The artifact of process.

For this exercise I would like all to assume that the content of the prints we are discussing are not in question, in other words, whatever the print is, the vision and execution are clear and true to the intent, so we can avoid the super lame "content is king" diversion.

That users of these process that will come to be mentioned are in firm control of the intent of their compositions needs to be taken for granted. I would like to ignore ridiculous assertions such as "platinum printers use platinum process because they think it makes their prints more valuable" That may be true in certain cases, however the expense of undertaking that process mitigates a lot of the "increased value" assertion, and that relationship is seldom mentioned.

My questions here concern the print as an artifact, and the relationship you as a printer have with both the process and the print.

I would be interested to know from actual users why they feel drawn to certain processes. What is it about the process or artifact of the process (print) that draws you to it?

Why is Sandy King currently making mostly carbon prints, as he has the expertise to print in any medium?

Why collodion? Large format contact prints on silver paper? Platinum? Gum over? Bromoil? etc.?

How do the results of your chosen process fit into your vision?

I suspect that a major factor in the decisions of which process to use is associated with its intrinsic novelty & individuality. I think this is why alt processes are now gaining so much traction in this age of perfect facsimile.

Consider the extreme case of a digital file, which is a 100%-replicable record and thus lacks the inherently proprietary / individual nature of a negative (I would argue). But through alt processes, folks find a way to generate individual output even from that... replete with wonderful "processing artifacts" that I think do greatly increase the value of the print. Even for traditional prints from negs or chromes, certain processes are more likely to create distinctly characteristic prints that intimately reflect the handcraft of the printer.

Not to make this sound only about sales, but I think the market value of a print is closely linked to its individuality and inversely proportional to the number of identical copies that can be produced.

That is my current thinking on process- it's all about creating prints that are individual and which reflect something about how I work and think.

Cyanotypes because I like blue. Bit simplistic, no?

I've come to like a lot of things about albumen printing.

It's a contact printing process, and I like the detail albumen can render from an original camera negative, as opposed to less glossy contact processes. But it's not quite as glossy as air dried glossy fiber silver gelatin paper, so it has it's own look.

It is a printing out process, so it is self-masking, making it great for landscapes with modern panchromatic films in a way that didn't matter for the orthochromatic plates that were the norm in the age of albumen printing.

The process of albumenizing paper, until it is sensitized, can be done with common ingredients that are non-toxic and can be handled in the same vessels that I use in the kitchen. I like to cook, so there's something satisfying about making albumen paper with egg whites, and being able to use the yolks for pastry, custard, ice cream, bernaise sauce and other things.

The print is a handmade thing that's best seen in person and is something that most people haven't seen, or aren't aware that they've seen. I usually have a small album of albumen prints in my camera bag that I'll show people who ask about my large format camera. Most people probably have seen an albumen print without being aware of it, so when I explain albumen printing to people, there is often a sense of recognition and of seeing something new at the same time.

Interesting questions are raised when the craft of the process becomes more important than the image content and message.

Ian

Ian Grant said:

Interesting questions are raised when the craft of the process becomes more important than the image content and message.

Ian

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Actually, I would assert that the discussion becomes mundane when persons assume that a discussion of process relegates subject , content , and intent to the trash heap. The first two paragraphs of the OP address this. Assuming the content and message are well crafted should be taken for granted. We can't convey content and message without a medium. There isn't much way to get by a crappy photograph printed in any medium, and I think everybody realizes that.

A chosen process coupled with the mastery of craft undertaken by a competent photographer has a direct effect on the of content and message of the image when it is rendered as a print. The same negative rendered as an inkjet, platinum, silver, or something else print will result in that many prints, each with its own characteristics, and although the nuances might be lost on some, those particular people have plenty of reality television to catch up on, if they aren't out for a night at the bar with their wife's sister.. I'm interested in knowing why people choose a particular process and how that process fits into their vision.

The process in some ways influences the kinds of subjects one shoots and the kind of lighting one looks for. Albumen + modern film can render some subjects that are hard to render in other ways. Some subjects look good in platinum or photogravure or carbon or cyanotype or some other medium. There is a constant feedback loop, so the process matters. The materiality of the artifact is part of the content.

OK, fair point Jason, you did address the issue I raised in a roundabout way, and I deliberately didn't go into further discussion, but the balance is fine.

Perhaps it's a shame that Jorge Gasteazoro is no longer a member of this forum, (he has also given up photography), because his work was an excellent example of matching craft and content with his superb Platinum prints.

Ian

I contact print on silver paper because of its simplicity. My favorite part of photographing is the seeing and the act. Developing film and making prints sometimes seems like a chore. I prefer the most simple method to satisfying prints, which for me is contacting on silver.

