Photography is cheap right? You just point
and shoot - the camera does the rest, then you take it in to the
chemist or wherever and get it back five minutes before you took
it in with a free film and a week's holiday with the filmstar of
your choice. So where do these art photographers get off charging
you hundreds of dollars for one print that is not even in colour?
The cliché goes 'Colour describes,
monochrome interprets' which infers that monochrome is art and colour
isn't - and that obviously is not always true. The
most obvious advantage of the archivally-processed black and white
print as an art object
is longevity. Given reasonable care it will last indefinitely whereas
the C-Type colour print is unlikely to survive much more than three
years in direct sun.
A Little History
The first truly viable form of photography
(the daguerreotype) appeared in 1839 after its showbiz inventor got
sick of painting scenery. Each image was unique because the process
didn't produce a negative. These images still exist in perfect or
near perfect condition.
There is a legend concerning colour daguerreotypes
in the 40's or 50's of the 19th Century but no proof. The first commercial
colour process was the Autochrome which appeared before the First
World War. It was slow, grainy and looked like an impressionist painting.
These images still exist as printable negatives.
But the story really begins thousands
of years earlier when the Arabs invented the camera obscura ("camera" =
room and "obscura" = dark). You may have seen this idea
yourself; the room is dark because the blinds are drawn but there
is a tiny hole in one of the blinds and on the opposite wall you
see an upsidedown image of what is going on outside.
Substitute a prism or a lens for the
hole and you can direct and focus that image... on to a piece of
paper for instance, so you can trace it. My point is the camera was
invented as a drawing instrument and monochrome photography continues
that tradition. What the pioneers of the early 19th Century did was
find a way to fix that image so it wouldn't disappear in daylight.
The advent of digital photography is
a revolution because ultimately it will mean the decline of "wet
processing" of colour. Such is the nature of colour film (effectively
three films, one on top of the other) that the development process
has to be fixed. There is virtually no flexibility whereas the monochrome
specialist can pull all kinds of tricks to vary contrast, grain texture
or the relative speed of the film.
So if you are shooting colour professionally
your ultimate future is to trade in your colour darkroom for a computer,
a digital back for your studio camera and go straight to the monitor
to see what you got. You can get proof prints from a good inkjet
printer and output as good as a C-Type print from a dye-sublimation
printer. After the initial outlay you will begin to save money and
have a lot more flexibility in the way you work - you can forget
about scanners for a start!
Meanwhile...
Back at the ranch the reasons for staying
with the silver gelatin print haven't changed in over a hundred years.
While still at Art School I saw an exhibition of old (photographic)
masters. I saw an 8 by 10 print of a Paul Strand image - not an enlargement,
a contact print.... that's how big the negative was. In his day camera
lenses had a focal length of 10 inches!
This print was beautiful; the creamy
highlights seemed to lift off the surface while the black satin shadows
folded back into it. It is impossible to describe that perfection,
you have to see it and no other medium can rival it. I'd recommend
original prints by Brett Weston or Ansel Adams if you want to experience
it for yourself.
Notwithstanding, the question of the
photographic print as art object remains controversial. Can a print
be as durable as (and hence potentially have the intrinsic value
of) a painting, or sculpture or similar traditional art collectable?
Yes... enter stage left the archivally processed fibre-based silver
gelatin print. It may not have escaped your notice that both negatives
and prints from the last century have survived intact to this day.
That does not mean that the technology
has stood still. In the Seventies Ilford introduced it's Galerie
paper which had increased silver content and photographers began
discovering details in their negatives they had never seen before
(clouds and UFOs where once there was just white sky). The Eighties
brought us multigrade paper which let us use our colour head enlargers
to give us infinite control over contrast. And of course there was
Kodak's ultra flexible T-Max film and developer for which I am eternally
grateful.
“Let's make a
million copies!”
Your other objection might be that once
the photographer has a negative can't he/she then make an infinite
number of prints? Well yes, if that photographer was prepared to
give up almost everything else apart from eating, sleeping and going
to the toilet. Producing the perfect print (or at least a very acceptable
one) is very labour-intensive and highly subjective. Batches of paper
vary considerably and it is almost impossible to keep your solutions
at an even strength and temperature. It can not be done by a machine.
While resin coated (RC) papers are faster
and easier to use than fibre based (FB) papers and do not have to
be flattened after processing, they are not archivally stable (i.e.
they won't stand indefinite exposure to light) and they do not have
the same ability to accurately reproduce the subtle tone variations
of the negative. Highlights tend to burn out and you won't get those
deep satin blacks I like. FB is more hi-fi than RC. I use satin finish
Agfa Multigrade RC for work prints and magazine work. Satin finish
hides retouching better than glossy.
But for the serious stuff - my limited
edition prints - I use the Prince of Papers: Agfa Classic Multigrade
glossy. I use glossy because it gives the best looking blacks but
a photographer who's work I greatly admire, Saelon Renkes (check
out her work at http://www.art.net/Studios/Visual/Saelon/Saelon.html) chooses Agfa Classic matt because it is more suitable for hand colouring:
"Black and white films and papers
allow us an immense amount of control over the image relative to
what we can get with color films. With black and white films we can
use a number of different methods to change the relative values in
an image, such as using color filters to lighten some parts and darken
others, depending on their color, or using the zone system to increase
or decrease the tonal range of an image. We can choose from a huge
variety of different papers, all with somewhat different characteristics,
and we can nudge the image along in different directions with a number
of different printing techniques. Processing black & white films
and papers tends to be much simpler and to use somewhat less hazardous
chemicals than color processes require. Black and white films and
papers both tend to hold up better over time than most color films
and papers. Most color prints will fade significantly within 10 years
but a well-processed black & white print should last 100 or more.
These are all the reasons I fell in love with black & white photography.
My intentions when painting on a photograph are to imbue it with
more of the emotional mood that I personally associate with the image.
I'm not trying to make it look like a color photograph. I may or
may not be using the colors that one would see if it was a color
photograph, but I am using the colors that I FEEL with the image."
Some famous professionals - like Mapplethorpe
- have employed professional printers to do the darkroom stuff but
not this boy. I wouldn't miss the excitement of pulling a new negative
from the tank or seeing the first print come up in the tray for all
the trendy gallery openings in New York.
But to clear this up once and for all
I and most serious photographers print limited editions like printmakers.
They number and sign all their prints and when the predetermined
edition is full they either start another at a higher price or, like
Ansel Adams, "deface" their negatives with a stamp so they
can still be used but lose their value (he donated his cancelled
negs to the Library of Congress).
Imagine that you have been persuaded
to buy one of my prints. It will arrive rolled up in a mailing tube
with tissue paper to protect the surface and it will not, repeat
NOT be flat. You will have to get your framer to flatten it because
my prints are on fibre-based paper (i.e. real paper not plastic coated),
because it is too expensive to mail them flat and I don't have a
heat press big enough for my 20 by 24 inch prints.
Why should you have to go to this trouble?
Well if you have any sense you won't, unless you really like one
of my images and you appreciate that a real print looks better than
even the best quality duotone or tritone reproduction in a book (and
the 72 dot per inch image you see on a computer screen is not even
in the race!). You should also appreciate that with reasonable care
you will have it for as long as any painting you may own and with
luck it should appreciate in value though who knows what the art
market will do?