Is Salgado, like, magic?

[MattKing]

I don't know about funerals and wakes, but post-mortem photography was quite common in the 19th century. It's still done today. I have come across photographers asking about shooting funerals or wakes in more recent years, but I can't find the original links.

I have a friend who has done volunteer work photographing children - I think for the linked organization "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep". She has an established child portraiture business as well. It apparently is very difficult, but also very rewarding.

 

[RobC]

A friend who used to run a small private catering company told me that she really loved doing catering for wakes because the bereaved were always happy to let her choose the menu and organise it as she wished without interfering or being picky about anything. They were just happy that someone would take the strain of organising it all for them under the circumstances. And no I'm not thinking of taking up photographing wakes but I wondered if the same applied to photography at wakes. I just can't imagine leaning over a strangers body in a coffin to photgraph them. It's seems somwhat macabre to me just like the photo above in this topic, art or no art.

 

[mooseontheloose]

The only photo I ever saw of my paternal grandmother was in the coffin. Never understood why there were no photos of her sitting on the front porch in a rocker or hanging clothes outside instead. Same thing with my granny's sister. They brought her into the parlor in a coffin for everyone to see at her home and photographed. This was back in the 50's.

This is common in my family - we have photos of almost every close family member who has passed, at least within my lifetime - all of my grandparents, and two of my uncles, so far. This includes not only the body laying in the casket, but photos of the funeral procession and gravesite (post-burial). I don't know who takes the photos - possibly my parents, or someone else in the family. I guess I thought that every family did this, but clearly not. At times I thought it was a little strange, but it doesn't bother me now (that said, I don't know how I'd feel if asked to photograph a wake or funeral, whether it was someone I knew or not).

 

[ColColt]

I don't believe I'd be interested in doing it.

 

[MattKing]

The friends that asked me to do this - at the internment of their adult sister and daughter - made the request because when their father/husband died, many people came to help them grieve, but their memories of who was there were vague and distorted by their own grief. They wanted a record of those who survived and cared enough to show up - in some cases after travelling a very long distance.

At the celebration in particular, there were smiles and laughter and happy memories shared as well as sadness. It was a lot less unsettling to photograph there.

A few months earlier, the family asked me to take family portraits, when their daughter/sister/aunt was still well enough to be a part of that. I was glad to do that.

 

[RSalles]

I consider printing to be an integral part of the photographic process. It is the completion of what began with pressing the shutter. So the reputation of photographers that do not do their own printing is diminished for me. What would we think if Picasso gave his ideas to an assistant.

I couldn't elaborate a complete response to this opinion, as it has a number of misconceptions and wrong statements.
Can I start with the painters and sculptors which work were accomplished with the aid of assistants as Rafael, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rodin, etc, in different scales. Painting is not photography, totally unrelated, other medium, other skills needed, other "technology".

But let's for the moment consider this option: photographers that I can recall starts with Cartier-Bresson for instance, I could add a list of Magnum agency photog. who had their print done by others in house. I have worked for a number of big scale newspapers which had also their own lab. and none of their photographers had to make this work neither had the time to. In color processing? You name it, for different reasons.

It doesn't hurt to the artist to humbly consider the help of great printers to accomplish their work, for one reason or another, neither it restricts the value of the image taken, IMO. It's a wrong idea I think to consider the help of a professional lab a gap of any sort toward the results of an image. Even A.A. did it, at his own lab,


Cheers,

Renato

 

[Gerald C Koch]

I couldn't elaborate a complete response to this opinion, as it has a number of misconceptions and wrong statements.
Can I start with the painters and sculptors which work were accomplished with the aid of assistants as Rafael, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rodin, etc, in different scales. Painting is not photography, totally unrelated, other medium, other skills needed, other "technology".

But let's for the moment consider this option: photographers that I can recall starts with Cartier-Bresson for instance, I could add a list of Magnum agency photog. who had their print done by others in house. I have worked for a number of big scale newspapers which had also their own lab. and none of their photographers had to make this work neither had the time to. In color processing? You name it, for different reasons.

