be able to see that there are TWO teachers at SF Art and Design (Mike Webb is it and Chris Nail) teaching alt! They were teaching the night of the presentation by Cristina so we got to see their students and their dimrooms. And the students' alt works were hung smartly on these framed metal screens with those little nail-sized magnets, a great idea for a hanging device.
> 
> APIS in the start was about 150 people I might guess. My favorite was when we all stayed together at St. John's University. This APIS was about 40-50. The setting was lovely. It was at a brand new Santa Fe Community College which had a cafeteria right next to where the presentations were occurring. The weather in October is gorgeous. Next to the presentation room was a side room with tables where people had their prints out for all to see, another benefit to this conference. There was some really beautiful work there. I loved Joe P's (forget spelling of his last name) little mini prints, really teeny!! Phil Schwartz's carbons.  A lot of platinums by various people. Jason Lazarus' VDBs of Alaskan gold mines. And Lorran Meares (sp?) has some incredible 3D images that look like Jerry Uelsmann meets Doug Prince and Arthur Tress in 3 dimensions.
> 
> The first night Cristina Kahlo gave an excellent presentation to a packed house in the theatre at the College of Art and Design. Lots of great pictures of her great-grandfather, Guillermo Kahlo, who was a Mexico City photographer in the 1900s (also father of Frida). Cristina is as charming as was her presentation, well timed, well-illustrated. After there was a reception at the Marion Center with the works from the five Mexican photographers that came to APIS. I was particularly blown away by the tricolor photopolymer prints by Byron Brauchli. Another great exhibition set was a gum bichromate skull image done in 10 different colors/ways by I think Eric Jervaise from Mexico. But that is to be expected since I am into color alt.
> 
> Friday Jill Enfield gave her talk. Jill was the honored photographer at the presentation and also giving an albumen workshop at the end of the conference. She showed her work which was just wonderful to see. I had seen some of it here and there in books, but to see her whole "oeuvre" so to speak was really fruitful as she is a versatile photographer. Her latest project, portraits of immigrants in collodion, is a very contemporary theme in an old process, something I like to see more of. I also had the pleasure of being "roomies" with Jill and that made the trip! 
> 
> Then the Mexico contingent gave individual presentations about their creative work. Never enough time, when a panel presentation is done, IMHO. Usually the last one gets short shrift, which was the case, so Cristina got 3 minutes to talk! She was very gracious about it. Julio Galindo was there who I think is on this list and I think has presented in the past. He, Eric, Byron, and Cristina were the presenters and we even had a Skype call with Rafael Galvan Montolo who could not make it.
> 
> I was (no surprise there, given my research) particularly entranced with Art Kaplan's talk about the identification project of old prints that the Getty is developing. Art is a wonderful speaker, to the point, well-timed, and showed "signatures" for want of a better term of photographs they have identified all over the world. Example: a photograph is said to be a platinum print but under electron microscope it is found to be a photo mechanical e.g. from a plate in a printmaking press print. Another example is that a casein print will exhibit phosphorus as a signature element. This project is available on the web as someone pointed out a while ago on this list, but to hear Art talk about it makes it much more fascinating. There is that one-day presentation at the Getty December 5 that looks like a must-visit.
> 
> Madelyn Willis and Dick Sullivan gave a Rawlins Oil demo/talk and showed their prints. They have been collaborating together laboriously working out this process. The good news is Dick has developed a Rawlins paper for sale through B&S so you don't have to make your own gelatin-coated paper to do this process. They gave away several of their HUGE oil prints as a door prize, one in particular a pretty stellar image of blue trees in the forest (and big) that Madelyn had created.
> 
> Saturday I gave a casein talk and demo. I will be sharing that talk again in Seattle at SPENW Friday 3PM Art Institute Seattle Nov 8.
> 
> Then Richard Puckett gave a Texas Chrsotype demo which with his sense of humor was a HOOT and his book is a mere $10 so maybe chrysotype is in my (my students') future.  I don't know much about it but the range of color from eggplant to blue to whatever is pretty compelling.
> 
> Then of course Bob's wonderful Uranotype presentation. Between Bob and Richard's sense of humor it was a pretty humorous Saturday. 
> 
> The end of APIS was a presentation by Barret Oliver on woodburytypes that he is collaborating with Chuck Close on. He brought a bunch in person to show us and they are really quite juicy, and also did a great slide show of how they create the plates and make the work. I now know that whatever it is I do is a piece of CAKE compared to woodburytype. We also found out that when printmaking for another person it is normal NOT to have your name attached to the work, only the artist's name, and apparently that is not an appropriate issue to dialogue about in no uncertain terms :)  Yikes.
> 
> OK that'd be it! I hope I have not left anything out.
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Christina Z. Anderson
> http://christinaZanderson.com/
> 
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