From: Joe Portale (jportale@gci-net.com)
Date: 12/29/00-10:25:18 AM Z
Randall,
Sorry to say that I believe that your little joke on the public was for
nothing. If you and Martin were trying to prove a point, you missed the
mark. There is a marked difference between an original image and one
reproduced in a book. The state of the printiing trade has not evolved to a
point where pictures can be reproduced ***EXACTLY*** as they would appear in
real life. The reproductions look like brown pictures. They could be
palladium, kallitype, platino, salted paper, Zia, silver bromide, you name
it.
The texture, depth and subjective felling of the images are lost in the
reproduction. I can very easily take a scan of an image made on
conventional store bought silver paper and with Photoshop make it look like
anything I want at the output, even a platinum print.
But to support your experiment, it has long be asserted that many of the
platinum pictures hanging in galleries, museums or in collections are
actually well produced kalli's. In many cases it is impossible to tell the
difference without either very expensive spectral anaylisis or by a
destructive chemical process. Another arguement to support this claim is
that platinum and palladium at the turn of the last century actually cost
more per gram than it does now! Right now, the stock markets gurus are all
screaming that platinum and palladium are at an all time high. Yes the cost
in year 2000 dollars is higher, but when the math is done platinum during
the nineteenth century, adjusted for time works out to $1200 per ounce. This
was during the years when the highest paid tradesman was a master carpenter
making $30 per week. It is hard to assume that a middle class photographer
during those years, could afford chunks of platinum laying around waiting to
be mixed into potassium chloroplatinite. (Yes, someone else worked this out,
I am a photographer not an economist.)
Your point was well intended, but it missed the mark. And don't take this
personally, it is not. You would have been better served to have a group of
"knowledgable" platinum and kallitypists in a room and show them ten prints
of mixed petigree and ask them to tell you which is which.
Joe Portale
Tucson, AZ
Oh yes, I have heard of gum and india. Never tried it.
> At this point we have to make a public confession. In Spirits of Salts
if
> you have it) in the chapter on kalli/vdb we inserted a palladium print. We
> did this deliberately and without any sense of shame, but as nobody has
> noticed it yet then it was probably a waste of time anyway
> Finally, on the question gum and di-chromate, has anyone heard of indian
ink
> prints using gelatin and ferric chloride -(filthy stuff).
> A Happy New Year to all our readers !
> Randall Webb ( and Martin Reed.)
>
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