Thank you very much for your helpful and enlightening comments.
To me the point that has come through is that we have a problem with the meaning
of the word 'revival'. The popular conception is that it somehow means bringing
something back from the dead or, at the very least, from the comatose. The
truth is that there are always a number of people who are unconcerned with
fashion. Something will catch their imagination and they will make use of it to
serve their own creative ends.
Here we have Judy using 'photographic' effects from exhibitions in her painting
but in a different way from the fashionable photo-realists and Peter Frederick
finding the gum printing book, from the first decade of the century, of use in
coping with his students' need for colour. I was rather hoping that Dick
Sullivan would tell us how he started. I am sure that most of us ' pioneers'
must have indulged in what Carson Graves has felicitously called the 'arrogance
of ignorance' ,each believing that we had discovered a new path. This list has
certainly served as an enlightenment in helping to dispell both the ignorance
and the arrogance.
I made my first gum print in 1974 after seeing examples of 'little gems'
produced by a gentleman from Maidenhead named Steinbock who, as he remembered
the windows of his house being smashed during the 1914-18 war because of his
German name, may have been old enough to have made gum prints before that war
but his efforts were more liklely to have stemmed from one what one might call
the pictorial hangover of the twenties and thirties. His gum prints were in
black using a contrasty negative to produce a gum print with a wide range of
tones from one printing. I was completely ignorant not only of what other people
were doing but even of whom the other people were. I thought my use of colour
was unique. I even thought of a silly name for it. Oh Shame!
I had to reinvent the wheel from first principles. And I am glad I did because,
as one may have concluded earlier, much modern practice seems to be based upon
nearly a century of misconceptions. I had worked out how to make multiple
coatings and which papers and gums to use before I came across my first book on
the subject in 1978. This was the RPS booklet 'Pigment Printing Processes' by
T.I. Williams published in 1978. He packed into one paragraph more than some
manage to get into a whole book. The book is still available from the RPS.
I found the aesthetic of the'little gem' somewhat unsubtle, a little like the
fashion for 'soot and white-wash' in silver gelatine printing. Having been
brought up in a London where the smogs could be so thick that thousands died and
one could not see one's hand in front of one's face to the extent that I had to
walk home from school by following the kerb or the man carrying large gas flares
in front of the trams, I prefer marked recession and a softening of outlines. I
still get a thrill from the light in coal burning cities such as Newcastle or
Istanbul or where there is moisture in the air in cities such as Venice or San
Francisco or now London.
I sought out exhibitions and books that tended to reinforce my enjoyment of this
kind of light. I wallowed in the work of the Secessionists
and painters such as Whistler or the abstract expressionists. ( But that did not
mean that I did not enjoy the sharp from front to back lot but Southern
California has held sway for rather a long time ). The 1978 Arts Council
Exhibition at the Hayward ' Pictorial Photography in Britain 1900-1920'
produced under the aegis of Barry Lane, with examples of work from Dudley
Johnston, Coburn, Stieglitz, Edward Weston,Walter Bennington, Paul Strand
somehow gave respectability to what I was doing but also underlined the need
for a broad and unblinkered perspective. Being helped through the rich archives
of the RPS at Bath by Pamela Roberts was a double pleasure. Now, of course both
Barry and Pamela are at Bath. As Judy discovered the V & A has but one gum print
and that a gum platinum print. The 1908 Studio book of colour photography was
also a help.
But even though I gave workshops for the RPS at Bath and and the National
Museum of Photography at Bradford and had work exhibited at both, my hard work
was appealing to a very small market. If there was to be money in it so that I
could devote myself to alternative photography, I had to spread the word. I
wrote articles for the BJ and the Journal of the RPS and Creative Review and
other magazines, even for the Amateur Photographer which managed to get the
colour right, so that I started to get commissions.
I set up courses such as the one at Twickenham, where, in the first year , we
told people that as there was no one else to tell them how to do it, some of the
course would be experimental. Peter Marshall was part of that first year. The
experiments were worthwhile as we found improvements to the received opinion as
to how things should be done especially in platinum/palladium printing and
later gravure. Our collodion experiments did not work as we were using medical
collodion which is methylated so that it becomes impervious on exposure to air.
I now have a winchester of commercial photographic collodion. Now we cover
Wedgwood, salt,cyanotype,albumen,platinum/palladium,kallitype,
gum,carbon,pigment and bromoil and transfers, photo-etching and photogravure and
we still experiment from time to time.
Incidentally I have returned the Gassan book to Peter. I was using the
chapters on silver gelatine and how to look at pictures. I got another by saying
that I needed one in an article. Mike Shorter very kindly sent me a copy. I saw
some of Mike's gelobroms at Bath yesterday. They were of such quality that I at
first glance thought that they were platinums. I am not sure if Mike is on the
net.
Now the course at Twickenham attracts those who already have their degrees, or
wish to add something creative to their degree course, or who are adding to
their expertise as professionals wanting to take a more hands on approach to
the creative side of their photography given the prevalence of electronic
manipulation . But there is some branching out. The recent weekend platinum on
gum course in Sussex produced prints with the qualities of ink and wash
drawings.
In the UK the practical revival is still limited in public perception . The
recession has meant that agencies are wedded to the conventional and electronic
variations and are unwilling to chance their arm on something as 'new' as gum.
Randall Webb. Peter Frederick and I have now had hundreds of students who are
now working photographers, gallery owners or teachers themselves. Our
publications have been read round the world; we have students coming from for
example China, Brazil, Scandanavia and Australia. They are spreading the word.
That, I suppose, is a revival.
I am forwarding this correspondence to the organiser of the exhibition. I hope
that this thread will not die as a result. I have learnt a lot from listening
and want to listen some more.
Terry King