Ctein at work--dye transfer prints

[Ctein]

Dear John,

I updated all the prices as soon as I shut down the darkroom (Sept. 15), but there are still some "bargains" to be had. Namely, because I haven't gone through my inventory to match what's online to what I actually have.

My intention is that when I get down to the last two prints of something, the price for that next-to-last print is going to jump another 60% and the very last print will be 2.5-3X more expensive than the current prices. Maybe even higher. I'll also be deleting listings for anything I'm entirely out of stock on.

But all that requires checking each and every photo to see what I have and changing the web pages accordingly. Which i ain't done yet. So, everything's at the lowest "new" price for the mo'.

I'm going to get started on that next week, I expect. (fingers cross)

pax / Ctein

 

[Ctein]

Dear Frotog,

Equally satisfying, but different. It's a bit like trying to compare watercolors and oil paintings; they ain't gonna look the same. But overall, in at least half the cases, I find the the inkjet prints as aesthetically satisfying as the dye transfer (being the artist, I'm the final and sole judge of that).

In maybe 30-35% of the cases, the dye transfer print is clearly superior. Those tend to be photographs that depend on really rich and well-separated tones in the deep shadows, where the superior D-Max of dye transfer wins out.

The other 15-20%? The inkjet print is clearly superior. Those tend to be photos that depend on highlight rendition for their power (note that many hues very close to primaries also qualify as "highlights" in the technical sense, as at least one color channel is extremely light).

In any case, I much more ENJOY digital printing. After forty years of it, I was totally bored with dye transfer.

As for the Eggleston business, unless he promised that he'd make no more prints IN ANY FORM of those photographs, this isn't even a close call ethically. Making new prints of massively different size AND in a different medium has never, ever been considered an infringement on an edition. Absent a total "no new print" agreement (which might exist-- I don't know), the previous buyers have no grounds for complaint, other than their terminal greed.

pax / Ctein
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-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
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[DREW WILEY]

Hmmm, Ctein.... those are just about the percentages which I would have guessed when you were kind enough to show me a number of comparison prints. But that Eggleston thing seems to be a little more complicated, since it's not him personally reissuing prints, but a hired-gun "publisher" who might have in fact made a misleading impression. Contracts are one thing, reputation another. When I tell someone they're going to get a "one of a kind" print, for example, the whole subject of whether or not it is suitable to be "reissued" in a slightly different medium or size is first discussed up front, and the print appropriately priced per agreement. About the only exception would be if they can reasonably demonstrate that their original purchase got destroyed in a fire or flood etc, and it would still be hypothetically possible to reprint it, assuming the original chrome or neg is still usable, or the appropriate media still in existence, which is often not the case.

 

[Ctein]

Dear Drew,

There was some lengthy writing about the Eggleston matter on The Online Photographer. You can probably Google for it.

What we really don't know is the terms of the initial issuance. New York (where the suit has been filed) has some serious laws on the books about limited editions; they were the first state to pass them. What they do is make it clear that a pronouncement of a limited edition is indeed a binding contract. If you tell someone that some photograph will be issued as an edition of 15 16x20 dye transfer prints, say, you sure as hell better not produce more than 15 prints. It is fraud.

But announcing such an issue places no other restrictions on the use of the photograph. You are enjoined from producing prints that are substantially similar (a gray area that, of course, some folks have abused) but substantially different prints are entirely fine, whether they are produced in a different limited edition or in unlimited numbers. Changing the medium of reproduction **and** producing the prints in a substantially different size, which is what occurred in this case (not a “slightly different” medium or size) is entirely acceptable and a well-established standard practice. You, the artist, are not obliged to do so, of course, but you are entirely free to do so.

It should be noted that the plaintiff in this case is a well-established collector, a definite 1%-er. He entirely knows what the customs and rules of the game are. He cannot plausibly claim he was in any way misled.

The real matter under question, which we don't know the answer to, is what the original terms of issuance were: was it stated that the photograph would be issued as an edition of so many dye transfer prints of such and such a size or that it would be ONLY issued as an edition, etc., etc. if the former, it's the standard limited-edition I described in the earlier paragraphs; if the latter, then producing superlarge inkjet prints of the same photographs is a clear violation of contract.

It does not matter who is doing the reissuing of the photograph or who is doing the printing. The original limited-edition contract is binding on the photograph's rights, not its owner, and is conveyed with those rights. If there's a usage restriction on the photograph, it's enforced on third-party licensees, heirs, etc.

By the way, the common interpretation of limited-edition law is that the artist DOESN'T get to print a replacement one if someone's original purchase got destroyed. They only get to make so many prints. If some of them get destroyed with time, then that's the way of the world. Of course, many artists ignore that and will happily do a favor for a favorite client. If I did limited editions, I probably would and I would just caution them not to tell anybody. It would be considerate of me… But it wouldn't be legal!

