I'll take a bit of a chance (maybe a great deal of a chance) by saying
that we have to go beyond explanations that describe the impact and
imitation of styles in order to understand something like the compression
of tonal range in platinum and palladium prints. I think too, that we
have to go beyond Sandy Vrooman's (Feb 20th) suggestion that we look
toward the print's composition and subject matter. It is not that these
are unimportant. It's just that there's something still elusive, but
perhaps ultimately understandable.
Yes, artistic movements do influence public taste and photographers'
practices. Sandy King (Feb 21st) notes how the work of most pictorialists
seem to be imitating a pre-existing style. I agree, and yet I seem to
think there is more to it. The more of it is that those photographers
were dealing with something that they did not talk about/write about, but
that was nevertheless powerful in their lives.
Sandy's point raises this issue of compression as a paradox. As a
question, the paradox asks: if platinum offers a long (I would say a
voluptuous) tonal range, why compress it? Why would a photographer avoid
one of the most important features of the medium? Is it merely or mainly
the influence of artistic styles? To answer yes, would conceive art
styles to be very powerful.
We can understand the influence of styles on ourselves: they do effect the
composition and what we attempt to accomplish. But we also know that what
alternative processes currently offer seems to diverge from what most
contemporary photographic styles offer. The alternative process movement
itself might be thought of by many as being out to step out with the
times. It reaches back to another periods. Platinum and palladium
require another kind of appreciation. I agree with Sandy on this. I
would also say the P/P calls for another kind of sensibility (the "play"
of the senses) for both photographer and viewer.
I agree with Sandy that Ansel Adams may well have changed his way of
photography had he experienced the recent platinum Renaissance. Perhaps a
photographic process has as much, if not in some cases a more important
effect in forming a certain photographic look than styles that precede the
introduction of the process. Discovering and using what you can do with a
photographic process can lead to what is then taken to be distinctive to a
certain historical period. I don't want to push this point to far. We're
not determined by technology. We choose a technique that coincides with
what we appreciate and search for.
Looking elsewhere for an answer to Sandy's paradoxical question, I suggest
we should ask, what was accomplished in compressing the tonal range?
Stieglitz's and Strand's photographs (I've not seen original prints of
Emerson and others mentioned in messages) are able to elicit a particular
type of sensual response in the viewer. In terms of Terry King's (Feb
19th) question about what terms we might wish to use to describe such a
quality in platinum/palladium prints, I suggest haptic to acknowledge that
some tonally compressed photographs create a SENSUAL SEDUCTION--an
enticement to feel what is seen. If we can understand how this seduction
effects us as viewers, and if we are inclined to make such prints, maybe
we can go on to share our knowledge about techniques to create its
presence.
Touch is the most proximate of the senses--and it is often said that sight
is the most distant of the senses (distant as in the spectator looking
dispassionately, perhaps objectively). Stieglitz and Strand prints create
an invitation, more strongly put, an enticement to touch, to be close--as
in an intimate engagement. Much of what I see in contemporary art
photography hardly calls for intimacy on the part of the viewer. Some
photographs call for the distance so as to be a spectator looking at a
monumental scene, in others even more distance required in order to
become a voyeur. This is not all to do with the subject matter but the
way the subject matter is rendered.
What is distinctive in the Stieglitz and Strand prints I've seen is that a
sensual seduction overtakes the identity of the subject matter within the
image and, as well, overtakes the viewer's inclination to accent his or
her sense of sight. If I overstate my case in order to make this point,
I'll say the identity of the image's subject matter serves mainly to carry
a tactile quality. To put this more moderately, the success of the print
is contingent on viewers losing their understanding of what they know
about what they are looking at (say a man's or woman's face, it no longer
matters), and, instead, experience how they feel about what they are
looking at (the platinum effecting a tactile sense of touching a person's
face). When viewing these types of photographs, there is a sense a
softness or satin quality or warmth, or....
We can measure tonal range with our densitometer. We can agree on
technical terms to establish tests to discover the necessary density
ranges for different photographic processes. Much more difficult for us
is to create a common language to describe haptic/tactile and other types
of qualities of platinum, palladium and other mediums. Perhaps it is
worth the effort, perhaps it is necessary.
When I tried different types of papers that others had used and recently
recommended on this list serve, for example Fabriano, I immediately found
different kinds of qualities to their distinctive looks. Printing the
same negative gave me different effects with different papers. These were
qualities other than what we refer to as warmer or cooler, more or less
sharpe. And the qualities were other than representations of density
steps--I think. Can we begin to describe how different materials (paper,
chemistry) create different qualities. It's hard for me to say what I
found, but when I see (and feel) it, I know immediately its presence.
The Shipibo-Conibo Indians of eastern Peru create geometric visual designs
which embody sound. When seen by a shaman, the designs become songs. The
visual includes the auditory. For our world, alternative processes also
offer possibilities for integrating the visual with other senses. How to
say what it does is exceedingly difficult, but possible.
So what about Edward Western's prints of vegetables? They're not only
visual representations. Wait, no no, they're not visual representations
at all, they're......
ron silvers