(?) Ed Hopper, how do you do it.

Dave Wooten

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Got a good technique, color photography, non digital that is Hopperesque? Film, dev, printing etc. examples? I am mainly interested in the color rendition.... I don t have any good examples to share, nope, nary a one
 
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df cardwell

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Our very own John Callow.

 

Larry Bullis

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Dave Wooten said:
Got a good technique, color photography, non digital that is Hopperesque? Film, dev, printing etc. examples? I am mainly interested in the color rendition.... I don t have any good examples to share, nope, nary a one
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I think the qualities that distinguish Hopper's work that are pertinent here are the way that his light glows, and the particular choices he made in his use of color. Some of this is possible in photography; the glow can be emulated. In order to use color as he does, we'd have to choose when and where to shoot; we have different issues today. Hopper wasn't dealing with the multiplicity of light source types that we have today, and since he was a painter, didn't have to deal with spectral anomalies as we do with film.

We don't think of Hopper's use of color and light as "soft", but compared to our contemporary ads in slick magazines, etc. they definitely are. You won't be able to do that with the kinds of lenses they are making for us today. My image "Pacific Avenue" was made with an f/12 Ross WA that has to have been made prior to wwii. I use it because of the warmth it produces and the luminosity of the shadows. It is not a particularly sharp lens, but the images it produces are particularly friendly. I also use old protars (I particularly like the f/18 version), and a Goerz Rectagon. All of these produce a kind of warmth and glow that you just can't get with high end contemporary optics. I also use a super angulon but not for this kind of image. It won't do it.

I'm hoping to compare "Pacific Avenue" with Hopper's "Early Sunday Morning". I don't seem to be able to link to the Hopper file, so here's a url: http://emptyeasel.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/earlysundaymorningbyedwardhopper.jpg

Dang, the uploaded Pacific Ave doesn't seem as warm and vibrant as I expected. In the C print I made from it, and the print film transparency I scanned from, it is much warmer and more saturated.

For awhile, I did a bunch of shooting in the evening and at night. I used 4x5 color negative films, and would choose the film type (daylight vs. B) according to how I wanted the daylight and various light sources to balance. Here, in the Frisko Freeze, you can see how the multiple light source colors influence the color. Hopper didn't have sodium vapor, mercury vapor, fluorescents, etc. to deal with. This image also has that warmth and glow, though. It was made with the f/18 protar.
 

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donbga

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df cardwell said:
Our very own John Callow.
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Sorry this isn't Hopper-esque. The colors need to be muted and there needs to be some sense of musicological anguish in the scene which usually means there needs to a person or people present to carry a sub-text.

My 2 cents -
 

donbga

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You are getting closer with the second shot but you're really not there. For printing, try tri-color gum which can provide a painterly surreal look with subdued colors.

Again there needs to be a subtext in the image for it to Hopper-esque, IMO.
 

Larry Bullis

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donbga said:
You are getting closer with the second shot but you're really not there. For printing, try tri-color gum which can provide a painterly surreal look with subdued colors.

Again there needs to be a subtext in the image for it to Hopper-esque, IMO.
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I have never tried to emulate Hopper in my work, and don't intend to start anytime soon. Emulation doesn't interest me very much. It just happens that certain similarities seemed to have popped up in some of the images I was making in the mid '80's. My posting those images has only to do with the request of the OP for information on color rendition.

However, there is a good deal more to pursue in relation to Hopper's work than just means of attaining qualities of light and color. But does a more inclusive discussion fit within the scope of the thread? I'm always trying to make things bigger, so I hope it does, but maybe it doesn't. OP? So, Dave, whack us if we're out of line.

The subtext including a figure doesn't exist in all of EH's images by any means. He often included a person, but frequently did not. A search on google images will provide numerous examples of both. Sometimes, the strange quality that characterizes his work seems actually enhanced by the absence of a figure.

Why do you use the term "musicological"? I'm not saying it isn't appropriate; I'd just like to know why you think it is. Around here, the musicology department at the university brings musicians from Africa and Asia, among a variety of other unusual activities like building instruments and playing digiridoos and trombones, etc. in really deep holes in the ground. That seems not to apply very well to EH's paintings. Musicology is a broad field with lots of branches.

Perhaps you can help us define just what it is that is so persistently compelling about his work for so many of us. I have a sense that you may be onto something interesting, but I'd like a little more precision.
 

catem

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Dave Wooten said:
Got a good technique, color photography, non digital that is Hopperesque? Film, dev, printing etc. examples? I am mainly interested in the color rendition.... I don t have any good examples to share, nope, nary a one
Click to expand...