J, interesting question to pose.
As each of the respective response will be individually relative, Ill answer from exactly only there.
I've personally gone through alot of steps in my, albeit short, photographic history. I've settled on what I feel is most fitting for me. 12x20 shooting and platinum/palladium and gum bichromate over platinum/palladium contact printing. I think the main reason for this is a purely selfish one, its what feels right for me. I enjoy every single step of the process. I get personal satisfaction and an immense level of enjoyment out of every single step of the process:
from loading film into the holders
to hauling around the camera
to being limited to the small number of holders I have
to setting up the camera
to exposing film
to developing the big negs
to coating a sheet of paper
to exposing the coated paper
to processing the print
to spotting the print
to holding that finished print in my hands and experiencing it in it's final form
(add in the multiple steps of doing gum layers on top and the list grows longer)

Of all the processes I've experimented with, the ones I have settled on are the ones I feel most effectively and successfully express what it is that I see, not to mention they are understandable and tangible in my mind. Some may say complicated, but in all actuality, they possess a great sense of simplicity and a measurable and graspable sense of beauty. The steps and processes I explored previously always seemed to contain some or many step(s) that were less than enjoyable or that I even down right hated (silver printing and the steps that encompass it, are loathesome to go through, for me personally). I think that is the biggest and most prominent reason for choosing to do the processes that I do. They have given me a sense of balance in life. I have spent, and continue to spend, a large segment of my life behind a computer screen dealing with the 0s and 1s of everyday work and life, the photographic work I do is a balance. It seems to afford me the ability to balance on that razors edge of sanity and happiness.
Maybe it all boils down to the main reason being a completely and entirely selfish one.

But there is virtue in selfishness.*


*blatantly swiped from Ms. Rand.

Akki14 said:

Cyanotypes because I like blue. Bit simplistic, no?

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I agree.
Though silver isn't bad either.

When I made my decision to specialise, my platinum printing wasn't very good, but I felt the need to pare down the number of options I had in order to make progress. I’d already managed to make some nice prints and I’d bought some much nicer prints from other people; these left me feeling that it was worth trying to really explore platinum.

At about the same time (through serendipity rather than conscious decisions) I started my first serious nudes project. Even though many of these photos weren’t very good (like my printing!), I realised the two went well together and that helped me stay focused as I learned.

Since then my photographic aesthetic and my printing skills have developed side by side, feeding each other as they go. New and exciting photos make me want to make better prints, and learning how to make better prints has introduced new options for making new and exciting photos. I've got to a point where I just don’t feel any urge to print with other processes (so much so that I've stopped using roll film), and I’m drawn to subjects and compositions that I know will work with platinum.

As an aside, anyone who thinks that people take up platinum printing, and then sustain it for long enough to become good at it, solely because it’s glamorous or in the hope of selling expensive prints really should talk to my bank manager. He’ll happily explain that I’m insane and that the money I’ve spent on this would have been better invested in Enron shares.

Ian Leake said:

As an aside, anyone who thinks that people take up platinum printing, and then sustain it for long enough to become good at it, solely because it’s glamorous or in the hope of selling expensive prints really should talk to my bank manager. He’ll happily explain that I’m insane and that the money I’ve spent on this would have been better invested in Enron shares.

Click to expand...

The $1000 question !

Are your platinum prints actually any better than the best Silver Gelatin prints you could make off the same negatives ?

Ian

Ian Grant said:

Are your platinum prints actually any better than the best Silver Gelatin prints you could make off the same negatives ?

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To be honest, I don't know. Other than a few experiments using RC paper for proofing, I don't think I've made a silver print in 2 years. I'm happy and I can get exactly what I'm looking for with platinum so why would I want to waste my time finding out?

Afterthought: my platinum prints are physically very, very different from silver prints. They have texture; they have different weight, different tones, different contrast; they have lumps and bumps from paper flaws. In my opinion the question is like asking a watercolour painter whether they could get the same effect in acrylics - interesting from a technical perspective but pointless from an aesthetic perspective.

Ian Grant said:

The $1000 question !

Are your platinum prints actually any better than the best Silver Gelatin prints you could make off the same negatives ?

Ian

Click to expand...

That's an apples to basketballs comparison. You don't shoot for the one while thinking of the other, as the prints have very different tonalities. Silver gelatin paper has a different feel - the paper itself is very uniform in color and texture, whereas pt/pd is done on a wide variety of textures and colors. A matt silver gelatin print still doesn't look like a platinum print, and a sepia and selenium-toned warm base silver print on matt paper still won't look like a palladium print. Within the medium of pt/pd, you can have an infinite variety that still have a consistent underlying tonality and emotional response. You get something different from the silver gelatin print - not better, not worse, just different.

