>
>
>> She is interested in the whys and the wherefores
> and exhibitions that effected the revival.
>
> I was introduced to it all by someone from the first time round and that
was not
> that long ago. Her interest is centred on gum printing.
> It would be interesting to have an idea from people on the list on the
aestetic
> and practical background to the 'revival'.
>
> Terry King
>
>
Terry
Here are a few thoughts entirely from a UK perspective which no doubt will
lay bare my ignorance on the subject.
When you and I first took them up I think it would be fair to say that that
there was little or no interest in alt processes in the UK at all.
As you say there were a few ageing pictorialist who had picked these up when
they were dying out in the 30's - such as the gentleman in whose lecture we
sat together (Steinbock I think?). They apparently occupied a very small
corner in the exhibitions of such old-fashioned bodies as the RPS (I hasten
to add the RPS has changed a little since then.) The RPS historical section
(rather more lively than the rest at the time) also had people with an
interest in old processes, but I think largely from a theoretical viewpoint,
though some may have been active in them in the '30's? There was also the
occasional contribution to the RPS journal on the subject, I think mainly
from abroad - I remember an article about the Fresson process - perhaps by
Echague? - I think in the mid 70's.
So far as contemporary gum printing (etc) was concerned, all the examples we
knew of then came from the USA - for example the work of Betty Hahn. . I'd
seen this in reproduction before (perhaps in that seminal UK magazine
Creative Camera?), but the first time I got to see actual work was at the
Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in 1978, the show '23 Photographers' Wwhich
- I mention this only as I know some people will have read my post about him
in another forum - I went to see in the company of one of the UK's greatest
photographers of the century, Ray Moore, photographing him and his
wife-to-be on the Mersey Ferry - end of irrelevant digression.)
(What date did the Bea Nettles book come out - I think this was the first
book that told you how to do it that had been on sale in the UK - if very
limited sale - since the '30's? Or was Peter Fredricks 1980 book before
this?)
However, as I remember it we (you and Randall Webb in particular, while I
just occasionally dabbled) ploughed a fairly lonely furrow until the
mid-80's. Of course Peter Fredrick was also at work in Southend. I don't
know quite when the re-wenactments of Fox-Talbot's pictures started at
Lacock - nor the part if any this played in Richard Morris's resurrection of
the Calotype - but as he is on the list he can no doubt comment (after 23
September.) Other than the workshops that you and a few others ran I think
there was little else kindling interest in the UK until we came to the run-up
to the celebration of 150 years of photography (make that 167 years if you are
French) in 1989.
Now of course everybody and his or her dog are doing it. Partly this is
because of a new eclecticism (we could call it post-modernism but this would
probably spark off a lengthy and ultimately sterile debate) and partly I
think it is a kind of Luddite rearguard action.
Personally I do it because its fun. Perhaps if I got rid of the computer I
would have time for it!
Peter Marshall
On Fixing Shadows, Dragonfire and elsewhere:
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~ds8s/
Family Pictures & Gay Pride: http://www.dragonfire.net/~gallery/
and: http://www.speltlib.demon.co.uk/