Not so incidentally, the aforementioned 1%-er is going to have a very difficult time proving any material loss. There's a pretty large body of market data to support the conclusion that what Eggleston did didn't diminish the value of the original vintage dye transfer print one bit. If anything, it may have enhanced it. The dynamics of the art market are very odd.

In any case, I shall be very interested in seeing how this plays out in court. Throw some seriously high-powered attorneys at a case like this, and there is no assurance that new precedents won't be set. Which, I suspect, is what the 1%-er is hoping for.

pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
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-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
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[frotog]

I personally thought Eggleston's work lost all its charm and "authenticity" once it went inkjet or even big. It was very off-the-cuff and needed something small and intimate. Assembly processes in general are never particularly sharp compared to conventional options, though I guess it's all relative, and a DT print might look sharp compared to a gum print, for example. The power of dye transfer is really in the richness and transparency of the dyes, and not ultimate detail, which never existed to much extent in Eggleston's work anyway. I find the transparency lacking in inkjet, which are obviously opaque inks composed of both dyes (lakes) and pigments. But to each his own. Dye transfer varied wildly in quality, depending on the practitioner. A lot of the clock-in/clock-out commercial examples were pretty disappointing. Eggleston himself is not a printmaker, so it's hard to know what his personal expectations were.

Suggesting that Eggleston is not critical of his own work, regardless of who prints it, is an absurd contention. Equally daft is your suggestion that the print-makers hired to print the work are "clock-in/clock-out" commercial hacks. Furthermore, the ink jets in the retrospective were not the reprints that were the subject of the lawsuit some time ago (which Eggleston won - the judge dismissed the case thank goodness and besides, I don't see what that subject has to do with the relative quality of ink jet vs. dye transfer) but rather more recent work and some work that had never been printed before. I guess you missed the show.

No, my point was simply that the ink jets themselves were tremendously satisfying as color prints and held their own besides the jewel-like quality of the vintage dye transfers on display. Seeing the show, it's obvious why Mr. Eggleston, who has access to the world's finest printers, chose the medium of ink-jet to realize his vision when he could have just as easily made c-prints or new dye transfers; the ink jet medium is capable of rendering the purity of color and tone and richness of saturation that are instantly recognizable hallmarks of Eggleston's body of work.

I'm not at all surprised to find out that Ctein, also known for his high print standards, finds the medium of inkjet as satisfying as he does. Other world renown print-makers, most notably Richard Benson with his multiple pass technique, are finding the medium both technically challenging and aesthetically pleasing as well.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I certainly know my share of very skilled inkjet printers, and I'll bet they put just as many hours tuning up an image as they did back in their
darkroom days. It's damn near impossible for any commercial lab to be viable as a business and put that kind of labor into something at the
same time. Home cooking has to be a labor of love, and perhaps only a few hired gun printers are around who will take that kind of commitment on a dedicated assignment for someone else's actual shots. Ctein is one of them. But anything under Eggleston's name was probably done on an assembly-line basis, with different tasks in the whole complex workflow assigned to different people. The quality of the prints could also vary to how far along the edition was and the condition of the matrices. My remark about not liking his work big is of course a personal aesthetic, but I've never like his work big, even when he briefly shot med format and still had it done dye transfer. The shoe just
didn't fit his style.

 

[labyrinth photo]

This is very interesting discussion and i'll chuck my few pence in...
there are some new dyes up in the Tate Modern in London part of a new set of prints from the book Chromes, so previously unseen.
i think the edition was printed by guy stricherz.
they are 16x20" prints.
apparently some are from Kodachrome and others from Ektachrome stock and this can be guessed in a few of the prints. also strangely some of the prints vary noticeably from the same images seen the recent Chromes publication and not always for the better. I remember seeing a similar recent edition of Bruce Davidson Subway and a friend saying to me that these are good prints from some tricky originals, similarly there are some tricky looking prints here, i'd love to know more about why that is?
the majority are lovely.
much more interestingly is the fact that this was a major investment project too, tax breaks involved etc.and that the powers that be decided that the best (aesthetically? economically? both?) way to produce these prints was still dye transfer.
from what i hear there were dye prints made for Eggleston in the past that weren't top quality for various reasons, it was a much more commercial process in it's heyday so possible.
we are lucky enough to be attempting to move into hybrid-dye transfer, we have a stock of the Efke matrix (sorry ctein we can't buy your pan-matrix as we are "skint" and need to buy a neg writer) and are currently building a new space from too smaller darkrooms, as for paper we have a long way to go.

