Re: old literatures

From: Monnoyer Philippe <monnoyer@imec.be>
Subject: RE: old literatures
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 11:42:06 +0100

> You won't be less rigourous with a pinch of teaching art. I am sure
  your knowledge is interesting for the people on the list.

If you look at my first responses on each topic, I always try to
minimize technicality and give my best short recommendation/answer. It
is often the responses from others that drive my subsequent responses
to be more technically involved.

Most of the recent topics were very legitimate for photography but
also technically challenging ones as you know. People already looked
at literatures at their hand. For example, when Sandy King posted
after consulting toning literatures that lacked adequate description,
I think it is irresponsible to respond in the same level of
description as his books. It wouldn't add any new information nor
provide any use to what he sought.

Of course I am reluctant to misrepresent or oversimplify issues of
current controversy in science, or issues where scientific knowledge
is lacking. You know there are way too many more interesting and
legitimate scientific questions that are not solved. Chemistry of
toning is one example and even at the present time people (like a
group at IPI) are trying to figure out the nature of toning processes
that were empirically known for more than 100 years. Palladium and
platinum toners are an area of very scarce knowledge (because they
were primarily used with pre-silver gelatin materials). So there isn't
much that can be said conclusively about these toners. I simply
refuse to make up something that sounds easy just because reality is
complicated.

(When reality is simple, people probably find their answer in their
books or whatever resource, and questions don't get here anyway. But
if I see simple questions, my answers are of course simple. I just
don't like to knowlingly oversimplify things, especially in written
media.)

--
Ryuji Suzuki
"Reality has always had too many heads." (Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound, 1997)