My favorite printing process was gum bichromate, perhaps because it took me days and a lot of brushing to make a single multi-layered print. Next was probably salted paper which also demanded a lot of handwork mixing and coating chemicals on the paper. I also used to do a lot of hand-colored silverprints, so the print textures and physical manipulation of the chemicals have always been important to me. I can get lost in oil painting for the same reasons.

Now, I'm doing wetplate collodion ambrotypes. I got hooked on it after watching a Sally Mann video where she held a glass plate up to the sky and poured collodion on it. Being raised Catholic, that kicked in a memory of the priest consecrating the sacrament during Mass. Talk about a hook! I get the same feeling now every time I reverently pour a plate.

I've also taken to developing the glass plates in my hand rather than using a tray. If you think watching a print come up in a tray in the darkroom is intriguing, imagine the magnitude of the feeling when the plate develops almost instantaneously in your own hand. It's like being an alchemist or magician.

And, once in awhile I find the wetplate artifacts like oysters or developer patterns serendipitous.

Joe

JBrunner said:

Assuming the content and message are well crafted should be taken for granted. We can't convey content and message without a medium. There isn't much way to get by a crappy photograph printed in any medium, and I think everybody realizes that.

Click to expand...

This is a good point and I am glad you made it. Form and content are always linked -- you can not have one without the other. I get sick of people who claim that the only thing that counts is the content, or the "picture". If anyone feels that way they might as well just look at images on the internet or on television as there would be no point at all in making prints.

Over the years I have printed in both silver and with a number of alternative processes, including carbon transfer, gum, salted paper, vandyke, kallitype, and pt./pd.

However, I don't photograph with any of these processes in mind. Rather, when making negatives I just look for things that are visually interesting, have historical or symbolic importance, or that simply offer interesting light play. If the thing I see is interesting to me I figure that I will be able to make a good print somehow.

I spend most of my time printing with carbon transfer because I am intrigued by the extraordinary surface texture and tactility of carbon prints, which have a relief effect that no other process can imitate. However, carbon is not always the ideal process for all of my negatives as it tends to work best with images that have a lot of important textural qualities and that depend primarily on shadow and mid-tone tonalities. For scenes that work best with long gradations in the highlight I will print with either kallitype (which I tone with platinum or palladium) or palladium. However, as a general rule I prefer the much higher Dmax, the sheen, and the much greater perception of detail in a carbon print than in a kallitype or palaldium print. Although I have done a lot of printing with LF and ULF in-camera negatives most of my work today is done with digital negatives, which gives me the flexibility to tailor the negative for the process that best suits the image.


Sandy King

I've taken up "poly-gravure" (I wish there were a simpler term for it, but I don't think you can usurp "photogravure" since the plastic version really is a less complex process) because I like to get my hands in it. It's that simple. There is a tactile sense that allows you to feel the work in a very real and direct way when you're rubbing ink on and off the plate. The mysteries of the process come into play as well and, since I love not really knowing what I'll get until I pull the print off the plate, I get a satisfaction that no other photographic process has given me yet. The extraordinary combination of chance effects, deep blacks and creamy paper give me a wonderful pay-off. The print is one of a kind and I love it when it works.

Ian Grant said:

The $1000 question !

Are your platinum prints actually any better than the best Silver Gelatin prints you could make off the same negatives ?

Ian

Click to expand...

I just printed some 8x10 negatives using what Sile calls "cyanowhite" the simple beaching and toning method I sort of arrived at on the shoulders of a lot of other people. I had formerly contact printed these on silver gelatin. The silver gelatin prints are really cool, and have a level of detail that cant be matched (by me, anyway) by another process. I'm really satisfied with them.

The toned cyanotypes by comparison, while very sharp, do not carry the incredible tonality nor the very fine detail of the silver contact prints. However the textured paper that I chose, the brown tone with subtle blues in the shadows that never get all the way black, and the feathery feel of the highlight and mid tone interplay give the prints a totally different feel, and nobody could confuse one for the other.

I really like them, but choosing between them is like choosing between two beloved children who have vastly different temperaments.

They are different, you love them both, and you can't really say that one is better than the other.

There are some I've shot with a particular process in mind, and others that just seem to cry out for a different treatment.

Much of the time I find that the variations available in "normal" silver gelatin prints is sufficient - like one negative which I won't print again until I can get more Bergger Silver Supreme paper, or another one which only ever looked right on my last four sheets of severely outdated Ilfospeed G3...

But these "artifacts" are not always obvious, so I will continue to experiment with just about everything.

Jason,

I learned the wet plate process to enhance the concept of my work, not to distract from it. In other words, it's sometimes difficult for me to hear all of the discussions about the craft but rarely (or never) anything about the concept (of the work). I appreciate your question.

