Jim Spiri wrote
> ... The only
>photographer i can think of whose work loses nothing in reproduction (or
>gains nothing in original) is Cartier-Bresson. (I like it.)
I think the situation is more complex than either Jim of Pascal suggest.
There are actually many photographers whose work is better in reproduction.
Many photographers actually worked for reproduction - this would include
many photojournalists. The original prints they made were not intended for
viewing but as an intermediate stage in the process that was completed when
the magazine or paper rolled off the presses.
Possibly the best example of this is Bill Brandt, whose reproductions in
Weekly Illustrated and Picture Post have an authority and integrity lacking
in both the contemporary prints by the author and his later exhibition
prints. He completely revised his ideas about printing over about a ten year
period in the fifties, so the later prints are completely different in
quality in any case.
Press prints means something quite different in the UK by the way - these
are the deliberately? bad copy prints that exhibition organisers and
publishers make available for publication with reviews.
It is certainly not uncommon for me to go to an exhibition and come away
thinking the work looks better in the books or the catalogue by the way. I
would say it happens at several major shows I see a year, It probably
wouldn't be fair to identify many of the photographers, though I have
written comments to this effect in a number of reviews. There are many
photographers who are not particularly great printers but still print their
own work, and among photographic printers are a number who don't always come
up to scratch. And there are some really fine quality reproductions in some
books.
Coming back to Cartier Bresson I think there is something in the early
prints that the later technically more perfect prints lack. I suspect in the
old days he either printed his own work or at least worked much more closely
together with the printer.
Peter Marshall
Fixing Shadows and elsewhere:
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/cgi-uva/cgiwrap/~ds8s/Niepce/peter-m.cgi