Hoe can you print a portrait whitout eyes?

Henry Alive · Jul 22, 2014

How can you print a portrait whitout eyes?

The Prado Museum (https://www.museodelprado.es) inaugurates Mascaras', organized in collaboration with PhotoEspaña. This is an exhibition of 18 photographic portraits of Alberto Schommer, a very good Spanish photographer. The portraits are simply amazing. Many of them have the peculiarity that there are no eyes. As an example, look at the Rafael Alberti portrait. It has been made with traditional Black and White film. Can someone suggest how it can be done?
Thanks,
Henry.

darkosaric · Jul 22, 2014

After print is done - Retouching eyes with black ink.

snapguy · Jul 22, 2014

ortho

If you use orthochromatic film you can make light blue eyes disappear. It was a real problem in silent film days before the use of panchromatic filkm.

Jim Noel · Jul 22, 2014

snapguy said:
If you use orthochromatic film you can make light blue eyes disappear. It was a real problem in silent film days before the use of panchromatic filkm.

That is the correct answer.

Henry Alive · Jul 22, 2014

What about with the white area of the eyes?

pentaxuser · Jul 22, 2014

Henry Alive said:
What about with the white area of the eyes?

Good point. Before I had seen the answer about ortho film I was going to say that with very careful "burning" it would be possible to turn the whole eye, including the white cornea, black, wouldn't it?

pentaxuser

mono · Jul 22, 2014

Personally I do not like those portraits without eyes!
For me the eyes are the mirror of the soul, so to speak.

Allen Friday · Jul 22, 2014

I think the simplest way to accomplish this would be to cut the eyes out of the negative, or to selectively bleach the eyes on the negative to get down to the film base.

RalphLambrecht · Jul 22, 2014

darkosaric said:
After print is done - Retouching eyes with black ink.

or bleaching the eyes on the negative, but ,I can't say I care for the effect;it looks sinister.

cowanw · Jul 22, 2014

snapguy said:
If you use orthochromatic film you can make light blue eyes disappear. It was a real problem in silent film days before the use of panchromatic filkm.

That is to say the eyes become white, which is the opposite of black.

Mark_S · Jul 22, 2014

I almost always dodge the eyes on a portrait because I want them to stand out, but I suppose that you could carefully burn. You could make a print, and then cut out the eyes to make a mask, then burn through the mask.

darkosaric · Jul 22, 2014

Mark_S said:
I almost always dodge the eyes on a portrait because I want them to stand out, but I suppose that you could carefully burn. You could make a print, and then cut out the eyes to make a mask, then burn through the mask.

If you did not dodged them enough - I learned recently that you can slightly make them lighter (and more pop uout) with very diluted potassium ferricyanide.

Bob Carnie · Jul 23, 2014

I think that is what was done here.. not to mention exposure development of the negative to record mostly the high end and drop the shadow end.. The lighting also helps.

If you drag this image into PS you can brighten the image to actually see the eyes, that is why I do not think ink was applied to the print.

Mark_S said:
I almost always dodge the eyes on a portrait because I want them to stand out, but I suppose that you could carefully burn. You could make a print, and then cut out the eyes to make a mask, then burn through the mask.

Ghostman · Jul 23, 2014

mono said:
Personally I do not like those portraits without eyes!
For me the eyes are the mirror of the soul, so to speak.

The exhibition is called Masks. Masks are what the eyes betray, so take away the eyes to reveal the mask at work. In this case the mask is revealed without the presence of the peepers that give it away, so a mask hiding in plain sight. There it is, a mask purporting to be just that, a mask. Only it draws us into the human behind it and a longing to see the soul.

I like it.

Bob Carnie · Jul 23, 2014

Me too.

Is this work current , because I have seen this before and it could be the same person.

Ghostman said:
The exhibition is called Masks. Masks are what the eyes betray, so take away the eyes to reveal the mask at work. In this case the mask is revealed without the presence of the peepers that give it away, so a mask hiding in plain sight. There it is, a mask purporting to be just that, a mask. Only it draws us into the human behind it and a longing to see the soul.

I like it.

Bob Carnie · Jul 23, 2014

Me too.

Is this work current , because I have seen this before and it could be the same person.

Ghostman said:
The exhibition is called Masks. Masks are what the eyes betray, so take away the eyes to reveal the mask at work. In this case the mask is revealed without the presence of the peepers that give it away, so a mask hiding in plain sight. There it is, a mask purporting to be just that, a mask. Only it draws us into the human behind it and a longing to see the soul.

I like it.

Henry Alive · Jul 27, 2014

Thanks everybody for the coments.
Henry.

Ronald Moravec · Aug 28, 2014

http://onlyoldphotography.tumblr.com/post/37159602514/yousuf-karsh-pablo-casals-1954-in-the-abbey-de

If you can do one without a face and everyone knows who it is, a missing eye should be a piece of cake.

Hoe can you print a portrait whitout eyes?

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