Carson, Though you are correct (I suppose!) that f/64 was modernist, to me
today it seems so retardataire.... I have seen the catalog of Pradip's
recent work & it is everything you suggest & then some -- but that's the
exception, as you surely realize unless you exist in an idyll or
beautiful big bubble....
> Another person who comes to mind
> is Sally Mann. Her series of 13-year old girls was originally done in
> platinum. Certainly these were shot with a large format camera and
> printed "straight," but Ansel Adams, they ain't.
I am big fan of Sally Mann's, & consider her gelatine silver prints of her
own children among the most beautiful ever made, but I wonder if you saw
the platinums (they were 12-year olds, BTW, published as "At Twelve"), in
the paper, so to speak. The images may have been compelling, but the
prints were dull as dishwater to look at. Very washed out appearing, &
whether that was due to incongruity between subject & process or lack of
platinum savvy, or what, I can't say -- but unresolved they were, & so
could be "proof" of almost any argument one wished to make!!!
> The reality is that any image making process is defined by the rules
> we create for it - i.e. if platinum printing means view camera work of
> the western landscape school to you, then those are the images that you
> make with it. It isn't an intrinsic property of the medium, however.
Of course not, but for about 2 reasons is treated as if it were. I didn't
mean western landscape, BTW -- any realistic landscape -- could be
treebark of Central Park
> just trying to make the point > that you also eloquently made, that our
understanding of history is often > a personal, non-consensual one. > >
Here I must disagree again -- as near-contemporaries of the events
addressed, we may be non-consensual, but soon consensus sets in. Someone (or
ones) will enter the material into the history books with their gloss on
it & then it becomes "photo history" and generally consensual.....
Judy