Re: Revival

Carson Graves x1507 3NE (carson@zama.HQ.ileaf.com)
Fri, 13 Sep 96 09:58:03 EDT

Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com> wrote:

>
> On Thu, 12 Sep 1996, Carson Graves x1507 3NE wrote:
> > Not to dispute your point above, but perhaps I've been exposed to the
> > 1% more than most. I've seen the work of lots of photographers whose
> > print statements with platinum are far from the modernist view of
> > photography exemplified by f/64.
>
> 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....

Judy, Modernism does not mean contemporary. But, my real question to
you is how many exceptions does it take to disprove your 1% rule? I
wasn't aware that I live in a bubble (perhaps I do), but when I can
easily name multiple exceptions to your statement, "Platinum
printing is, 99 times out of a 100, son of F64, the view camera
esthetic, entirely unrelated to the iconoclasm of Fichter, Hahn,
Nettles & co.", does that make me out of touch with reality or your
statement just a bit hyperbolic?

>
> > 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!!!

Huh? The discussion wasn't about the quality of Sally Mann's platinum
prints but about the esthetic choices made and rendered in the medium.
I had a chance to see all of her 12-yr old series (you are right, I was
off a year) about a dozen years ago when we did a show and workshop
together in Virginia. I found them competently made and didn't have
any feelings of incongruity between subject and process.

>
> > 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

What "2 reasons"? I'm interested, especially as to how these reasons
relate to the way a photographer choses imagery and process. Of course,
there are those who try to imitate another's esthetic, but saying that
99% of all platinum prints are just imitations of the f/64 landscape
school is like saying that 99% of all gum prints are neo-DeMachey's (sp?).
By the way, is it significant that none of the f/64 group printed their
classic landscapes in platinum and that platinum was pretty much
anathema to their purist ideology?

>
> > 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.....

Perhaps, though the monolithic histories of photograhy of 25 years ago
(Newhall and Gernsheim) have been greatly fractured by some good
scholarship and monographs. If you were studying photography
in the late 60's and early 70's what you knew about the subject was
pretty tightly defined by Newhall's book and by the slide sets
published by George Eastman house. Sort of like how everyone watched
the Ed Sullivan show and Milton Berle on television (in the US at
least). Now, to quote Nesbitt, there is a multiplicity of choices that
are unrivaled in the past, whether on cable TV or in photographic
esthetics. I think everyone would agree that consensus just isn't what
it used to be.

Thanks for the interesting counterpoint, Judy.

Carson
carson@ileaf.com