Ha! My ole sales agent, who had quite a museum background, thought of Smith as his favorite photographer. But he was shocked and changed his mind when he learned that a couple of Smith's most famous images were highly doctored; OK for Uelsmann, but not for a journalistic documentarian, it seems.
Haven't you killed your last sentence argument with everything stated before it?The very act of taking a photograph--i.e., making a 2-dimensional representation of a 3-dimensional situation--is inherently a "manipulation" by choice of what to include or exclude and position from which you take the picture. I think for a photojournalist, the manipulation is only an issue when it is meant to present a false reality.
That's true. And the bigger they are, the better too. Going to museums or galleries and seeing really large photos, even grainy photojournalism shots are far superior to anything you see in a newspaper or on the web. Big gets your attention.Have you ever actually seen the print, Alan? Trying to judge something like that based on a web image is like trying to listen to a symphony with a lawn mower running next door.
Are you referring to Adams (or Weston)? Why didn't his work hold up above 20x24?I'd seen a number of Edward Weston original contact prints when I was young. But even though I had a house close Yosemite, and had seen a few very poorly printed AA images in magazines or postcards, I never saw any actual prints of his until I was slightly over 30. Ironically, the first time was when I finally got to sneak out of my own opening of color prints at a gallery in Carmel, and wandered down the street to Weston Gallery and the two others who held a lot of his work at that time. Eventually I had opportunities to see all kinds of it up close.
But his classic work 8X10 doesn't hold up well above 20X24 inch size. That's why, in his own how-to series, he recommended printing mural sized images softer and warmer. But if it had been something from a precision big aerial camera like Bradford Washburn used during many of the same years, that would be a different story. So AA's oversized prints were farmed out to a much better equipped pro lab and printed under his supervision, and came out more soft and poetic, meant to be viewed from a greater distance simply because they were so fuzzy up close. Some of those old films were very grainy in comparison to the ones we now have. But the specific image under discussion at the moment doesn't hold up big very well at all, maybe 16X20 print size at most. It was one of his earlier shots with less than ideal equipment.
Why is that? It seems strange that the inventor of the zone system got his tones crappy.I usually get flamed for this, but when I finally saw real prints by Adams, Weston etc. I was quite disappointed, having grown up on books like Examples. Not because of sharpness, but tonality. I was warned of this, but I didn’t really believe it until I saw it. And these weren’t even large prints. It was a liberating experience for me.
Yeah I never knew much about how those books were/are made. I only know the lingo that was usually used (and still is) in the marketing. “Laser scanned”, “duo tone”. That’s what I remember from the good Adams books. I think later books are “quad tone”. I don’t know what any of that means in a reproduction context.
As for printing papers, it’s got nothing to do with that. Not even the great Seagull G, Brovira, Portriga, Galerie, Elite, Azo, Convira made the slightest bit of difference. What I’m talking about has entirely to do with the repro process. I’ve seen many, many darkroom prints by all the big names. They are great, and they all look like darkroom prints, not the books.
+1AA's Examples is one of my favorite photography books, and I have a pretty sizeable book collection now. I enjoy his discussion of the experience of making each of the photos, including practical and aesthetic considerations that went into each photo. It's a unique book. Plus the print quality is great.
Dale
There were around 360 of them made by himself, so it's supply and demand up and down as far as pricing goes. The earlier less dramatic version, before he selenium intensified the sky in the neg, now seems to sell for more because it's a lot scarcer. The size of the print is also a factor. It's certainly not my personal favorite. But at those prices, expect some slick sales tactics. It didn't used to be that way.
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