tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30581803784379955772024-02-19T23:28:46.467-05:00nonfigurativephotoThis blog is devoted to non-objective photography, especially photography created solely with light and chemicals, the camera being entirely optional. We will discuss, analyze, teach and promote this work.dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.comBlogger120125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-81710737611343616452019-11-25T08:02:00.000-05:002019-11-25T08:02:36.317-05:00Mike Jackson: the secret lives of light<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2om2co1RS0hTVdg6pLXxdjr66MGEOlnR4P9Xc3V60L6JOkHpxtEn5s8OExK8qgETcdvSJbgwISiybj-E0GHKKA1F-6CPLb1HGDyWdvxot-himADymelMEPqmASAWUe_JXFk66ZMaMkMfw/s1600/Jackson+1-webready.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="252" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2om2co1RS0hTVdg6pLXxdjr66MGEOlnR4P9Xc3V60L6JOkHpxtEn5s8OExK8qgETcdvSJbgwISiybj-E0GHKKA1F-6CPLb1HGDyWdvxot-himADymelMEPqmASAWUe_JXFk66ZMaMkMfw/s400/Jackson+1-webready.jpg" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Mike Jackson</b>, <i>yellow study #2</i>, 2019</td></tr>
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Some call it painting with light, others call it making luminograms, and still others don't bother with a proper name for it, they just go into the darkroom and fool around until somehow, against all odds, they manage to do it. It's not easy. We've tried before to describe how Mike Jackson proceeds, first <a href="https://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2015/09/luminograms-from-wales.html">in 2015</a> and <a href="https://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2016/09/">again in 2016</a>, but according mail from readers we've come up short. It's just too difficult to describe unless you have a darkroom, good lightbulbs, proper chemistry, tons of photo paper that you can run tests on and waste, lots of time, and a vigorous imagination - which in this digital era limits prospective students to quite a small number. For a start, if you want to try it yourself, I would think of employing scrims, gobos, fans, and hand-waving, but this is not an authorized recommendation: the thoughtful man who is redefining luminograms for the modern age has remained mum. This leaves him pretty much the whole terrain, so let's see how he's progressing.<br />
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The <a href="http://foleygallery.com/">Foley Gallery</a> on Orchard Street in New York has just wrapped up a show of 15 of his recent pictures. We'll share a few and then comment.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1PlmlqIyuXmJnzL5e_87S6rtFbqsDR9ANd2EyzF8PLqBz-6CdTIFZSqRZqEmTn8erTjIPTMpDySifgS7-n-GDscfHyFeLH7n98zLTlFCBcVdDb5UHqNJ2H7p3tPXNpPPbaYxH7Vxmqcmm/s1600/Jackson+2-webready.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="305" data-original-width="253" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1PlmlqIyuXmJnzL5e_87S6rtFbqsDR9ANd2EyzF8PLqBz-6CdTIFZSqRZqEmTn8erTjIPTMpDySifgS7-n-GDscfHyFeLH7n98zLTlFCBcVdDb5UHqNJ2H7p3tPXNpPPbaYxH7Vxmqcmm/s400/Jackson+2-webready.jpg" width="330" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Mike Jackson</b>, <i>yellow study</i>, 2019</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfKL91clSzN7Y6-C7Heo5WW01H0ZK08B_aBCctWJ4vkaqwKwNlwoAYFvFPbcFOT_POT30toL0tv77za6SsISAFFU-GHQcESgg9xyicv_IC1k-R9uSzO9y34MzfhaYeTb2HCKG7hSq6SC8k/s1600/Jackson+3-webready+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="252" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfKL91clSzN7Y6-C7Heo5WW01H0ZK08B_aBCctWJ4vkaqwKwNlwoAYFvFPbcFOT_POT30toL0tv77za6SsISAFFU-GHQcESgg9xyicv_IC1k-R9uSzO9y34MzfhaYeTb2HCKG7hSq6SC8k/s400/Jackson+3-webready+copy.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 12.8px;">Mike Jackson</b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, <i>Birdsong</i>, <i>Summer 2018</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, 2018</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj-jOJ_3YBZrVsKDLl_XfrnzVNNDqFwOlFAEjLexk9tEJoT6BkuD-qLRpA8jqh0lrk4YGUS-k6MTpAkHVZAc2ZCpeuxzjXM0LEdUkUEjevtBeVSojsZU6QaiqDH-n6WK2I4MzF547AiYF6/s1600/Jackson+4-webready.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="295" data-original-width="252" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj-jOJ_3YBZrVsKDLl_XfrnzVNNDqFwOlFAEjLexk9tEJoT6BkuD-qLRpA8jqh0lrk4YGUS-k6MTpAkHVZAc2ZCpeuxzjXM0LEdUkUEjevtBeVSojsZU6QaiqDH-n6WK2I4MzF547AiYF6/s400/Jackson+4-webready.jpg" width="341" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 12.8px;">Mike Jackson</b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, <i>Birdsong, Winter #6</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, 2019</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhGmYdudonVEMU5BjoJDCOWFmeoCWiZqdZBbckKA6ZpLGYjCOnN9aWqqfJTpOKVMXtpxc1ee6DaLmp70p2KauUzrb6BuPZTLKZxnsfHo0Ddu6wFQk5f03cf2Z-b1c-XF5ID-u3WIEGWaku/s1600/Jackson+5-webready+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="252" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhGmYdudonVEMU5BjoJDCOWFmeoCWiZqdZBbckKA6ZpLGYjCOnN9aWqqfJTpOKVMXtpxc1ee6DaLmp70p2KauUzrb6BuPZTLKZxnsfHo0Ddu6wFQk5f03cf2Z-b1c-XF5ID-u3WIEGWaku/s400/Jackson+5-webready+copy.jpg" width="342" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 12.8px;">Mike Jackson</b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, <i>Birdsong, Summer #20</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">, 2019</span></td></tr>
