Thomas Demand ... c-print, dye transfer, extreme technique

[jtk]

THOMAS DEMAND Dailies | Matthew Marks Gallery

Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Thomas Demand: Dailies , the next exhibition in his gallery at 526 West 22nd Street. The artist’s second one-person exhibition at the gallery will feature a new series of eighteen dye-transfer photographs. In contrast to his usual practice of depicting...

matthewmarks.com

 

[jtk]

see also Matthew Marks gallery's installation video for end result of Thomas Demand's extended process

 

[jtk]

33X33.5"

I don't find any info about source of dye transfer supplies but there once was a lab in Mexico

 

[jtk]

Answers to many questions:

Interview with Thomas Demand: Demannd’s Way — Musée Magazine

Andrea Blanch: How do you go about producing your work. Do you do it by yourself or do you have assistants? Who makes the actual models? Thomas Demand: Predominantly I do them by myself. When I get assistance it is for making the walls because you need three or four hands for this. When we did The

museemagazine.com

 

[fgorga]

Lets be clear here... the first website cited above refers to an exhibition that ended in January 2014 (i.e. more than eight and a half years ago), thus the term "new" in that introduction cannot be taken literally.

Furthermore all of the photos in that exhibition are dated at least several years prior to the exhibition. Whether those dates refer to the exposures or the prints is unknown.

As for dye transfer materials, production ceased in the 1990s. Some dye transfer printers (notably Ctein) stockpiled materials which lasted them for sometime. However, I doubt that any of these materials remain. Ctein stopped making dye transfer prints roughly seven or eight years ago when his cache of materials ran out. As far as I know he was the last dye transfer printer. (For more info on this see: https://ctein.com/dyetrans.htm).

Thus, currently (i.e. in 2022) there is no such thing as a 'new' dye transfer print.

If you have never seen a dye transfer print in person, it is worth seeking some out. They are special, in a good way!

As for the prints in this exhibition, the word "banal" pops to mine. Not my taste but I am sure that there are others who like them. To each his/her own as they say.

Regards,

--- Frank

 

[gordrob]

Dye Transfer is not dead yet and I bet there is more than four individuals with materials to make dye transfer prints - whether commercially or for their own enjoyment.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I think it was Guy Stricherz who did the prints for Demand.

Saw the prints in late 2015 here.

And finally, some commentary from Paul Graham on why artists like Demand are easily explicable (and thus salable) to contemporary arts audiences:

"The broader art world has no problems with the work of Jeff Wall, or Cindy Sherman or Thomas Demand partly because the creative process in the work is clear and plain to see, and it can be easily articulated what the artist did: Thomas Demand constructs his elaborate sculptural creations over many weeks before photographing them; Cindy Sherman develops, acts and performs in her self-portraits. In each case the handiwork of the artist is readily apparent: something was synthesized, staged, constructed or performed. The dealer can explain this to the client, the curator to the public, the art writer to their readers, etc. The problem is that whilst you can discuss what Jeff Wall did in an elaborately staged street tableaux, how do you explain what Garry Winogrand did on a real New York street when he ‘just’ took the picture? Or for that matter what Stephen Shore created with his deadpan image of a crossroads in El Paso? Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity knows they did something there, and something utterly remarkable at that, but... what? How do we articulate this uniquely photographic creative act, and express what it amounts to in terms such that the art world, highly attuned to synthetic creation -the making of something by the artist- can appreciate serious photography that engages with the world as it is?

Now, please do not get me wrong, I admire the work of Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall and Thomas Demand - I have zero problems with it, and it is emphatically not an either/or situation. Nor should you misunderstand in the other direction: I am not arguing for some return to photographic fundamentalism of reportage Leica 35mm black & white work or whatever - far from it, for we are clearly in a 'Post Documentary' photographic world now. Both of these disclaimers not withstanding, I have to say that the position of ‘straight’ photography in the art world reminds me of the parable of an isolated community who grew up eating potatoes all their life, and when presented with an apple, though it unreasonable and useless, because it didn’t taste like a potato."

 

[jtk]

Paul Graham Archive

Thomas Demand “Daily Show” at The Common Guild, Glasgow — Mousse Magazine and Publishing

“Daily Show” is a solo exhibition by German artist Thomas Demand that includes new and recent works from his series “The Dailies” in an installation devised

www.moussemagazine.it

 

[jtk]

DARK SIDE BREW CREW

Covering the New Mexico craft beer scene

nmdarksidebrewcrew.com

 

[halfaman]

Bettina Haneke still makes dye-transfer prints with an hybrid techinique, relief matrices produced digitally most likely.

Bettina Haneke – Dye Transfer Atelier

Atelier für Dye Transfer

bettinahaneke.com

I wrote her some time ago in order to know a price quotation getting no asnwer, so looks like she is not widely available for any kind of work.

 

[jtk]

Juan Carlos.... she's apparently worked for very-big-money customers so maybe it's unlikely that she'll bother to respond to emails asking for prices. Just my thinking.

As well, given the big-money customers she mentioned on her site, it's likely that she can make more money the way they do, rather than as a darkroom craftsperson. She's evidently very well connected.

 

[jtk]

"If you have never seen a dye transfer print in person, it is worth seeking some out. They are special, in a good way!"

Frank, I almost agree...but I do think many of us have seen dye transfer prints in person but may not have been stunned aesthetically...

As well, very few have ever seen good conventional C-prints from their own photographs if they're not working directly with good craftsmen in good photolabs.

Photographers' personal standards for C-prints have slipped quite a lot, despite the fact that the materials and technology have both improved tremendously over the last decade.

For example, digital prints on Kodak's C-print papers can be astounding. That's probably the main reason Kodak isn't bothering to produce dye-transfer materials.