How'd He Do It?

I recently received a superb book on Henri Cartier-Bresson entitled, "The Modern Century". Those photos were excellent and there were quite a few in this near four pound book. As I began to study the composition, tonal range and sharpness of those photos I had to wonder why I(and maybe you) can't get that look with todays better optics and film. There was detail in most all the highlights of the photos and the shadows were at least what one would call Zone III-IV. None of my photos look as those do in that book. I saw one or two contact sheets and he used Super XX film on many occasions which would, I imagine, pale in comparison to todays FP-4, Delta 400, etc. yet, they seemed nearly grain free, sharp and a superb tonal range. All he had back in the 40's-60's was his Leica M3(probably) and the latest film.

I can't post any photos but you can see the cover and several of the others to get an idea of what I mean. I have an M2, use FP-4 and Tri-X mostly but can't attain the quality he did.

"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0870707787?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=od_aui_detailpages00

Easy, he exposed it right and it was printed, not scanned, by professional printers with all masks and D&B Jazz.
Are you printing now or still wasting film for scans?

Still having to scan in order to post on the Internet. I think I've nearly forgotten what a print looks like. I haven't fired up my old dark room since 1998.

I have read the he did not print and so it is probable that he did not process film.

He did at least early on according to the book. For how long I have no idea. I can't imagine for long since he was a world traveler and no doubt had precious little time for dark room work. Regardless of who did it they did an admirable job.

DAK said:

I have read the he did not print and so it is probable that he did not process film.

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i read that as well, he used an drum scanner and the 1940s plug in

Simple. His camera didn't have a magic green "A" on it.

I think by proxy you could ask cliveh how HE does it...

HCB did not make his own prints nor develop his film. Thank the long suffering darkroom workers at Magnum who had to deal with his poorly exposed negatives.

A few years ago a local gallery had a show of HCB photography where it was clear that the prints were original, period prints.

The prints were good quality, but really not nearly as dramatic as the versions you see in printed publications.

In most cases, book versions of photographs look very different than original prints.

Here's a great article at TOP about HCB's longtime printer, Voja Mitrovic. Very insightful about the challenges of printing for HCB and others like Josef Koudelka.
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/08/voya-mitrovic-part-i.html

Taking the photo is just half of the process. Learning how to print effectively adds a whole other dimension to achieving a good image.

I have wondered this myself about many older photograph reproductions I see online and in print. Sometimes they have so much depth of field, so little motion blur, so much shadow detail,and so little grain that it just seems impossible. Even with modern films, I am always sacrificing something. I think it's a combination of luck in the taking, and very expert photofinishers, as opposed to hobbyists. Maybe the magic comes from the replenished developers or the classic papers. The pictures are famous, after all, and the striking quality of capture is part of what made them that way.

Ko.Fe. said:

Easy, he exposed it right and it was printed, not scanned, by professional printers with all masks and D&B Jazz.
Are you printing now or still wasting film for scans?

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DAK said:

I have read the he did not print and so it is probable that he did not process film.

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ColColt said:

He did at least early on according to the book. For how long I have no idea. I can't imagine for long since he was a world traveler and no doubt had precious little time for dark room work. Regardless of who did it they did an admirable job.

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Gerald C Koch said:

HCB did not make his own prints nor develop his film. Thank the long suffering darkroom workers at Magnum who had to deal with his poorly exposed negatives.

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MattKing said:

A few years ago a local gallery had a show of HCB photography where it was clear that the prints were original, period prints.

The prints were good quality, but really not nearly as dramatic as the versions you see in printed publications.

In most cases, book versions of photographs look very different than original prints.

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For most of his career HCB did not develop nor print his photographs. He paid others to do his darkroom work, thus proving that one can be successful in photography and never enter a darkroom.

Sirius Glass said:

For most of his career HCB did not develop nor print his photographs. He paid others to do his darkroom work, thus proving that one can be successful in photography and never enter a darkroom.

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But he knew exactly what he wanted the print to look like. Others may have done the actual work but his was the final approval. You may not have to go into the darkroom but if you don't then you better have a professional printer who can follow your instructions to the letter.

MattKing said:

A few years ago a local gallery had a show of HCB photography where it was clear that the prints were original, period prints.

The prints were good quality, but really not nearly as dramatic as the versions you see in printed publications.

In most cases, book versions of photographs look very different than original prints.

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In Henri Cartier Bresson - Just Plain Love (Documentary) at around 35:53 you'll see them using Photoshop to edit his photos.

Prints in books are ink on slick book paper, and have been "optimized" for publication. Prints in a gallery are silver in emulsion on photo paper. Big difference in looks. As mentioned, HCB had one particular printer for a long time, and that printer was largely responsible for what people know of HCB's work. No one can get the sort of tight framing compositions on the fly w/ a rangefinder camera that many of his prints exhibit, they were judiciously cropped by his printer at the time of printing. From what I read, many of the pics were a bear to print too because they were NOT perfectly exposed. Like Ansel Adams, much of the magic happened in the darkroom.