It doesn't hurt to the artist to humbly consider the help of great printers to accomplish their work, for one reason or another, neither it restricts the value of the image taken, IMO. It's a wrong idea I think to consider the help of a professional lab a gap of any sort toward the results of an image. Even A.A. did it, at his own lab,


Cheers,

Renato

Sorry but I disagree. Painters like De Vinci would let assistants work on the background of a painting but never on the main subject. BTW, no one ever touched the Mona Lisa except De Vinci who continued to work on the painting until his death.

You must remember that Magnum first and foremost was a news agency. There was little concern for negatives and prints after their original use. Ansel Adams in his latter life became a print factory cranking out print after print. Edward Weston did all his own work and so did his sons.

For many years you could buy silver-gelatin prints from the Library of Congress from negatives in their collections. So you could have a Dorothea Lange print indistinguishable from the original. These prints were made by expert printers but sold for very little. Why, because they were not made by the photographer who took the negative.

As I said "So the reputation of photographers that do not do their own printing is diminished for me." You're free to think anything you want. It makes no nevermind to me.

 

[RSalles]

As I base my thinking in facts, not mere opinions mind crafted in the vacuum - this statement is not a remark to your opinion about the subject but to your sentence that "I can think whatever I want" - or equivalent.
As a side note:
----------------------------------------------
Original

General usage means a print made by the artist. Historically, some photographers were not interested in working in the darkroom (such as Henri Cartier-Bresson) but prints signed by him are considered originals. With digital processes, originals are not handcrafted but are approved and signed by the artist.
-----------------------------------------------

Source: anseladams.com - Glossary of photographic terms.
http://www.anseladams.com/ansel-ada...y-ansel-adams/glossary-of-photographic-terms/

Cheers,

Renato

 

[RobC]

Does a playright have to perform his own plays to you? Does he have be the director of the production? Does an author have to read his work to you himself or print the book himself?

This argument is about money and appreciation but you just haven't realised it yet.

When I was a teenager I had salvador dali posters on my bedroom walls. Should I have treated them with contempt becasue they were very cheap prints of original paintings or were they valuable in a far better sense for their artistic value.

If the work MUST be printed by the photographer then why? Well I suspect its subconciously either because of expectations of seeing original work by the photographer themself or because you wouldn't want to pay for it if it wasn't printed by the photographer themself. You wouldn't want a copy or someone elses work which comes down purely to monetary value and nothing to do with artistic value. Or may be even snob value of owning an original by the photographer themself.

Take the that old photo of tennis girl with a hint of her backside showing. Millions of posters of it were sold and it was on every pubescent boys wall. Was it art? Yes it was. It may not have been high art but it was art. Now does it matter that all those millions of posters were not original prints by the photographer himself? Well no it doesn't unless you are secretely thinking about its monetary value and/or your own kudos and/or bragging rights at having seen or owned an original print of it.

So ask yourself why does it really matter if the work was actually by the artist.

But I stll think digital prints are a cheap cop out by the photographer but possibly for good monetary/commercial reasons.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

The point that I was trying to convey is a fairly easy one. The owner of a print is only assured of the photographer's intent is fully expressed only if the photographer makes the print. This matters to me but obviously not to some other people. Sorry but this is how the marketplace works. Is an Ansel Adam's print really an AA print if it was made by someone else? The bottom line is no. If Salgado never makes his own prints then the point is moot with regard to his work. End of discussion.

 

[RobC]

the use of the term marketplace serves to emphasise what I said. i.e. its about money and expectations before appreciation is given. End of discussion.

 

[Maris]

This long thread, if it illustrates anything for sure, shows the pernicious consequences of substituting the word "print" for "photograph". I expect most APUGers think photograph when they say print but in the wider world I see a conceptual haze where it's all just pictures. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out that the words we use firmly limit and channel how we are capable of thinking. If we lump photographs with ink-jets, etchings, mezzotints, lithographs, linocuts, engravings, web-offsets, and all the other things that are actually prints we become unable to think of what makes photographs different and uniquely valuable.

The piece of exposed, developed, fixed, photographic paper with picture-forming marks on it is not a print, it is a photograph, and I would plead it is the photograph. Other things, including the camera-original negative, are ingredients used in passing to culminate in the photograph. The person who executes the entire process from beginning to end is certainly the photographer. But how should people with partial roles be designated? I reckon there are plenty of honest options.

