From: Richard Sullivan (richsul@earthlink.net)
Date: 07/26/03-10:14:02 AM Z
At 09:42 PM 7/25/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>"gum printing will never be the same". This is the epitomy of HYPE! All
>due respect Dick, but coming from a guy who admittedly hasn't printed gum in
>"about 25 years", this is laughable, laughable!
>Hey, a lot has happened in
>a short 25 years (or two brief years as the case may be).... someone came
>along and made gum prints twice as good as yours. Whoo Hoo! Guess what?
>It was already done 100 years ago!
Clue me in Dave. Whose gum prints from 100 years ago are you comparing to
Stuarts? Nmae some names please. Where did you seem them? Where did you see
Stuart's latest work, unseen until APIS. Were you hanging out with Sandy
King at APIS and missed the show?
Two years ago I spent the better part of the day with Christian Nze looking
at gum prints in the viewing room at Société Française de Photographie, we
poured over boxes of Puyo's, Demachy's, Kuhn's, Eugene's, and many more
100+ year old gum prints. the Societe has undoubtedly one of the finest
collections of Classical Gum prints. I have studied gum prints in the Getty
Collection and the Stephen White's Collection before it went to Japan.
Seems that most of the complaints about Stuart's work and procedures are
coming from people who have not seen it. I have not heard many dissensions
from people who have seen it, quite the contrary. I guess we can call it
"argument from ignorance" which in itself is quite laughable.
I might not have made a gum print in 25 years but I have been out and about
critically looking at them for the better part of 30 years.
>I haven't had the luxury to devote "two years full time" to gum printing,
>but I've been at it for well over ten years. I have no reason to question
>Stuart's ability to make beautiful gum prints, but from what I've read, his
>process is far from perfect.
Stuart himself professes only to improving his process and improving it for
himself and what he wants to achieve. I suppose it will be more than
perfect on the next go-round. If you had seen Stuart's presentation you
would have given nary a thought to the idea that Stuart or anyone else
considered it perfect. You throw strawman's about.
>IMO, several aspects of Stuart's procedure are
>cumbersome and time consuming. For example, what a pain in the hiney it
>must be to weigh and mix dry dichromate into every batch of emulsion.
>Filtering the emulsion prior to application?
Duh! You want it easy? Make some inkjet prints their easy. And talk about
time consuming, for gosh sakes stay away from carbon.
>That suggests problems in
>mixing pigment into gum. On that subject, here's a great tip for my friend
>with the "tennis elbow/spanking the monkey/mixing gum" tendonitis... try an
>electric stirrer, it works great.
If you had seen his demo you wouldn't have missed the point.
Why all the hostility about one person who has spent a great deal of
time improving the gum process and then having the grace to show us how he
does it. I can't count the number of times folks at APIS came up and
commented on how everyone was sharing their "secrets." No one is forcing
you to do anything different in your printing, least of all Stuart.
Cheers.
--Dick Sullivan
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