I'm convinced that many of his shots were setups as well, and not taken spontaneously and captured "at the decisive moment". That sort of thing makes for good copy in galleries and books, and from there, urban legends develop. People want their heroes to behave as heroes, and not as flesh and blood mortals that screw up and scheme like everyone else.

As an example, one of my very favorite abstract expressionist painters of all time is Franz Kline, an American that worked in the 50's and died in the early 60's. Much lore went into the art magazines of the time on his technique, when in reality Franz started out as a realistic painter. One day one of his sketches became tilted on the table that he used to project his small images onto the large canvases. Just a little corner got projected, and it magnified the quick brush work into a large abstract piece. A light bulb went off in Franz's head and he said "ah ha, I have something new here". He then threw out and destroyed all of his old work, and started painting these bold, large works w/ quick, loose brush strokes on very large canvases. Unfortunately, in an effort to economize since he was broke, he went out and bought gallons of black and white house paint. That was much cheaper than quality art colours, and by sticking to just black and white he saved some bucks. Years later many of his works started falling apart, including two or three that went from masterpieces to rubbish when I caught a magnificent traveling show of his work in S. F. many years ago.

Gerald C Koch said:

HCB did not make his own prints nor develop his film. Thank the long suffering darkroom workers at Magnum who had to deal with his poorly exposed negatives.

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Don't know about magnum staff but when HCB died his long time printer came out of closet and said none of his negatives were easy to print, and he was the best fine art printer in France...

To help you the rule book in them days was 'don't underexposed and over develope'.

Xmas said:

Don't know about magnum staff but when HCB died his long time printer came out of closet and said none of his negatives were easy to print, and he was the best fine art printer in France...

To help you the rule book in them days was 'don't underexposed and over develope'.

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but from what i have read, his film was all developed by inspection, not sure how a professional lab person
who is developing by inspection will over develop negatives.

Fine art Printers are sometimes so good that other printers (for example 10-20 years later) are not able to get the same result. I was looking some documentaries about HCB and about Moriyama Daido where on the end printers took a photo of the original print and do the reprint from that, not from original negative.

Money

While not detracting from HCBs talent one big advsntage that he had was that he made his money by being born into it so that he could afford professional printers and all the rest from the very beginning. This is not a criticism but just an observation. Even if some of his pics were set ups they look spontaineous， whivh is what counts from the vierwers perspective.

guangong said:

Money

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In documentary "The Salt of the Earth" you can see that Salgado was broke and his wife was supporting him during start of his photo carrier. He was using the same Picto lab in Paris as HCB. It is not about being rich.

ColColt said:

Still having to scan in order to post on the Internet. I think I've nearly forgotten what a print looks like. I haven't fired up my old dark room since 1998.

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?? You're not imaging your prints for the internet? That's not good.

Remember, the "photographic print" is your ultimate goal. So let's have no more talk about "not remembering what a print looks like." All your work "film wise" should culminate in a "fine photographic print". No imitations allowed.



Really. I'm serious.

Back to the original post. Super XX was grainy, but it had a longer straight line than any typical current film. It was also an old-school "thick emulsion" film that could accept quite a range of development tricks to reduce or boost contrast. So in that respect, it had certain advantages that current films do not. In other words, it had a LONGER potential range of tonality, capable or crisply separating deep shadows all the way to the highlights. For that reason it was considered the standard commercial film for several decades, just like Tri-X was the standard journalistic film, and Plus-X the most popular studio product under controlled lighting. Several similar films have been around, like Bergger200 or Fomapan 200, but none quite equal in its versatility to Super XX.

The great depth of field, as someone else mentioned, was another strikingly thing I noticed about many of his photos. Margaret Bourke-White, another excellent photographer of her time, used primarily large format cameras as the 4x5 or 5x7 Graflex and her photos as you can imagine, were superb and also great DOF. Two entirely different cameras from a Leica to large format 4x5 and like HCB she never to my knowledge upon reading her books, developed any prints-especially those for Life magazine.

I think it was W. Eugene Smith that developed most of his prints and fussed with the editors of Life for changing them at all. He resigned from Life at least twice due to their editorial methods.I find many of his photos of a dark and macabre nature for some reason but his essay on the Spanish Village was superb, especially the photo of the dead old man who had his family around him. Excellent photo in every way and one of the few that looked like it could have been a B&W Rembrandt painting. They all had their own talents.

Remember, the "photographic print" is your ultimate goal. So let's have no more talk about "not remembering what a print looks like." All your work "film wise" should culminate in a "fine photographic print". No imitations allowed.

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I use to love to print and spent literally nearly all day doing so years ago. I made my own developer(D-23 and Beer's formula) when the chemistry was still available via Kodak and just enjoyed it immensely. Chemistry is not that available anymore as it once was when you could get 80% of what you needed locally. I still have it all, however even 20 year old containers of Sodium Carbonate and found a half empty bottle of Benzotriazole a couple weeks back.

I really hate scanning but it's the only way to let others view your work-there's no other way. You either scan the negative or scan the print. I can't get the quality I did with printing regardless of how I do it.

I think you already identified the problem.
He used an M3 while you are still stuck with a lowly M2