Ken Schles Invisible City like reproductions

[ericdan]

I have a copy of Ken Schles' Invisible city. I really like the reproductions in this book. I know this is Steidl and he's a master publisher, but I would like to know how to get something along the same lines from my negatives or prints.
I would like to make a coffee table book out of one of my projects.
I believe Ken originally made Photogravure prints from thin negatives and then scanned those for the Steidl published book.
I have silver gelatin prints on fiber paper of what I want to go into the book.
Would scanning and printing on a very matte inkjet type paper be my best option?
What sort of paper would give me a similar look?

 

[Lachlan Young]

The book uses a 5-ink offset process intended to look like rotogravure. I think it's a quadtone with an extra hit of black & stochastically screened somewhat coarsely to give a sense of the distinctive gravure screen pattern. I have a copy of Koudelka's 'Gypsies' that was printed using the same methods & having looked closely at it & played around with separations on the computer & that seems to come closest in 'feel'. i.e. it's ink on paper that gives you the 'look', not silver gelatin.

Closest I've ever got to gravure without making actual plates & using an etching press involved pigment ink prints on to a gelatin sized Arches watercolour paper - but that's outwith the scope of this forum.

Schles himself says that the repros in the Steidl book come from new scans of the negatives - https://thephotobook.wordpress.com/2015/12/29/ken-schles-invisible-city/ - at no point did he make individual photogravures - the original book was printed in gravure & the Steidl one in an offset pseudogravure.

 

[ericdan]

Thanks LY. So you think the look in the recent Steidl book was created by scanning the negatives and applying some "pseudogravure" digital filter to the images?

 

[Lachlan Young]

Thanks LY. So you think the look in the recent Steidl book was created by scanning the negatives and applying some "pseudogravure" digital filter to the images?

It's not a filter, merely the actual effect of choices of quadtone curve shapes & halftone screens at the time that the images were separated ready for printing in 5 grey & black pantone inks. It could potentially be done by physical means if you had the right repro camera, films, screens & knowledge - though much slower & far less easy to use in terms of outcome. The images that went through the process were probably not a million miles away from the repros contrast-wise etc, but no duo/ tri/ quadtone will look 100% like the original art.

 

[removed account4]

ericdan

did you want to make multiple copies of your work ( more than one book ) or one book ?
if you wanted to make one book, book making ( book binding ) isn't excessively hard. it is a
simple solution and a lot of fun. i made my first closed spine book as a 17 year old and then2 more closed spine books
and then because i didn't have a bindery but a simple studio, i worked on japanese bound books after that and have made bunches.

there are online solutions to your auto publishing question ... some are better than others, and these solutions get more sophisticated + better every week it seems.
i hate to say blurp, but ... i have seen books published by them and they look fantastic. the first one i got was sam portera's book on hurricane katrina
and the last one was denise ross's book ... maybe i am clueless, but it is an online option that isn't excessivly difficult ( but / and you get what you pay for) _.

good luck !
john

 

[AgX]

Does actually someone still print photobooks by rotogravure?

I know about the overhead involved in this (and rotogravure today used in highest volume printing).

 

[Lachlan Young]

Does actually someone still print photobooks by rotogravure?

If there is, I'd like to know too - I suspect that the death of single colour sheetfed roto presses was one of the key deciding factors, coupled to the investment needed to go from chemically etched gravure cylinders to laser engraved ones.

 

[ericdan]

ericdan

did you want to make multiple copies of your work ( more than one book ) or one book ?
if you wanted to make one book, book making ( book binding ) isn't excessively hard. it is a
simple solution and a lot of fun. i made my first closed spine book as a 17 year old and then2 more closed spine books
and then because i didn't have a bindery but a simple studio, i worked on japanese bound books after that and have made bunches.

there are online solutions to your auto publishing question ... some are better than others, and these solutions get more sophisticated + better every week it seems.
i hate to say blurp, but ... i have seen books published by them and they look fantastic. the first one i got was sam portera's book on hurricane katrina
and the last one was denise ross's book ... maybe i am clueless, but it is an online option that isn't excessivly difficult ( but / and you get what you pay for) _.

good luck !
john

Thanks for your reply. I want to just make one book for each of my projects. One is B&W only the other one all C-41 color.
I like the look and feel of 'Invisible City'. I doubt my images will be as gritty as Ken's simply because I exposed most of them differently.

