re: could someone summarize, now gum vs. carbon

Peter,
Thanks for the really nice and lengthy reply, below. I'm so glad to see you
posting again. I don't know you, but assume you are from GB, and therefore
are "in the know", seeing as all this stuff started in your country. I'm
rootin' for your countryman Pouncy all the way :)

I have not seen these prints in person, and that is on my "wish list" to be
able to go to England and Germany and France and see gums in person and
actually be able to photograph them (can I stay with you :)? KIDDING). I
have seen Kuehns in person and a Demachy or two, and of course the aesthetic
of that time was not what appeals to me today...and certainly, I agree, is
not like a carbon. I have only seen Sandy's carbons, and some huge ones at
that, and they are beautiful and look like a traditional print, in fact,
which gum usually does not.

I have also been told by Andre Fuhrmann that a "life changing" event was
seeing the Trifolium's huge gums in person. I am dying to see those prints
in Germany.

You bring up an excellent point, below, about the ability to commercialize
carbon and the harder ability to commercialize gum until Artigue and Fresson
and another paper I cannot remember, but if I am not mistaken, correct me
you all especially Art Chakalis, both those papers had gelatin in the
formula.

What I am writing about is the discussion that came BEFORE Pictorialism--at
the time when they were seeking sharp images and those that described
reality as it was and those that were PERMANENT as the prevailing discussion
was the problem with prints fading. But, again, you are absolutely correct,
the proof being in the pudding, I would have to see these in person to
really judge their merit.

To clarify my particular quest, and this is in response to Marek's nicely
summarized email:

1. Does gum harden top down or bottom up?
2. Can gum provide wonderful halftones and dmax in one coat from top
exposure?
3. Can gum rival a carbon in halftones and dmax in one coat?

Bringing up history into this was just my support of the fact that gum did
provide halftones and dmax back in the beginning but it was hotly debated
that it did not, even tho records of those initial meetings show that it
did. There were many AFTERWARDS who tried to print gum and failed and they
were made laughing stocks of, the "soot and chalk" printers.

So, for the record, my hypotheses are these:

1. I don't care about gum hardening top down or bottom up--I think we
should send a freshly made print to Dusan Stulik at the Getty and have him
electron scan it and tell us the answer. Until then we can only guess.

2. I believe that with a correctly derived digital curve that you can get a
fully half toned and tonal and dmaxed gum in one coat and that the inability
to do so in the past was due to using inappropriately developed negatives.
Gum is short scale. (I find this also true of solarplate, almost to the
point of being "on and off" or more like white and open bite). These kinds
of things show up in spades when plotting curves, which I have only been
able to do in the last year--plot my own custom curves--with the PDN system.
I do not think you have to expose a print from the back to get full tones,
and, in fact, I will say it even more strongly: the inability to get full
tone in a gum is due to practice and not gum's shortcomings. This is why we
live in exciting times--we can fit one neg to myriad processes with a press
of a button to apply a curve to the negative to fit its tonal range within
each process's parameters (whew, run on sentence).

3. I am predicting that there is no way the gum will rival Sandy's carbon,
and I think the reason this may all be true is that gelatin might be
providing a more tenuous and stable and sticky layer than the gum does for a
pigment load you need to keep attached to the paper. In other words, I bet
the depth of the coating is huge compared to gum, and if you did an equally
thick gum coat as a carbon coat is, you may experience flaking.

Yesterday I derived the curve through my standard printing time, my
colorized tonal palette, and my 101 step tonal palette, and measuring those
steps to plot my curve, and I will say that the carbon pigment curve is yet
again different than yellow, magenta, or thalo. It is an odd beast. I
printed one little bitty print because I have now run out of sized paper and
have to size a batch today. I certainly got complete black dmax and full
tone (14ml tube of carbon black M. Graham in total volume of 60 ml gum mixed
in this proportion: 1 of this stock pigment, 1 gum, 1 water, and 1
saturated am di) with an hour development. But I don't think it looks
anything like a carbon. I certainly proved to myself that I can do a one
coat fully tonal gum tho.

I am predicting that when i see Sandy's print I will realize that for the
prevailing needs of that day, back in 1865, carbon was "it" for very good
reason. But I think that the best way for all of us to see if this is or
isn't true is a side by side print of the same subject printed by a carbon
expert and then someone who has made gum her process of intense choice--both
scanned with the same scanner, side by side, not white point/black pointed,
yada yada yada.

Today, since I ran out of sized paper, I will also be (finally) testing
Terry King's statement that super duper gelatin unhardened works just as
well as hardened. My hypothesis is that this is not true. But what the
heck--either I'll be extremely enlightened or be cursing Terry for making me
waste paper.

I will be testing it side by side with glutaraldehyde hardened gelatin on
Fabriano Artistico EW Soft Press. I have run out of hard press :( And, I
promise, as soon as I get Sandy's print I will scan his and mine and send
the scan to someone who hopefully will post. My website is STILL under
construction and probably will be until the semester ends.