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Comparing these with the earlier pictures, we immediately note a heaping on of detail, a fecund proliferation of dark and light planes to imply a sense of motion where formerly the surfaces were more unitary and static, and the introduction of delicate white vectors seeking to tie everything together. The work as a result has become more restless, as if it wanted very badly to tell us something about what it's experiencing, which must be a great deal, but of course it can't. Light bounces, refracts, gets absorbed, leaks out, carves shadows, it's active. That's how it speaks. There's no sense of where it's coming from. The tension is palpable.<br />
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From this he produces accidental homages, adding to the richness: the density of pictorial constructs at the center of each image is so supercharged that it becomes nearly gear-like, recalling Italian Futurism, or, to bring it back home, the blurry operation of an early kitchen blender. <br />
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Mike has moved from the Wales of an earlier post to the "deeply historic landscape" (his words) of Wiltshire, England, where contact with the outside world from his darkroom is often limited to the sound of birds chirping, thus his titles. The prehistoric megaliths of Stonehenge loom nearby as does Lacock Abbey, the 13th century monastery where Fox Talbot in 1835 produced the first photographic negative; this immersion in great moments of human awe and discovery cannot go unnoticed or unfelt by the artist.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ1dQWbBeAAq-dyuRN7CZIo0hO2Y2Gs7p4X3tiC7l-QYcobnpU2gwFhb8oPQG8-FVs9YqGQgjKdSSav_GqNbecZOYFOv9Qgik0AzQUu6nV0fbW-MyL-aTLVJsXc1THpTxCTk3Ayzkp7VHI/s1600/Lacock+Abbey%252C+cloisters-webreadytif.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="189" data-original-width="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ1dQWbBeAAq-dyuRN7CZIo0hO2Y2Gs7p4X3tiC7l-QYcobnpU2gwFhb8oPQG8-FVs9YqGQgjKdSSav_GqNbecZOYFOv9Qgik0AzQUu6nV0fbW-MyL-aTLVJsXc1THpTxCTk3Ayzkp7VHI/s1600/Lacock+Abbey%252C+cloisters-webreadytif.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lacock Abbey, cloisters</td></tr>
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Wiltshire's wonders don't stop with Jackson, Fox Talbot or Stonehenge, either. It's also where almost all the Harry Potter movies were made. <br />
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There must be a strange magic in the air. Jackson's lineage is most distinguished, and it's starting to show.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-52597018924733411092019-11-08T07:41:00.000-05:002019-11-08T07:41:51.160-05:00A virtual ramble through Paris Photo 2019<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtQk4sPdj_SLobgTALMkXdXug71YkDN4EHvxyBTonqIxsxQM5yU95HvHxCac5jXVj0lRhnMK9SLmK1CELBpzWyoA1EHnd0Mcm0B9IAaOPU_Mdein71BspABanEixgkHT5viSt9KqbB97ve/s1600/John+Chamberlain+1989.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="215" data-original-width="288" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtQk4sPdj_SLobgTALMkXdXug71YkDN4EHvxyBTonqIxsxQM5yU95HvHxCac5jXVj0lRhnMK9SLmK1CELBpzWyoA1EHnd0Mcm0B9IAaOPU_Mdein71BspABanEixgkHT5viSt9KqbB97ve/s400/John+Chamberlain+1989.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>John Chamberlain</b>, <i>Downtown</i>, chromogenic print, 1989</td></tr>
