Re: Could someone summarize that gum up or down discussion?

On Apr 15, 2006, at 2:15 AM, Peter Marshall wrote:

> 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.
>
> <snip>
>
> 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.)

It's interesting to consider in the context of this discussion that
some of the "gum" prints that Stieglitz bought from Steichen and
donated with the rest of his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, turned out on later analysis by museum staff to be second-
generation prints, reproductions in carbon of the original gum
print, using a copy negative made from the gum print. The
implication being that Steichen considered the gum print more labor-
intensive than carbon and so he reproduced the gum prints in a
process that was more standardized and routine. In some cases no one
knows what happened to the original print; all that's left are the
reproductions in carbon.

What Steichen did, I suppose, is kind of like what Phil Borges is
doing with his most recent series: he makes a platinum print for
each image, and then scans that platinum print and makes an inkjet
reproduction run of the platinum print.

I just happened to have been looking through a book of Demachy prints
a couple of weeks ago, before this discussion started, and I found
myself being surprised at the gum prints, in view of the general
perception of Demachy's gum work. Granted, I haven't seen the
originals, but looking more carefully through this book this morning
I would say, with only one or two exceptions, that Demachy's gum
prints (at least in these reproductions) weren't fully tonal even in
the sense that most of us mean today when we say that we can make a
fully tonal one-coat gum, and are far from being fully tonal in the
sense of great delicacy of tonal gradation in both highlights and
shadows, which was the distinction I was making yesterday. I really
do think we're talking about different things. Sure, we can easily
reproduce the tonality of a Demachy in one coat, with or without PDN,
but can we really achieve delicacy of tonality throughout a long
tonal scale in a conventional one-coat? I haven't seen it yet.
Katharine
Received on Mon Apr 17 09:52:49 2006