Luis Nadeau (nadeaul@nbnet.nb.ca)
Tue, 02 Mar 1999 23:43:20 -0400
Bob_Maxey@mtn.3com.com wrote:
>>>This, of course, is a matter of opinion.
>
>True, but based on 20+ years seeing it done, working with the process,
>understanding the physics and meeting and working with the experts.
>Obviously you have never seen a good example. Are you familiar with what a
>Dye Transfer print is and how it is made?
>
>RM
I studied dye transfer with the Swiss dye specialist René Groebli, at the
Rencontres d'Arles in 1976. He was quite wellknown in Europe and I also saw
some of his work in _Playboy_. You should be able to find some of his older
books with this search engine:
At that time, the poor lightfastness reports on the process had started
hitting the fan but I since I like learning as much as possible about
photographic processes and since my press privileges gave me free access to
his course, I took advantage of the situation and attended most of his
workshop.
The first thing I learned is that dye transfer stinks -literally. The joke
around Arles was that you could find Groebli's BMW if you were within a
block from it. The acidic vinegar smell coming out of a stack of prints in
the 45C heat (in the shade) did not go unnoticed, to say the least.
Dye transfer was high end and was excellent for advertising photography.
You could easily reduce one or two colors magically, using something like
Photo-Flo. Once you had a set of matrices the process was cheaper than RC
color prints. This is ideal for editioning. However, colors that can be
made to disappear with Photo-Flow are not archival in quality... For that
you need quinacridones or phtalocyanides, but more on that later.
Many of my museum customers have dye transfers in their collection but it
is a problem since they have to be segregated from the rest of the
collection. Not my customers but the dye transfers;-) Dye prints can't be
anywhere near an alkaline environment. I have seen the very best of US and
European dye transfer production but I have very few in my collection
because of the conservation problems associated with keeping dyes. However,
I do own a dye transfer identical to what's on the cover of this book:
http://www.wilhelm-research.com/Permanence_Book/permanence_book.html
The original is owned by the John F. Kennedy Library. (As an aside, Kennedy
was assasinated exactly 100 days after this picture was taken with
Ektacolor color negative film in a Hasselblad camera.) I first met Wilhelm
during a conservation/ restoration course in Rochester in the early 70s.
Years later, 1978, I think, after trading tons of information, he invited
me to lecture at the ICP in NYC at a conference on the permanence of color
prints and I swapped the Kennedy dye transfer print, made by K&L in NYC,
for a Quadrichromie Fresson I had obtained from France. How's that for
irrelevant but interesting trivia?
One of the reasons why dye transfers were beautiful is that because of
their cost, only the best photographers and models were involved with it.
When you looked at dyes, you were often looking at super models
photographed by the best photographers in the world. Small wonder people
were impressed. The prints were bright, but not the sharpest on close
examination because dyes *diffuse* in a layer of gelatin. Dye transfer is a
dye imbibition process. My main concern however, was lightfastness.
The solution obviously resided in the carbon process because it could make
use of finely ground solid pigments. This led me to years of research that
ended up in many articles and books on pigment processes in half a dozen
languages. I knew I was on to something when Sam Abel (National Geographic
Society photog.) came to visit me and begged me to move to Washington. Even
if the prints had been *less* permanent than dye transfers (which they were
not) he wanted them because they were so much more beautiful, with the
strong relief that allowed one to literally see and feel (with both eyes
closed) a three-dimensional image. He was just blown away.
Mike Polillo (where are you Mike?) was working for one of the last
commercial dye transfer labs in NYC, ca. early 1980s. One day, he went to
visit Warren Condit, of Condit Manufacturing (Sandy Hook, CT), the
wellknown maker of registration equipment for color separated processes.
While there, he looked at an impressive gallery of color prints his
customers had sent him over they years. One print was clearly standing out.
"What is that?" he said. "That, my friend, is a carbro" Condit replied.
>From that point on he knew there was something better than dye transfer.
Long story but he ended up hiring me to teach him the process and one year
later I hired him as an assistant for testing McGraw Colorgraph materials.
Btw, Maximum Bob, are you familiar with a Tricolor Carbon print and how it
is made?
Luis Nadeau
NADEAUL@NBNET.NB.CA
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
http://www3.nbnet.nb.ca/nadeaul/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sat Nov 06 1999 - 10:06:54