Analog photoshop, 2 enlargers, photomontage

[DREW WILEY]

How much is memorable today, longer than a snickering cynical glance? Any serious craftsman takes pride in his tools. That's the difference between a real lithograph and a mass-produced poster, between a $75,000 coffee table and something mass-produced by Ikea that falls apart a month later, that can't even be given away for free sitting out on the front lawn afterwards.

When you have a fashion of technology which can do "anything", it seems nothing is done well. Limitation does one a favor; you have to master something specific.

 

[warden]

How much is memorable today, longer than a snickering cynical glance?

A lot. But if all the viewer has to offer is a snickering cynical glance obviously nothing will be memorable to that person.

Any serious craftsman takes pride in his tools.

Agree. Tools like pen and paper. Photoshop. Traditional darkroom. AI. Whatever it takes to realize the artist's vision.

 

[Don_ih]

Uelsmann would approve as long as you get the image you're after. He'd likely be a skilled user of Photoshop if he had been born a bit later.

Jerry Uelsmann's wife was Maggie Taylor, who uses photoshop (and scanning both photos and objects) extensively in her work. Jerry had full access to photoshop but never used it. That wasn't what he wanted to do. I don't think he was derisive of it - there really is no need to be. He was confident enough in his own talent and ability to know it was valuable in its own right. Unnecessarily smearing digital techniques and digital representation always seems like weakness.

From here:

Uelsmann admits he’s sometimes a little jealous of the tools at Taylor's fingertips. But “I don’t think art is a competitive sport,” he says. Photography is “another system for making marks on paper. If you do it with a computer, if you do it in the darkroom, there’s a variety of ways of doing it — it’s not like one is better than the other.”​

 

[warden]

I don't think he was derisive of it - there really is no need to be. He was confident enough in his own talent and ability to know it was valuable in its own right. Unnecessarily smearing digital techniques and digital representation always seems like weakness.

I agree, and it’s childish. I imagine Uelsmann went his whole life without intentionally misspelling the word Photoshop. From his obit in the NYT:

“If I were 22, I would probably be working in Photoshop,” he told The Times.

And Photoshop appeared to appreciate him. In 2013, its Twitter account shared an article about Mr. Uelsmann’s photographic manipulation with a message that said, “Jerry Uelsmann’s incredible composites remind us that imagination is everything.”

His former wife Ms. Taylor, a digital artist who uses Photoshop, recalled that Adobe approached Mr. Uelsmann in the mid-1980s to create a poster image to promote a new version of Photoshop.
It was his introduction to the software. Adobe scanned some of his negatives and sent an expert to help him create a final photomontage of clouds resting in the palms of two hands while a rowboat floats unattended in the water nearby. He decided which elements to put where, but did not know how to use the software.

“He liked the image and decided to take the negatives into the darkroom and recreate it photographically,” Ms. Taylor wrote in an email.

Image from here

Remembering Photographer Jerry Uelsmann, IU Distinguished Alumni Award Honoree: 2022: News: Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design: Indiana University Bloomington

Remembering Photographer Jerry Uelsmann, IU Distinguished Alumni Award Honoree

eskenazi.indiana.edu

 

[Carnie Bob]

I was and still am a big fan of Jerry Uelsmann, as well as Maggie Taylor, In 1983 I started my journey of photomontage on a Lisle Camera, I am pretty sure very few
have ever heard of this unit as if I am correct there were less than 6 made worldwide, Basically it was an x/y bubble memory layout computer driving an overhead front light and backlight camera with a back room with a rotating vacuum back with cropping blades that we could move with 0001 th inch tolerance. We used this machine to position our images in a composite, somewhat like Jerry's set-up of over 15 enlargers in a row, we would us compression and expansion pano lith masks to allow smooth blends of images together . Our film source was usually 16 x 20 E6 film which would then be sent to the separation houses, or we worked on BW or Colour negative film depending what the job required. I spent the first tortuous 9 months trying to wrap my mind around how to make this magic happen, one day it clicked and it was then my job to teach others which it seemed always took 9 months. My first year of college we were assigned to photograph two images and blend them together as one, basically it boiled down to finding a common time for both images (10seconds) and then overlap each image on two enlargers using the same easel and the red filter to position and then come from one side for one image with a card and then the second image the second side, making sure you timed it so that you went end to end within the 10 seconds.

I use vibration machines to create chokes and spreads with pano lith which kind of did the same thing which would help us blend the two images, I kind of remember this Mantra
Visualize you design from the top image to the bottom image and use the upper image to create the lower image masks.

confusing as hell

 

[DREW WILEY]

Don and Warden - I have a perfect right to state that I prefer the LOOK rendered by Uelsmann's own way, and not just his methodology.
That pertains to my own two eyes, and has nothing to do with ideological "weakeness" or bias. Who hasn't used PS for something or other, even in a business setting? Put it on steroids, and you've got blockbuster movies. But if you want to sing the praises of PS and discuss its details, please take that to the appropriate other side of the forum. Nobody is going to contest its time efficiency or convenience in this day and age. But sheer seamless visual quality in a finished print, that's another story ...

 

[koraks]

But if you want to sing the praises of PS and discuss its details, please take that to the appropriate other side of the forum.

Leave the moderating to us.
And speaking of taking things elsewhere: 'fauxtoshop'. Not here, on this forum.

 

[Don_ih]

But if you want to sing the praises of PS and discuss its details, please take that to the appropriate other side of the forum.

My comments were about Uelsmann and his wife and what they used to create their images - as were Warden's. The point is, not everything needs to be either praised or insulted to be discussed.

 

[Lumipan]

Here it is

As I already said. Nothing special but still it exists...

Next I'll find an image with a lot of black and have my brother draw something on a transparent foil and try to do contact printing (masking). That should be more interesting

 

[koraks]

That looks pretty convincing to me!

 

[Lumipan]

That looks pretty convincing to me!

Thanks