Is Salgado, like, magic?

summicron1 · Apr 10, 2016

Looking at the images of Segaldo's work on the Kuwaiti oil fields after the first Gulf war, I'm amazed, figuring he's using tri-x, at the tonal separation he is getting in what had to be an almost exclusively black environment.

Anyone got any idea how he did it?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...t-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

markbarendt · Apr 10, 2016

Practice, avoid underexposure, and develop properly.

I'd also image that while there would be plenty of black there was plenty of light and even color.

CropDusterMan · Apr 10, 2016

The man is incredible...talent on a completely different level.

Ricardo Miranda · Apr 10, 2016

Are you sure he didn't use Ilford HP5+?
And he must have a good printer.

John Bragg · Apr 10, 2016

Expose long enough to record the subtleties of the dark tones, and develop for the right time in the right developer and employ one of the world's best printers !

John Bragg · Apr 10, 2016

Ricardo Miranda said:
Are you sure he didn't use Ilford HP5+?
And he must have a good printer.

Before he went digital, Salgado used Tri-X and had it developed in Rodinal.

Gerald C Koch · Apr 10, 2016

I personally believe that it is impossible to look at a set of prints and say this one was with Tri-X or this one with HP5 Plus. Unless someone has actual proof as to what film was used it is probably best to avoid speculation and just appreciate the images.

summicron1 · Apr 10, 2016

Gerald C Koch said:
I personally believe that it is impossible to look at a set of prints and say this one was with Tri-X or this one with HP5 Plus. Unless someone has actual proof as to what film was used it is probably best to avoid speculation and just appreciate the images.

I was just guessing he used tri-x. could easily have been Ilford, or some weird concoction of a bunch of gypsies in Albania ...

But, seriously, yeah, I expect he got there, did some testing to get what he wanted with combinations of film, developer, times, etc etc etc.

Dali · Apr 10, 2016

Tri-X + Atomal I guess...

Fixcinater · Apr 10, 2016

Stand development + lots of "massaging" in the darkroom.

markbarendt · Apr 10, 2016

Fixcinater said:
Stand development + lots of "massaging" in the darkroom.

Why would you think that?

The premise of stand development rely's on compressing shadow and highlight tones, reducing tonal separation in shadows and highlights.

Lachlan Young · Apr 10, 2016

You should watch Herzog's 'Lessons of Darkness' which was shot around the same areas at about the same time - if there was enough light for S16, 35mm reportage will have presented no problems.

Given Salgado's oft professed preference for Tri-X, it'd be a reasonable assumption that that's what he used, generously exposed, probably about 200 & almost certainly processed in something utterly ordinary. No silver bullets involved.

I think the images in the NYT article have been worked over fairly aggressively in PS, whether for the article or his forthcoming book.

Fixcinater · Apr 10, 2016

markbarendt said:
Why would you think that?

The premise of stand development rely's on compressing shadow and highlight tones, reducing tonal separation in shadows and highlights.

Because he's got texture in tones from shadows to the raging fire, how better to do so than to expose generously as noted elsewhere, then retain the highlights in the fire and then massage the heck out of them once in the darkroom/on the computer as Lachlan stated. The overall contrast of the scene has been severely manipulated, including the midtone separation. Stand (or my preference: semi-stand) would give lots of middle tones to manipulate without losing details at either end.

For all the hatred that stand gets here, it does serve a purpose.

markbarendt · Apr 10, 2016

Fixcinater said:
Because he's got texture in tones from shadows to the raging fire, how better to do so than to expose generously as noted elsewhere, then retain the highlights in the fire and then massage the heck out of them once in the darkroom/on the computer as Lachlan stated. The overall contrast of the scene has been severely manipulated, including the midtone separation. Stand (or my preference: semi-stand) would give lots of middle tones to manipulate without losing details at either end.

For all the hatred that stand gets here, it does serve a purpose.

The idea behind stand/semi-stand is reasonable when you are trying to minimize burn and dodge or trying to straight print. The paper's range is the biggest limitation.

There's plenty of headroom on Tri-X on the straight-line to fit most scenes without stand/semi-stand. The disadvantage of normal development is that it takes more burning and dodging to get it on the paper.

The advantage of using normal agitation and times is that there should be better separation in the high and low tones, more visible detail in the blacks and the fire. More separation on the film curve means more separation on paper.

Fixcinater · Apr 10, 2016

markbarendt said:
The idea behind stand/semi-stand is reasonable when you are trying to minimize burn and dodge or trying to straight print. The paper's range is the biggest limitation.