Salgado is a supremely admirable camera-man and the people who make pictures for him are brilliant printmakers. In a similar vein Henri Cartier-Bresson who exposed film but made no visible photographs was a camera-man who relied on photograph-makers to have something to show.

All the recent Salgado pictures I've seen are print-outs of electronic files that have been heavily worked in a data processing environment. The Salgado "industry" fabricates glorious visual experiences, the mechanical equivalent of hand-wrought paintings or drawings. But all of this is well sideways of making pictures out of light sensitive substances; photography as such.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

This long thread, if it illustrates anything for sure, shows the pernicious consequences of substituting the word "print" for "photograph". I expect most APUGers think photograph when they say print but in the wider world I see a conceptual haze where it's all just pictures. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out that the words we use firmly limit and channel how we are capable of thinking. If we lump photographs with ink-jets, etchings, mezzotints, lithographs, linocuts, engravings, web-offsets, and all the other things that are actually prints we become unable to think of what makes photographs different and uniquely valuable.

The piece of exposed, developed, fixed, photographic paper with picture-forming marks on it is not a print, it is a photograph, and I would plead it is the photograph. Other things, including the camera-original negative, are ingredients used in passing to culminate in the photograph. The person who executes the entire process from beginning to end is certainly the photographer. But how should people with partial roles be designated? I reckon there are plenty of honest options.

Salgado is a supremely admirable camera-man and the people who make pictures for him are brilliant printmakers. In a similar vein Henri Cartier-Bresson who exposed film but made no visible photographs was a camera-man who relied on photograph-makers to have something to show.

All the recent Salgado pictures I've seen are print-outs of electronic files that have been heavily worked in a data processing environment. The Salgado "industry" fabricates glorious visual experiences, the mechanical equivalent of hand-wrought paintings or drawings. But all of this is well sideways of making pictures out of light sensitive substances; photography as such.

Well said. My only comment would be that the term print is firmly entrenched in the photographic literature.

 

[ginandtonic]

He spoke to the guardian about these pictures here - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/may/28/sebastiao-salgado-photography-kuwait

Incredible story. He had a 60mm lens, so I wonder what camera he was using, wasnt a common focal length.

 

[cliveh]

The photographer captures the original image and the zillion ways it can be printed is merely a technical exercise.

 

[Maris]

The photographer captures the original image and the zillion ways it can be printed is merely a technical exercise.

This is precisely the ruinous vaporising that empties photography of its powerful and unique values. I won't accept a dumbed down world in which the universal consensus is reduced to "Photographs? Nah, leave it out, guv. It's all just pitchers, innit?"

 

[NJH]

To be fair he describes himself as more of a social documenter than a photographer, the argument about whether someone is an artist or not because they don't print for themselves only highlights a lack of understanding of Salgado.

 

[NJH]

The photographer captures the original image and the zillion ways it can be printed is merely a technical exercise.

Hate to have a dig at you Clive but you only trot out this nonsense because of HCB.

 

[Lachlan Young]

He spoke to the guardian about these pictures here - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/may/28/sebastiao-salgado-photography-kuwait

Incredible story. He had a 60mm lens, so I wonder what camera he was using, wasnt a common focal length.

It was a 60mm Macro Elmarit-R for a Leica SLR (I recall reading that he used the R6 bodies, & 28/35/60 lenses).

 

[removed account4]

And he must have a good printer

he does !!!

her name is nathalie loparelli



she is pretty fantastic ...

 

[chip j]

Salgado is digital now, converting his files to film. ???

 

[ginandtonic]

The photographer captures the original image and the zillion ways it can be printed is merely a technical exercise.

I'm guessing you have never printed in a darkroom.

 

[removed account4]

Salgado is digital now, converting his files to film. ???

no clue but she was printing his film...

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Salgado is digital now, converting his files to film. ???

I have checked his book with some pathetic name where it is digital. Something with penguins, if I'm not mistaken. It was awfully over-processed and boring.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

he does !!!

her name is nathalie loparelli



she is pretty fantastic ...

I think I'm in love.

Thanks for the link to the video, jnanian.