HCB Appreciation

[GregY]

Why? What do you exactly experience on the print that you cannot in screen, the quality of the paper or texture of it as you said? Is it really that important? It is not painting where the paint has a material texture. And I am saying it me who love prints that is why I buy so many photography books. But I dont believe they are superior to an image in any other form. An image has no material identity it exists in many forms. Maybe like a musical score. And the prints or edits are interpretations

...."the map is not the territory"
.....the menu is not the meal....

 

[snusmumriken]

...."the map is not the territory"
.....the menu is not the meal....

This is getting a bit metaphysical, isn’t it? The photo is not the girl in Sifnos either.

 

[pentaxuser]

This is getting a bit metaphysical, isn’t it?

A bit metaphysical! You really have to stop using the so-called "British understatement, Jonathan

pentaxuser

 

[snusmumriken]

A bit metaphysical! You really have to stop using the so-called "British understatement, Jonathan

pentaxuser

 

[Vaughn]

...."the map is not the territory"
.....the menu is not the meal....

Mistaking the Map for the Territory...one of my favorite images.

The image is the map, the print (or any way used to make the image visible) would be the territory. I suppose 'content' could be another word for image.

 

[GregY]

This is getting a bit metaphysical, isn’t it? The photo is not the girl in Sifnos either.

the online screen photo, or book image ....is not the print

 

[MattKing]

And the prints or edits are interpretations

There is no way to experience any of these things except through interpretations. And a print interpretation is different than a screen interpretation.
I'm okay if some don't care where and how and through what medium they see and/or experience the photography.
But to my mind I like best the "performances" that are in print form.
And I always have in the back of my mind that HCB expected his photographs to be seen as prints, not as images on a screen.
I take slides with the expectation that they will be projected.
And I take black and white images with the expectation that they will be presented as prints.
And those expectations influence how I expose the film.

 

[GregY]

There is no way to experience any of these things except through interpretations. And a print interpretation is different than a screen interpretation.
I'm okay if some don't care where and how and through what medium they see and/or experience the photography.
But to my mind I like best the "performances" that are in print form.
And I always have in the back of my mind that HCB expected his photographs to be seen as prints, not as images on a screen.
I take slides with the expectation that they will be projected.
And I take black and white images with the expectation that they will be presented as prints.
And those expectations influence how I expose the film.

Me too..... which is why i will go out of my way to see photo exhibitions in any city I visit.
The impact of the print is orders of magnitude more than the picture of the image on a screen or in a book.

 

[nikos79]

Me too..... which is why i will go out of my way to see photo exhibitions in any city I visit.
The impact of the print is orders of magnitude more than the picture of the image on a screen or in a book.

Hmm I don't know. I have been to museum and seen painting I only saw in books and I was ... wow!!!
On the other hand, I have seen prints that I have seen in books or screens too and I didn't feel such a difference

 

[GregY]

Hmm I don't know. I have been to museum and seen painting I only saw in books and I was ... wow!!!
On the other hand, I have seen prints that I have seen in books or screens too and I didn't feel such a difference

To me...whether i connect with the print or not... it's like music. I always prefer the experience of an in-person live performance to any recording (vinyl, CD, streaming). There is something...a certain 'reality/physicality' about seeing a work of art directly. Matt K hinted at this in one of his earlier posts. I contend, that if you haven't seen The Last Supper or the Mona Lisa....your impression is based on the idea of them....not the work of art itself.
I've seen original prints of all of the photos in the thumbnails below.....some of them years ago, & to this day i can remember details not only of the impression they made on me, (that don't exist seeing 2nd hand) but also, where i was, who I was with, and the context of the occasion... much more so than if i had seen them flipping through the pages of a book or art catalog. You have no idea of the actual tonality, the paper....unless you see the real thing.

"Prints look like prints. They are more than just the image in them. They have physical characteristics in addition to the image included in them. They respond to and are dependent on the light they are viewed with. Some have texture, while others have gloss. They have a physical weight. If made sensitively, they are printed to take advantage of all those physical characteristics, and are printed with them in mind." Matt King

 

[Vaughn]

Hmm I don't know. I have been to museum and seen painting I only saw in books and I was ... wow!!!
On the other hand, I have seen prints that I have seen in books or screens too and I didn't feel such a difference

Not surprising with the media relationships being so different, with the printing of photographs in books tending to much closer to the "real thing" -- and often 'improved'.