You might be interested in looking at the work of Hellen van Meene - she says she isn't inspired by photographers particularly in her own work except perhaps Diane Arbus and Sally Mann, but she has acknowledged the influence of the Dutch Masters (she is herself Dutch, b.1972) and Edward Hopper..or at least other people have pointed to it, I can't remember exactly, though I'm pretty sure she does acknowledge this herself, (I'm trying to remember from an exhibition I saw 2 years ago!) I'm afraid I don't know much about her process except she uses colour film, I think transparency film but not certain. You could probably find out if you were interested. I don't imagine she does much if any processing/printing herself. She always uses natural light. She would see the process of portrait-taking as crucial to the end result, so it's not solely a technical thing, or a 'materials' thing. The second picture in the first link is very Hopperesque to me. She's attracted some controversy, whatever you think of her work or the way she works it raises interesting thoughts about portraiture, and is good to look at in terms of use of light, colour, and human emotion, and the way the individual is placed in his/her environment (and use of film! ).

http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2008/05/a_conversation_with_hellen_van_1.html


http://www.aperture.org/store/books-detail.aspx?id=419

her official website:
http://chapter13photography.blogspot.com/2007/02/hellen-van-meene-interview-goes-live.html
 
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Dave Wooten

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Thanks Bozart and the Early Sunday Morning, and the cafe painting are specifically ones i had in mind and yes the softness...also think Mondrain...
 

donbga

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Larry Bullis

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Dave Wooten said:
Thanks Bozart and the Early Sunday Morning, and the cafe painting are specifically ones i had in mind and yes the softness...also think Mondrain...
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Dave,

Do I recall that you shoot with a large panoramic camera? If you do, you may know about the f/18 Protar made either by Zeiss or by B&L. I understand that they are in demand by the pano folks due to their incredibly wide coverage. The one intended for use with 5x7 is about 135mm, and covers an image circle of about 15 inches!! I've shot 11x14 color film with the 5x7 version, with the corners vignetted. So, one made for the 8x10 would be somewhere on the order of 170 or 180mm and ought to cover a full 7x17 out to the corners. These are not easy to come across but they are definitely worth the effort. It is quite a sharp lens, but has that wonderful warmth. They weren't coated, but having so little glass, have little flare - but enough to soften harsh contrasts. Work great at night. If you are looking for that Hopper quality in the light, I think it would be a step in the right direction to find one or just use the one you already have, if you do.

The shortest one they made was something like 82-85mm. I have one of those, but I have always wished they had made one even shorter. 40mm would cover the 4x5, with just the corners clipped.

Of course, Hopper never used that w/a perspective, as far as I know, but the color quality these things can produce is definitely something like his.
 

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Why? You want to take pix that look like that? Pix that explore the same concepts? What is it?

Or you just like the color? The look of a painting as opposed to a photograph?

Painters can paint whatever they want, without limits. Photographers have to work with what has been given to them. Your pix will never look like a Hopper painting (nor should they).

If you are looking for a photographic shortcut to painting, you might try gum bichromate printing.

I would also look into soft focus lenses, or into making your own out of a regular lens. Try scuffing up filters, partially unscrewing elements, sandpapering the glass, blowing your breath on the glass...
 
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eddym

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Ah... this reminds me of some color 8x10 work I was doing back in the early '80's. I'll admit I was inspired by both Hopper and Joel Meyerowitz's (sp?) Cape Light. I was shooting a lot of night scenes then, really enjoyed them. I was using a modern lens, though: 300mm Schneider Xenar.

Alas, I sold the wooden 8x10, an Agfa Ansco from the '30's, when I moved to PR in 1984.

Sorry for taking the public trip down memory lane...
 

Nicholas Lindan

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To my mind Hopper conveys the feeling of isolation created by modern environs. He pictures lonely individuals - sometimes the artist/viewer is the implied subject of the work - in anonymous locations at lonely times: a timeless dusk, 3am on Wednesday morning, a hazy shade of winter.

To mimic the lighting, color scheme, or urban landscape of his paintings and call it Hopperesque is a simulacrum of the lowest order. Comparable to using the same film and developer as Adams, Sexton or Caponigro and expecting art of the same quality.
 
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Dave Wooten

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Thanks Lindan, some good points. Is it possible Hopper was influenced by Mondrian as much as by Robert Henri? Control of technique and style is foremost among masters...the ability to evoke desired emotions or visualizations, with one's medium....the use and strength of palette...are there photographic comparables...
 

Larry Bullis

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Eddy,

F'cryin' out loud, why torture yourself? Just buy another one. Life is TOO SHORT to pine over the things you love, living in regret. God knows we all have enough of that without ourselves choosing to suffer! Besides, there is online buying now. You don't even have to find a store that has one.

L.
 

