This is part 2 of the message.
You said
"But although a print could be improved in a physiological sense this way, this
alone wouldn't make it a piece of fine art. Not only must the subject matter and
composition follow artistic intention, but also the tonal values must be
'organized' to support the artist's objective and help the viewer to get the
'right' feeling. The zone system offers a certain control but only allows for
compressing and decompressing the whole scale of tones. Making a (long scale)
negative according to the sheduled processes'
Scheduled processes ?
needs is not a value by itself -
it may help not to loose texture in an important part of the image if you don't
know at the beginning how you'll print it, but I would regard this as a
compromise. A good photographer should know while viewing the original scene how
the print should look like and probably will decide for a much shorter scale of
tones in the neg. And then it's easier to organize 10 values than 256 or even
one million.
But however many values you choose they will still be related to a finite
brightness range, ten stops, twenty steps, ten zones and physiological
perception, about eight stops at one time.
. Under the best circumstances, this organisation of tonal values
is done due to a subjective selection of tones (previsualisation) according to
physiological rules, experience and artistic intuition. At least this is what
painters do and what straight silver bromide printing cannot.
Again this is the point that I was making.
Klaus you say:
"Platinum, salted paper, cyanotype and similar reduce the number of tones by
20-30% compared to silver gelatin"
I think that this where the confusion lies. You are talking here about the
reflection density of the paper. Silver gelatine paper may have a greater
reflection density but, according to people I have asked, the perceived
blackness of a platinum print is greater. And, as you say, the s/g print can
only accept a limited range of tones from the negative hence the zone system,
masking and so on. As the reflection density of a brown print or a blue print is
going to be lower anyway, as blue and brown are going to reflect more than
black, I am not sure of their relevance here. But even then the cyanotype seems
to have an unsurpassed beauty of gradation and the salt print, to the
uninitiated, is often preferred to the platrinum print on the basis of its range
and gradation.
I have prints that have been printed from a negative with a density range of
over eight stops, where the detail is discernible, and the gradations are clear
in the pt/pd print made from that negative across the complete range of tone.
And that print has been made with no masks, no dodging and no burning in. There
is an example in this week's British Journal of Photography.
Given the previous two paragraphs, what relevance do the relative reflection
densities of the platinum and silver gealatine print have to the discussion.
": If I concentrate on good separation in a
certain group of tones, I may therefore loose separation in another group."
If you start with the intention of making a negative for platinum to print
across the range of tones you can make a negative to do so.. But if it is your
decision to concentrate the tones in the image in a particular area at the
negative stage, and you make your negative accordingly, then you are going to
lose detail elsewhere. But that is your decision and your freedom as the
photographer. It is inherent in negative making.
" Gum; oil, bromoil and esp. their transfers as well as photogravure
additionally allow
for individuel influence on certain groups of tonal values."
And gum and gravure also allow one to print across eight stops with good
gradation but by different methods. I know because I do it.
" Deciding which values to cut off for which value's benefit may be difficult.
But there lies the
secret why some platinums for instance are superior to some silver gelatin
prints."
Some platinum prints are going to be better than some silver gealtine prints,
but in terms of quality, the converse is also true. 'Different ' may be a better
word.
" I remember printing a forest scene during a heavy rain against the light
in pure platinum. Although the neg showed texture in the trunks and roots I
decided to let them disappear in the dark for the benefit of the glittering
rain. The photographer liked this approach much more than the 'perfect' silver
print he had made himself before."
But would not this have been the case had you printed a silver gelatine print in
the same way.
"Some time ago somebody on this list complained about the lack of tones in
Irving
Penn's platinum prints. If Penn had wanted to show more, he had made a silver
gelatin print.."
It was not a matter of the lack of tonal range in the prints concerned, but that
the tonal range was inappropriate to the subject. They would have been FLAT had
they been printed in silver gelatine or platinum. If he wated them FLAT then
that was up to him. This reminds me of the time when I was asked to comment on a
print by a a good friend who was also a very good and successful photographer. I
said that it lacked bite. He said "You mean it's f*cking flat.'
". The same with Demachy's or Kuehn's gums"
Demachy and Kuehn had such different approaches to gum printing that I would not
attempt to compare them by the same standards. Their prints are different.
"... And who thinks Paul
Strand printed too dark (either in silver or platinum) hasn't understood him."
As with Brandt, the darkness of the print is a matter of artistic choice. I made
a series of gum prints once for an exhibition in Derby. I was told that they
were too dark; I suppose the judgement was made on the basis of conventional
silver gelatine printing.
Controlled reducing and this way abstracting (hiding things) gives way to
interpretation and allows accessing the image. It creates more tension then
presenting everything on a silver tablet:
Hear! Hear!
As I said in the bumble bee piece, when the detail in a print goes beyond our
perception of what we saw, it can remove the mystery. It can flatten our
perceptions. And to the viewer those perceptions are those intended by the
artist/photographer.
it makes curious. And this is what the
alt.processes can give us to a much wider extent than silver printing. Ron
Silvers wrote about papers, but I think 'papers' could easily be replaced by
'processes' : <I believe different types of papers bring us to recognize
different kinds responsive sentiments (feelings) to photographs.> For the
reasons above I am somewhat sceptical if people try to find or ask forthe
'perfect' formula or working practice.
Hear! Hear! again. One gets the im[ression far too often that the image is
unimprtant to some workers with alternative processes. They think the process is
all. In fact, with some, I have never seen a print.
" Didn't the silver gelatin industry
demonstrate sufficiently what happens once the 'perfect' material has been
found? Every 'imperfect' material disappeared, leaving a few almost
indistinguishable bromide papers and disappointed photographers behind... If one
day somebody had found the platinum paper with a Dmax of 2.0 or the idiot-safe
gum process, what would it be good for? To pass over it I assume. "
One of the reasons I have been promoting alternative processes for the past
twenty years, is that throughout the history of photography, as improvements
have been made in terms of industrial efficiency, processes have been
superseded. Before silver gelatine did not albumen replace salt and the
daguerreotype ? Often the beauty of the older processes has been thrown out
with the bath water and often, but not always, they have current relevance. But
it does not happen only in photography; anyone who has worked a large
organisation has seen how fashions in management come and go and how companies
can collapse because they do not know how to use the new ideas effectively.
Terry King