There's plenty of headroom on Tri-X on the straight-line to fit most scenes without stand/semi-stand. The disadvantage of normal development is that it takes more burning and dodging to get it on the paper.

The advantage of using normal agitation and times is that there should be better separation in the high and low tones, more visible detail in the blacks and the fire. More separation on the film curve means more separation on paper.

I agree completely with what you are saying but without knowing specifics of his technique, I'd put good money on the fact that the separation you are talking about is *not* there on the negative nor would it be on a darkroom print.

Heavy handed post processing in software: selective sharpening and contrast adjustment to draw attention to certain areas of the image.

Lachlan Young · Apr 10, 2016

Fixcinater said:
Because he's got texture in tones from shadows to the raging fire, how better to do so than to expose generously as noted elsewhere, then retain the highlights in the fire and then massage the heck out of them once in the darkroom/on the computer as Lachlan stated. The overall contrast of the scene has been severely manipulated, including the midtone separation. Stand (or my preference: semi-stand) would give lots of middle tones to manipulate without losing details at either end.

For all the hatred that stand gets here, it does serve a purpose.

This is wandering outside the the remit of the forum, however, short answer to this is that it's irrelevant, if you have access to a proper high-end scanner (Imacon or better) that you know thoroughly. If you are reasonably sensible, it is very easy to get every last bit out of the negative exposure-wise. It is also incredibly hard to get highlights so dense you can't get the scanner to see through them. I have negatives here that need 0-0.5 to print OK, but they scan beautifully.

Some of the heavy-handedness is because of what a duo/tri/quadtone will do.

I'd take a reasonable guess that most of the images will print just fine from their original negs on normal-ish grades, possibly with a breath of ferricyanide & that no extended techniques were used in the processing of the negatives.

Patrick Robert James · Apr 10, 2016

I hate to burst your bubble but those have been seriously massaged in Photoshop by the looks of it. I remember what they looked liked back in the day, and they weren't like that, although they were nice. My guess is scans were made of the negs and they went from there.

RSalles · Apr 10, 2016

One of my fav photographers of all time, and he it wasn't until a decade ago. I remember I hated his work showing the nude and rude poverty and misery all around the world: my impression at that time drove me to a series of wrong conclusions, including poverty exploitation. Until the day I stooped to listen to him. The man is even bigger then its work - no fanboyerism intended or any regionalism neither,
About the series, one thing is a press photo conceived to the newspaper or magazine, another one is the image displayed on any elet. device. I have the same image printed in a magazie here from decades ago and has a bit less "modern" displaying way but nevertheless a terrific image.

Cheers,

Renato

canuhead · Apr 10, 2016

My recollection of the prints I saw are very close to those in the NYT gallery. Obviously there will be slight differences going to web but I would doubt the negatives were scanned for the story.

Ricardo Miranda · Apr 11, 2016

Fixcinater said:
For all the hatred that stand gets here, it does serve a purpose.

I love it! I use it all the time.

calebarchie · Apr 11, 2016

IIRC his printer is Nathalie Lopparelli? And something about LVT negatives.

baachitraka · Apr 11, 2016

I have seen some if not all photos in an exhibition here in Bremen. SHARP grain and outstanding prints.

They were all presumably shoot with camera >= 645.

darkosaric · Apr 11, 2016

New work, for example Genesis is done with Canon digital full frame, in more than one videos/documentaries I have seen him with digital canon.
Then digital photo is transferred on the negative and printed in the traditional darkroom.

miha · Apr 11, 2016

This was T-MAX 400 as I remember Kodak using some of the pictures (and Salgado) to promote the film.
But it doesn't really matter.

MartinP · Apr 11, 2016

I recall some comments about the printing of a few pictures he had on show at Rencontres Arles a few years ago. Our best guess was overprinting and then a lot of manipulation on the print using reducer, to open specific areas that were otherwise 'dark'. Those prints were done by a lab in Paris that Amazonas-Images used/retained for a very long time. They also did the image-setting for the digitally shot negatives.

With the huge Genesis project (probably his last - Salgado is now in to his seventies), it was started on film and then moved to digital because of increasing difficulties transporting film around after 9/11. The digital frames were imageset/printed to large-format negs, then wet-printed from there and these had a 'look' pretty similar to the film-originated images. Some versions of the travelling exhibition had very large prints made digitally by lambda - in other shows there may also have been some sponsored prints on some sort of large inkjet. I think the point was to make everything in a specific exhibition look similar, so that one was not distracted from the contents of the images by the different printing techniques.

This info comes from observation of the exhibitions, from the books and from public presentations by Salgado.

Is Salgado, like, magic?

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