Larry Bullis

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2F/2F said:
...
I would also look into soft focus lenses, or into making your own out of a regular lens. Try scuffing up filters, partially unscrewing elements, sandpapering the glass, blowing your breath on the glass...
Click to expand...

I wouldn't think these would result in "Hopper-esque-ness". Just use a lens that isn't critically sharp; not a bad one, just not Zeiss's best. Hopper's work isn't "photorealistic" but it does border on "hard edge", albeit loosely. It is not impressionistic and it is not pictorialist in the way it looks. It is realistic, even a bit over that edge a bit into the realms that DiChirico might have found inviting. Soft focus, no. He couldn't have made it in the toilet paper ad business.
 

Larry Bullis

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If modern environs were lonely, postmodern must be deadly. Sometimes his scenes were so lonely nobody was there.

We can't "do" Hopper any more, and it's not just because we aren't Hopper. We have our own alienation we have to deal with, even if we deal through denial as so many of US do.
 

Larry Bullis

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Dave Wooten said:
...Is it possible Hopper was influenced by Mondrian as much as by Robert Henri? ...
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I could certainly be wrong, but I doubt it. Hopper came from an entirely different milieu and tradition. He may have known about Mondrian, but is unlikely to have seen a lot of the work. Europe didn't really get here quite by his time to that great an extent despite Stieglitz's efforts. Remember? Paris was the center of the "art world" and America was in the backwater.

Mondrian eliminated objective subject matter entirely, concentrating on the most simplified possible geometrical forms and only three primary colors plus black and white in only vertical and horizontal orientations, preferring to use a square. Hopper was devoted to the figure and to forms that referred specifically to real locations. He used diagonals, even occasional curves. The similarity could be in the way that each of them divided the two dimensional frame, but it is not at all difficult to understand (for myself, at least) how they could have arrived at this apparent similarity independently. We had a lot of history to draw upon by then, at least since Degas began aggressively cropping significant form with the edges of the frame. Mondrian is celebrated because he focused so strongly and compulsively on the division of space. That did not preclude others from exploring the same ideas, as many did.

The most similar European artist that comes to mind would be DiChirico. But even there, it is a bit stretched, if only because Dichirico had such a great library of the classical imagery to draw upon.

I ain't no art historian. I'm a studio guy. I can't remember dates at all. But I care.

Larry
 

catem

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From what I remember Hopper was unimpressed with the 'modern art' that he saw in Paris though he was drawn to and influenced by Rembrandt and other Dutch painters he saw in Amsterdam. Don't know about Mondrian later on - hard to know where influences come from sometimes - it would seem very opposed but some of Hopper's work is quite geometric. I think photographers are drawn to Hopper often primarily because of his use of light, and the realism of his painting. Then maybe the symbolism in his paintings - isolation, loss, identity, alienation etc..though I don't think it's all negative.... I agree with other posters it's impossible to emulate him through use of film etc...I think it's a good thing to look at the way he uses light though, and particularly the way other photographers who use colour film use light in a similar way - i.e. don't follow the fashion of brash full-on lighting. Then the themes within his work - and the work doesn't mean anything without them - add another dimension that make following his 'technique' a pretty much impossible thing to do . I think it's worth looking at what he's trying to convey though, and how he does it if that's what interests you - a bit like sketching paintings in art galleries - can be helpful as long as you see it for what it is...
 
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eddym

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Hee hee... calling my bluff, aren't you?
Seriously, I have been thinking lately about getting another 8x10, due in no small part to all the discussion here about larger formats. But I'm not doing color any more, so it would be for B&W, and I would need to brush up on my tray processing skills, which have lapsed badly. I rarely even shoot the Tech 4x5 any more. Maybe I should invest in a workshop....
Yeah, I think I'm getting the bug again.
 
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Dave Wooten

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Good points bowzart, Degas at times used a camera, and the camera wide and or above perspective in some of his paintings.
 

Larry Bullis

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Dave Wooten said:
Good points bowzart, Degas at times used a camera, and the camera wide and or above perspective in some of his paintings.
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Well, yes he did, and this is only my half baked theory: One thing that Degas brought to PAINTING was that he had this way of simply chopping right through things. Not that painters hadn't used open frames before, but Degas' use of the edge of the canvas to terminate really important things abruptly was pretty extreme. One might even think he had been sneaking around and had used the camera, which has a way of doing just that if we aren't careful to prevent it! Some photographers do work to prevent it, of course; EW liked to close his frames. Of course, Degas did use the camera and moreover used it as a tool in his painting - as the contents of his studio revealed upon his death.

My thought has been that this is a far more important contribution to painting than is generally recognized.

Mondrian's space depends upon this same termination by dead end. So does Hopper's. But then, by that time, they had plenty of company.
 
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