But heck, I have successfully avoided a day of grading 100 papers and maybe
another day, too! Do you think the students will understand if I don't hand
back their work in time?
Chris

I will also
> Christina,
>
> From what you write, I wonder if you have studied the actual prints by
> Pouncy and Demachy. Fine though they are, I can't imagine that anyone
> could confuse them with a silver print or carbon. They have their own very
> different qualities; certainly they were "SO good" but also SO different.
> What indeed would be the point of alternative processes if that were not
> so? The pictorialists certainly didn't want to make prints that looked
> like silver prints, but to clearly differentiate their art from the
> commercial work of the day.
>
> The reason why transfer jumped straight into my mind was in part because
> of the different nature of the substrate and a hope that the bond between
> gum and plastic sheet might be rather less than that between gum and paper
> so as to make this possible. Although it is always dangerous to judge from
> reproduction, Marek's image seemed to have a more delicate tonality than
> I've previously seen in one-coat gums.
>
> Carbon printing as a usable process was patented in 1864 and was a pretty
> widespread and popular during the heyday of the gum process which came
> later with Demachy and others. I've always assumed that what was seen as
> important at that time was the difference between an essentially
> commercial and technical process using factory-made carbon tissue and the
> hand-coated and locally worked nature of the gum which appealed to those
> who saw print-making as artistic expression. The qualities which these
> artists were seeking were more aesthetic and spiritual rather than
> technical. (We tend to forget that at that time both carbon and platinum
> were largely produced using factory-made materials, and not 'post-factory'
> processes.)
>
> What actually appeals to me about the best carbon prints is actually hard
> to pin down. I think it has more to do with the nature of the image and
> substrate than more easily measurable aspects such as densities. Words
> like 'pearly translucence' try to describe it. Its actually rather similar
> to the quality of some of the prints I made many years ago on the old
> Record Rapid. I can match (or beat) those prints for density, make them on
> similar surfaces either in the darkroom or very recently from the inkjet
> with papers such as DaVinci Fibre Gloss. Good prints, but somehow they
> lack that particular quality.
>
> I think if you read the controversies over the various print processes etc
> in the nineteenth century journals, actually going to see the prints they
> were talking about in the RPS collection and elsewhere can sometimes cause
> a certain surprise. I've felt it also in more recent years when some
> people have handed me their successful one coat gums; not that they are
> not successful, but just that they do not match in terms of technical
> quality what can be achieved in other processes - such as silver, carbon,
> platinum or inkjet. Perhaps exposure from the back and transfer can narrow
> that particular gap.
>
> Regards,
>
> Peter
>
> Peter Marshall
> petermarshall@cix.co.uk
> _________________________________________________________________
> My London Diary http://mylondondiary.co.uk/
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> and elsewhere......
>
>
>
> Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
>>> However put one of your monochrome gums next to a carbon print and tell
>>> me that something is not missing from the gum. The most delicate tonal
>>> transitions, the infinite gradation of tone are not there in the gum.
>>
>> AHA. Thank you, thank you Marek, for clarifying the bottom line here!!
>> NOW I understand. So the real test will be to make a monochrome one coat
>> gum that looks as good, side by side, with a carbon print. On paper.
>>
>> I find this a bit puzzling because, again, back in the lit, there were
>> huge discussions where people were ignoring the fact that Pouncy's and
>> Demachy's and others' gums were SO good that viewers could not tell
>> whether they were a silver gelatin/carbon or a gum. So I have to assume
>> from these discussions that it is possible to achieve that "carbon
>> tonality" with the gum process. I could xerox all my xeroxes for you all
>> to show the huge brouhaha that went on at that time about this very
>> issue--can gum, in fact, give the same tonality and dmax as carbon
>> transfer?? It seemed back then the proof was in the pudding but people
>> continued to say it wasn't. Either that is because it, in fact, WASN'T,
>> or they were too proud to back down.
>>
>> So I have to wonder that there is something we are all missing in our
>> modern technique.
>>
>> This interests me greatly.
>>
>> Can I suggest a test, not being a carbon printer? For instance, Sandy,
>> you "wrote the book" on carbon. Would you be willing to send a carbon
>> print you have made, and a digital file of the negative to me and/or
>> whomever (digital file uncurved), and with Mark Nelson's Precision
>> Digital Negative system I could devise a curve that would compress the
>> tonal range of your image into the tonal range of gum and print a gum
>> print and see if it rivals the carbon? That would seem to be as close to
>> comparing apples to apples as we can get.
>>
>> I have no clue as to the outcome of this experiment. Carbon perhaps may
>> rule. I have no agenda in proving this one way or another. I do not do
>> single coat gums. The only real experience I have had with carbon is
>> seeing a few at APIS and then your lecture/demo, Sandy, down at Clemson.
>> And then seeing that tricolor carbon print at A Gallery of Fine
>> Photography that blew my sox off and would've made me give up gum if I
>> wouldn't have to spend years slugging through yet another technical
>> process to refine to perfection.
>>
>> I do know, historically, that carbon supplanted the poor little lowly gum
>> process, so there has to be benefits of the carbon process that gum or
>> their gum technique at the time did not provide.
>>
>> I WANT to believe that with technology today, the ability to produce
>> perfect digital negatives for any process will allow us to come the
>> closest to closing that gap between carbon and gum if, in fact, there is
>> a superiority to the process of carbon and it is not a glitch in gum
>> technique.
>> My $5.
>> Chris
>>
>>
>>
>
Received on Sat Apr 15 20:11:09 2006