I create an image with a specific media type in mind, using the characteristics of the medium as part of the image, so to speak. My carbon prints have a raised relief, the image is on the surface of the paper and raises upwards above the surface of the paper, with the darkest areas being raised the highest. This relief is used creatively and is part of the over-all image...not unlike a painter's use of texture in an oil painting. The full intended impact of the print can not be seen on a screen or in a book. Same with my platinum prints, with which the image is not sitting on the top of the paper, but in it. This and paper texture is used as part of the image and can not be fully realized in a flat reproduction on smooth paper. it is not the full experience,

I consider all parts of the process equally important, from waking up in the morning and getting ready to head out and photograph, to hanging the print on a wall.

 

[Milpool]

Nikos, you see?

 

[GregY]

This is getting a bit metaphysical, isn’t it? The photo is not the girl in Sifnos either.

no...... but a screen picture of a photograph is not the photographic print either.

 

[MattKing]

Several years ago I was able to attend a travelling exhibition of the original prints that HCB himself would have approved - as I understand he didn't make most of his own prints.
They were quite interesting.
One, they were invariably quite small - 8x10 usually.
They were very subtle prints - some of the more famous images are commonly reproduced in somewhat more dramatic ways.
A couple showed some signs of minor damage, which fascinated me.

 

[Mike Lopez]

Several years ago I was able to attend a travelling exhibition of the original prints that HCB himself would have approved - as I understand he didn't make most of his own prints.
They were quite interesting.
One, they were invariably quite small - 8x10 usually.
They were very subtle prints - some of the more famous images are commonly reproduced in somewhat more dramatic ways.
A couple showed some signs of minor damage, which fascinated me.

I would wager that they were 8x12, or perhaps 6x9, but printed on 8x10 paper, for the most part. True 8x10s would have required cropping.

 

[MattKing]

I would wager that they were 8x12, or perhaps 6x9, but printed on 8x10 paper, for the most part. True 8x10s would have required cropping.

Yes - on 8x10 paper.
Or if there was/is a European size close to that, it could have been that.

 

[GregY]

Several years ago I was able to attend a travelling exhibition of the original prints that HCB himself would have approved - as I understand he didn't make most of his own prints.
They were quite interesting.
One, they were invariably quite small - 8x10 usually.
They were very subtle prints - some of the more famous images are commonly reproduced in somewhat more dramatic ways.
A couple showed some signs of minor damage, which fascinated me.

The first HCB show I saw was in Tokyo....similarly...small prints, subtly printed

 

[Harry Callahan]

Yes - on 8x10 paper.
Or if there was/is a European size close to that, it could have been that.

A common European size is (and probably was) 18x24cm.

 

[snusmumriken]

no...... but a screen picture of a photograph is not the photographic print either.

And I always have in the back of my mind that HCB expected his photographs to be seen as prints, not as images on a screen.

Some photographers see printing as a significant part of the creative process, others not so much. HCB was happy to let others do his darkroom work, and clearly felt that the creative stuff was already done and printing was just a matter of faithfully expressing the image he had made. We should also remember that much of his work was commissioned for magazines, or made into books, so I don’t think it’s true that he expected it to be seen as silver-gelatine prints.

They were very subtle prints - some of the more famous images are commonly reproduced in somewhat more dramatic ways.

That’s certainly true. His contemporaries commented on the gentle contrast that he preferred.

 

[Don_ih]

I don’t think it’s true that he expected it to be seen as silver-gelatine prints

I'm sure he expected to see prints, but they weren't particularly precious at the time. The value of his photography was publication - either in magazines or in books. No one was paying anything significant for any individual prints.

@nikos79 - if you don't find any significant difference between seeing a print and seeing a photo on a screen, that's fine. You'll likely never convince anyone that's made prints that that is true. From the very first time you start to try to make a good photographic print, you begin to realize just how easy it is to make a bad print from the same negative. The skill is being better able to realize in the print the possibilities in the negative - and to do that, you need to know the material you're using.

While it is true that there is skill involved in digital editing of scans (or digital photos), you have no control over what screens display your photo. You get more control if the photo is printed. But if you know anything about professional printing of art images, you'll know that each print calibration gets approved by the photographer (and prints that need recalibration of the print process get destroyed). So clearly there is an ideal the artist is trying to get realized in that process as well - which means it's easy to get bad prints and more difficult to get a good one.

Essentially, this is about subtle characteristics. The composition of the photo is the same across the options: image on screen, bad print, good print. So, yes, you can see the photo and think "That's a great photo" in all those instances. However, only one thing allows you to say "That's a great print." Is there an equivalent for a photo on a screen?