From: Dave Rose (cactuscowboy@attbi.com)
Date: 02/26/03-10:22:05 PM Z
Dear Michael,
No offense taken, and I completely understand the intent of your message.
I began printing gum after becoming frustrated with Cibachrome printing in
the mid-late 1980's. With Cibachrome, the cyan highlight/red shadow problem
was seemingly unavoidable and unsolvable. Even after making contrast and
highlight masks (using color filters for correction), Cibachrome was just a
real pain in the ass to print. Expensive papers/chemistry, limited
control.....what a waste of time.
I started experimenting in gum, hoping to create exciting color prints. I
was not disappointed with my initial results.
Much of the writing on gum printing (including Jordan, whom I recently
quoted on this list) suggests that it's a process unable to hold fine
detail. In fact, gum can record fine detail. Shortly after I began gum
printing, I visited a gallery in Manhattan. The few gum prints I saw were
awful - soft, muddy, and dull. Then I visited the Art Museum at Princeton
University to see a show entitled "The Art of Pictorial Photography
1890-1925". I was absolutely amazed at the large and beautiful gum prints
on exhibit, e.g. Hugo Henneberg's "On the Amper" 1900. IMO, it's not a
minor process.
Please make no apologies for your "theatrical wording". I think it's funny.
Cactus Cowboy
Big Wonderful Wyoming
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Healy" <mjhealy@kcnet.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 1:18 PM
Subject: Gum aside
> Dave (and others...!), I hope you didn't take my gum posting in the wrong
> way. I was trying to sound theatrical and to mock my reluctance to try
> something new; but when I reread it, it does sound like a person could
> decide that I was attacking you or the gum process. What I meant to do was
> to depict my change of mind in an exaggerated tone. What I did NOT mean to
> do was to insult you or give rise to a flame war over personalities or
> processes.
>
> For some reason I have always passed gum over as a minor process. Why?
> Because some of its examples remind me of the Impressionists? To be
honest,
> I can't even say why. And this "reason" forms the basis of a LOT of
> ideology, doesn't it, in and out of alt-processes?!
>
> So when I read your email, I thought to myself, Darn it, Dave, okay. I
will
> look into this after all. And I also thought, what an embarrassing
position
> to
> get myself into, trying a thing after making such a stink against it. Kind
> of like going home as an adult and eating canned peas in front of the
> parents after all. In my post, I kind of exaggerated my own
> "kicking/screaming" part of this "conversion" process for effect. After
all,
> a suit of clothes DOES fit funny if you've shooed it away as many times as
I
> have in my mind. It would make a fitting twist, too, considering my
earlier
> stance, if I WERE won over to calling it king.
>
> Rereading my post, though, I think I should have used less theatrical
> wording. What I meant to poke fun at were my own attitude toward change
and
> the difficulty of overcoming internal resistance. That's what I was poking
> fun at, Dave, NOT you.
>
> Mike Healy
>
>
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