Conversation about craft comes easy (traditionally speaking). It’s comfortable to ask about an exposure or a chemical - I know it is for me. It’s concrete and “knowable”. The concept is more perplexing and difficult; it’s the weighty, weird stuff. There are no “hard and fast rules”, no absolutes, so discourse can be very challenging. To ask about an “idea” or share a concept (feeling, emotion, etc.) is very abstract in this context. It’s intimidating too; you leave yourself vulnerable and seen as (potentially) weak. It’s saddens me to think about it.

I think your question is not only valid, but very relevant and a lot of artists/photographers should think about it (critically). The question “Why?” is a good one – I believe good art is supported with intention and surrounded by context. When was the last time you had a conversation about those things and not the process? (rhetorical)

Don’t misunderstand me; process is extremely valid (in fact that’s really my point). I believe it was Carol Diehl that said, "Great art is something where execution and idea merge so completely that we’re unaware of either and taken to a place beyond words." I’m the first to talk about the relevance of the material I’m using and the subject matter I’m photographing. I suppose it’s a question of integration and prioritization.

And finally, to answer your question directly: Why I use the wet plate collodion process. For me, the slowing down and interaction with my subject matter/sitter is important. I know it sounds trite and cliché now, but that’s played a huge role in making my work (especially the Madison Avenue portraits that I started in 2003). Also, handling the glass- the fragility and difficulty of it echoes our human existence. The imperfections on the plates/images echo our own imperfections – it’s really beautiful (oysters, scratches, tears, etc.).

The glass plays a very important role for me now as it pertains to the new project I’ve started working on about “Kristallnacht” (The Night of Broken Glass). And last, but not least, abandonment. The people and objects I photograph have been “abandoned” somehow, just like the process itself. I see these ideas, and many more, enhancing the work, not distracting from it – concept and craft, syntax and vocabulary – that kind of thing.

Photography is very social for me, I prefer the alt processes as I am not stuck in a stinky darkroom - people can visit at any given time and I guess there is always the fun of showing them that I am indeed making prints - platinum specifically as its is the first process I learned after cyanotype, for whatever reason it somehow came to me very easily ...

I've heard others at this site mention it and I agree, I think pt/pd (oxalate, NA2, zia etc..) is actually much easier than silver based enlargement processes

photogravure and gum bichromate - fascinating (the gravure especially) - but I think a bit fiddly

I'd love to get to grips with WPC but lack a teacher in this neck of the woods - again, a fascinating look, but also it means I would be no linger bound by the whims of society/economy which may decide that 'film is indeed dead' - something to think about considering the environment...

When it comes down to it alt processes are a great conversation starter - sometimes leaves me wondering if I would continue with photography if I was the last person left on earth.

It is interesting to me that there are very few posts here about "normal" silver gelatin prints, and no posts about colour, including colour transparency material.

Is that because those who are most likely to try alternative processes are those who are most intrigued by the processes themselves?

I'm just musing here, but I think that if there is any process that I'm most impressed by, it is the colour transparency.

Matt

Matt, I think we're just starting to get a real sense of silver gelatin's real "artifact of process." Film having been "normal" for so many years, it still takes a leap of analysis to get its specificity.

It's a question that is always on my mind when I am talking with people who consider that digital can reproduce anything that film can. On the one hand, yes, there is quite a lot about film that you can emulate digitally. But the problem is always: What can you REALLY distinguish?

Most people do not see much difference between a digital monochrome print and a silver one, and I can't blame them for it.

Contemporary artists justify their use of film on a conceptual basis: "By using colour film in a Rolleiflex to take pictures of vanishing urban areas, so-and-so is making a poignant statement on what history is leaving behind" (obsolete medium, obsolete subjects, blah blah blah). Cf. the "Analogue" project by Zoe Leonard, an otherwise very interesting sequence.

But to me the real reason to stick to film is not conceptual, it's pictorial. Yes, it's a clever conceit to link subject and process, but if it's only conceptual, there is no reason to prefer one film over the other--as long as it's film.

As film users we want a diversity of products, and I hope it's because we can create a diversity of pictorial results.

MattKing said:

It is interesting to me that there are very few posts here about "normal" silver gelatin prints, and no posts about colour, including colour transparency material.

Is that because those who are most likely to try alternative processes are those who are most intrigued by the processes themselves?

I'm just musing here, but I think that if there is any process that I'm most impressed by, it is the colour transparency.

Matt

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Matt- I think that's because the color processes, especially the modern ones, are really highly mechanized and automated. Because we naturally see in color, people are rather reluctant to break away from "natural" color by deviating from prescribed process constraints - far more people would accept the argument that an underexposed, sloppily processed color film is " bad ", especially when viewing the finished print. With black-and-white, because it is an abstraction from life, we allow more interpretation. With "alternative" processes, the whole point is deviation from perceived reality practically.