I've seen some photos from Ken Schles's Invisible City series. My question is, how can I achieve something similar to this look with 120 format film? Do I need some high-contrast developer or can I use D-76?
You need to learn how to edit in the darkroom or lightroom. The look has little to do with film, developer or cameras. Grain is on all film, it's just more apparent on smaller films and faster speed. If you print big enough you can get on large format.
I think if you spent around 10 hours a week for 5 years using a darkroom or lightroom you will start to appreciate just how much editing goes into one of his pictures and how much skill is required to accomplish that look. Not that you'll be able to duplicate it, that would require 40 hours a week over the same time frame, as well as taking photos.
... I worked as a custom printer for the likes of Magnum photographers Gilles Peress, Eliott Erwitt, Burt Glinn, Erich Hartmann and others who were quite exacting....The photogravure printing of the first edition of Invisible City gave the work another dimension that was hard to replicate (and played nicely off my very contrasty prints). After the work came out in book form, the work became known in that way. A funny thing to say, but I even identified the work with that gravure printing technique. The fact was that the original/traditional silver gelatin prints didn’t look like the gravure and the gravure didn’t have qualities of the silver prints. The look of the book was something I tried to replicate with available silver papers, largely failing. I shouldn’t say failing: it was simply different. A different interpretation. Over the years I sometimes moved radically far in that interpretation. For a time I used a very warm Hungarian paper called Fortezo....
Ken Schles – Invisible City
Copyright 2014 Ken Schles Photographer: Ken Schles (born & resides in Brooklyn, NY) Publisher: Steidl (Germany) Excerpts: Lewis Mumford, George Orwell, Jorges Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Jean Bau…photobookjournal.com
He is a master printer. Did you read the photographer's own account of why the images look that way?
My question is, how can I achieve something similar to this look with 120 format film?
So in my understanding, if I use grade 5 paper (or VC paper with filters) and I print larger or crop a part of the negative I should be able to get granier and more contrasty prints.
High speed film, Rodinal, high contrast grade paper. Push the film, too.
The standard recipe for exaggeration of grain is under development, allowing the use of high contrast paper. Kind of the opposite of push processing, where extended development of underexposed film allows printing on medium grade paper.
You will get more contrasty prints, and it probably will show more grain, but the point is that the print still needs dodging and burning which is a skill, it's not a free lunch to make prints like Schlse.So in my understanding, if I use grade 5 paper (or VC paper with filters) and I print larger or crop a part of the negative I should be able to get granier and more contrasty prints.
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