I've never tried book binding but would be very interested. I am just not sure where to start to get the output I am looking for with the options available. I did find some places near my house that do book binding workshops, but I assume i'd need to bring my printed pages with me.
I have fiber gelatin-silver prints and scans if needed. Would printing the scans onto inkjet matte paper be my best option then?

 

[OptiKen]

Love the GRAIN!

 

[removed account4]

hey ericdan

there are a few options ..
there might be someplace near you that does workshops &c
if you are near an artist center/ art school &c they might have a program.
there are a handful of books i can recommend
keith smith is a legend in my eyes, he has books on making books which are fantastic
http://www.keithsmithbooks.com
he is approachable too, i remember IDK 25 years ago i emailed him and he wrote back with info. nice guy !

another book on making books is "books boxes and portfolios"
it is a bare bones easy to read and understand kind of book
i consult it often when i am just trying to remember something easy i forgot...
https://www.amazon.com/Books-Boxes-Portfolios-Step-Step/dp/0830634835
i can't comment on the other books in the side bar top margin on japanese bookbinding but they look good too
( there are also websites and tutorials that you can find through google that give a hands on approach )
the classic bookbinding book i originally bought when i was working with a bookbinder ( getting book binding merit badge ! )
was lewis' bookbinding book ( it was published in the 50s )
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Bookbi...3340&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=bookbinding+lefwis
it focuses on closed spine book making ( like a traditional hard covered book.
while it is not too hard to make a closed spine book i have focused on open spine / japanese bound books
fewer tools, which tend to cost $$

i buy my supplies from either one of these 2 places
http://www.talasonline.com
http://www.gaylord.com
or someplace local that sells to the general public
( i am near boston and go to harcourt binder for book cloth ) and get wheat paste / rice paste, pva at a craft / art supply store...

oh, i almost forgot, sometimes art/ craft stores offer workshops.

regarding the prints, there are a few different ways you can do it

closed spin i fold pages over on the side tha will be stitched and sew each page as if it was its own "signature" to make the block of pages
open spine i have done the same thing.
i have also sewn pages of rag paper and had THEM as the book pages.
i trim the photographs and either tip ( glue top edge ) with wheat paste onto the page
or i cut diagonals and slide edges under, so the photographs can be removed ...

it all seems kind of like a lot of work, it really isn't much work at all, and it is a lot of fun with a 1 off

good luck !
john

 

[ericdan]

Love the GRAIN!

The grain is amazing in this book. It's coarser than what I get with Tri-X and Rodinal. Wonder what he used.

 

[Lachlan Young]

The grain is amazing in this book. It's coarser than what I get with Tri-X and Rodinal. Wonder what he used.

Ask and you shall find...

“Technically there weren’t very high ASA films. I used Tri-X and push processed it and that also gave the pictures a feel and a look. Because I was photographing in really dark areas, everything felt like it was about to fall apart - could I hold the camera that still for that long, could I push the film. I feel like I was working on the edges of possibility and I think my struggle with the technical is reflected in the pictures. That sense of things almost falling apart adds to the quality of the immediacy of the images too”. - it's about quarter of the way down the linked page.

Even now, TX can be made to be crisply grainy, especially if you end up printing on harder grades. Don't need any super fancy developer - D-76/ XTOL are fine. The Steidl pseudogravure repro process seems to exaggerate grain too - a number of the Koudelka images in the Gypsies book (same process as Schles' book) are far more obviously grainy than the (larger) original prints are in reality I recall.