I hope I have posted in the correct forum. I was wondering if anyone has ever seen a stat on how many schools, colleges, universities teach alternative processes. By this I mean everything other than traditional darkroom.
Best,
Doug Schwab
My school, Alfred University in Western NY state, has a class exclusively dedicated to alternative process. Students learn Cyanotype, VDB, Pt/Pd, Kallitype, Gum-Bichromate, as well as the use of liquid emulsions like Liquid Light and Black Magic. Most students choose to use a digital original, or scan 35mm/medium format film and then output a larger neg from our Agfa Imagesetter, but a select few (myself included, when I took the class last year) do contact their own 4x5 negs.
I'm graduating from the BFA program there in 2 weeks, with my BFA exhibit 6 days from now! I'm about to head to the darkrooms to keep working on
30x30" b/w prints...
While I think that emulsion making is a highly laudable practice that can give one a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the photographic process, I do not think NOT teaching emulsion making merely mix and stir. First, I feel what goes on prior to and during the moment of initial exposure is paramount. Some of the world's best photographers never even contemplated making emulsions. Those who did their own printing learned to work with the commercially available products and created well crafted prints of excellent photographs. I have known highly skilled photographic technicians whose picturing taking results left much to be desired. I worked with an optical engineer who designed systems for SAC, but whose pictures were boring and sterile.Yes,without emulsion making what is a course in photography. It is just mix and stir!
Send them to a workshop at George Eastman House.
PE
While I think that emulsion making is a highly laudable practice that can give one a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the photographic process, I do not think NOT teaching emulsion making merely mix and stir. First, I feel what goes on prior to and during the moment of initial exposure is paramount. Some of the world's best photographers never even contemplated making emulsions. Those who did their own printing learned to work with the commercially available products and created well crafted prints of excellent photographs. I have known highly skilled photographic technicians whose picturing taking results left much to be desired. I worked with an optical engineer who designed systems for SAC, but whose pictures were boring and sterile.
I find that in any given class there may be a student or two who express interest in the chemistry of analogue photography. Those students are few and far between. Yet many students are producing good work, and small number are turning out wonderful photographs with a very limited understanding how it all works. (Despite my best efforts to stir their curiosity and present at least some theory.) Introducing students to a process such as palladium printing, even if it comes in kit form is an excellent way to spark that curiosity and give them the experience of creating a printing paper with a unique visual quality just by wusing a few simple chemicals. IMHO.
Doug
IMHO, you are right and wrong at the same time.
Photography, as it exists now, is silver gelatin. The Pt/Pd and other methods are trivial compared to silver gelatin and it is vanishing. It is possible to mix and stir and get a good Cyanotype or Pt/Pd, but to get a good Ag/gelatin is a vanishing art. None of the above address this. You see, your answer falls far short of understanding silver gelatin itself.
PE
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