 

[Ctein]

Dear Frotog,

I don't think we need to make this contentious. Drew did NOT insinuate that Eggelston had low standards nor that all labs produce mediocre prints. He only observed, correctly, that the latter can be true and he did not know what Eggleston's standards were for these prints.

I can testify that I have seen some very crappy exhibits from photographers I would expect otherwise from. The last exhibit I saw of Elliot Porter dye transfers while he was still alive, his Antarctic (or was it arctic? lotsa ice, whichever), was terrible. I won't mince words. The prints were crap. Obviously bad color and tone, poorly spotted. They were completely substandard. Obviously they weren't made under his direct hand or supervision, unless he was losing it. But regardless who printed them, inexplicably (to me) they'd been deemed satisfactory for public exhibit.

So, even the best of folks, with sterling reputations, can have bad shows. It's a fair question to raise when you see something that didn't impress-- what went wrong, and where.

And, medium and subject matter come into play, as already mentioned. I could probably get consensus agreement that I'm the best dye transfer printer of color negative who ever existed; I know I'm much, much better than any other work I've ever seen. But from slides? I'm good. But only just good. I'm a more meticulous and cleaner printer than almost anyone else out there -- the only prints I've seen that technically were as good as mine were ones done for Mapplethorpe. (Coincidentally, I met the fellow who printed those a few years back. I told him how impressed I was.) But as for the aesthetic qualities, like tone and color rendition, there were many printers who were better than me, were better at masking, that kind of thing.

When it's a process as complex as dye transfer, no one has ever mastered it all.

And, now that I think on it, I'd have to say the same about digital printing. The physical high bar to making good prints has been removed (hurrah!), but the range of controls and techniques available to the digital printer makes dye transfer feel like chromogenic printing. There is so much more one can learn to improve one's results.

Which is one big reason it excites my muse.

pax / Ctein

 

[frotog]

Dear Frotog,

I don't think we need to make this contentious. Drew did NOT insinuate that Eggelston had low standards nor that all labs produce mediocre prints. He only observed, correctly, that the latter can be true and he did not know what Eggleston's standards were for these prints.

"Eggleston himself is not a printmaker, so it's hard to know what his personal expectations were." -DREW WILEY

Let's take the converse of this just for argument's sake; namely that Eggleston is a printmaker. Would Drew have any clue as to what his personal expectations were in the printing of his work? I doubt it. Would it matter? Absolutely not. Why would it? Does the fact that an Eggleston is rendered in DT vs. inkjet change the value of the object at all? Clearly, based on the Christie's sale, it does not. An Eggleston is an Eggleston is an Eggleston, regardless of how it's rendered. Only a lesser photographer would need to glom onto the process in order to enhance the perceived value of the artwork. Contrary to Drew's claim, there was no "publisher" involved in the inkjet reprints that were sold at Christies (but Drew should know this because based on his strong opinion regarding the reprints he must have been in attendance at the auction house). Rest assured that Eggleston proofs and edits and reproofs all of his pictures with a mastery that few can touch and a sensibility that is entirely his own.

Drew's implication is that a photographer who doesn't print his/her own work couldn't possibly have an eye for print quality. As someone who printed commercially for years I can say with certainty that this is not at all true. In fact I've witnessed many a scenario where an expert printmaker has shown themselves to be utterly lacking in the aesthetic sensibilities necessary to render an image as successfully as he/she might have done so under the direction of the artist. In the end, whether a print is made digitally or traditionally has no bearing on the emotional impact of the image. And nowadays, with the demise of worthy analogue materials, digital clearly has the upper hand when it comes to effective color printing.

 

[Ctein]

Dear Frotog,

None of the insinuations nor implications you assert are in Drew's post are actually there. He did not say any of those things, explicitly nor implicitly, nor did he intend to. I happen to know Drew personally, and all the attitudes/opinions you keep trying to ascribe to him are simply not the case. None of it.

You are looking for a fight where none exists, an argument for the sake of argument. You are misreading what he wrote. The discussion is over, so far as I am concerned, because you are trying to win an argument that exists only in your own mind.

Again, I request you just drop this, but whether you choose to or not, I am doing so. If you wish to rebut this post, it will not get a response.

Just let it go. Please.



pax / Ctein

 

[falotico]

It would be interesting to see Eggleston prints with a production-provenance that is strictly from Eggleston's hand. In fairness, some of his work seems to me fairly to scream out for dye transfer; but I don't want these remarks to lead to bloodshed. I should mention that Ctein not only shoots his images on med format Kodak, but he also developed the color neg before beginning his DT process. You can have a great deal of confidence that you see what the artist intended when he/she has done so many of the steps with his/her own hands.