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I will not fool you, dear readers, into thinking I was there while in truth I'm just sitting in a room in New York and the fair opened last night without me (it runs November 7 - 10). I can only wish. The beauty of art fairs nowadays of course is you don't really have to go, you can just scroll through the images on your computer. I've taken advantage of that and I'll share with you the half dozen or so that caught my eye out of perhaps a thousand on display, a ratio of significance. For the grand majority of photographic works at such fairs will not usually have much to interest us, the non-figurative community, devoted as these fairs are to familiar camera-based tropes of haunted landscapes, glum nudes, shopworn surrealism, subjects of prurient social interest, documentation of marginal lives, typologies, and so on. You will look in vain for work that accepts the photographic emulsion itself as the site of the artistic act. Probably because it's so hard to comprehend, there is little attempt to create something out of nothing, of finding the resonant forms that only the most immediate and obdurate materials can provide. No chemigram, no bleach-etch, no cliché-verre, no cyanotype has found its way into the Grand Palais this year as near as I can tell - though to be fair, and I am fair, a scant few photograms were sighted, and perhaps certain works of a hybrid or invented nature, but not many.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOokkNvYFEju_giv3VefBFfC3-vVGUewSSDlhbMhaHf6EjvDE3RrIL7P2zHVyseIL3rs1VQtvClm4FCGhrNXbXr9WYBpbTZ8h6IVRE3-sdL8E1evZgRsC6rBjrdpcOHgLUt9k5TBaVi9zb/s1600/Grand+Palais.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="176" data-original-width="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOokkNvYFEju_giv3VefBFfC3-vVGUewSSDlhbMhaHf6EjvDE3RrIL7P2zHVyseIL3rs1VQtvClm4FCGhrNXbXr9WYBpbTZ8h6IVRE3-sdL8E1evZgRsC6rBjrdpcOHgLUt9k5TBaVi9zb/s1600/Grand+Palais.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grand Palais, home of Paris Photo</td></tr>
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So, we take it for what it is and overlook what it is not. Let us be open to surprise. I begin with the item I like best, the C-print above by the late John Chamberlain, the artist best known, even exclusively known, for making sculptures out of twisted, wrecked, flattened automobiles. Many of us don't realize he branched out toward the end of his career into painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, even into furniture design, bringing with him the jarring rhythms of his earlier metal-based work. To my mind these subsets of his oeuvre have not earned the respect they deserve. I encourage you to have another look at them. Galerie Karsten Greve is showing him in Paris.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguQlQkbLvfWxLyG8FHskbtipqDt2xXloNfkNGpvp-Tfa2TDwpfzV3THFGIbugBIBFkWM_PCwy3THKHb5big5Z6qVoHVdbOs81OlIp8XsKH-35elRxQYTyqfxXO9URwlTNYsPejZH46F2EA/s1600/Klea+McKenna+2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="252" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguQlQkbLvfWxLyG8FHskbtipqDt2xXloNfkNGpvp-Tfa2TDwpfzV3THFGIbugBIBFkWM_PCwy3THKHb5big5Z6qVoHVdbOs81OlIp8XsKH-35elRxQYTyqfxXO9URwlTNYsPejZH46F2EA/s320/Klea+McKenna+2017.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Klea McKenna</b>, photographic rubbing, photogram on silver gelatin fiber paper, 2017</td></tr>
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Klea McKenna has modified the photogram process to accommodate her fascination with the tactility of surfaces, especially where the surfaces have been part of a living organism or constitute the record of a life. I love how she goes out at night, performs a rubbing in relief of, say, a cut tree, onto photographic paper, then shines the raking light of a flashlight over it and develops it. She has worked with rocks, spider webs, women's garments from various cultures, rain, and other materials, both the hard and the diaphanous. What facilitates this is her great insight, so elemental yet so decisive, that photo paper can receive and impart information simply by being physically pressed and shaped by the artist. She's having shows this fall simultaneously at the Gitterman Gallery (New York) and the Von Lintel (Los Angeles).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyi23Gi0VwZol1kHOM9Mn_hbMe3guKxPruNlFuL25LFaVsAjv2PLHAnsNW01EdE_7fd5khA8zwVfQEDF2JtGIjQvSfb0S9cWoVUqfM5fJa4hNcG1ND-Y-E3Y3v8rm107oiRbZgg1tVop_L/s1600/Moholgy-Nagy%252C+Fotogramm+III.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="295" data-original-width="252" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyi23Gi0VwZol1kHOM9Mn_hbMe3guKxPruNlFuL25LFaVsAjv2PLHAnsNW01EdE_7fd5khA8zwVfQEDF2JtGIjQvSfb0S9cWoVUqfM5fJa4hNcG1ND-Y-E3Y3v8rm107oiRbZgg1tVop_L/s320/Moholgy-Nagy%252C+Fotogramm+III.jpg" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>László Moholy-Nagy</b>, <i>Fotogramm III</i>, 1925</td></tr>
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The Kicken Gallery of Berlin has provided us with a photogram by László Moholy-Nagy which I had not seen before, from 1925. Anything by this great theoretician of the Bauhaus, who as much as anyone developed the ideas underpinning what we know as modern style, is worth looking at, and this is no exception. Does anyone know what that object is, hovering over the black expanse below it? Send us a comment.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Noboru Ueki</b>, title unknown, hand-colored silver gelatin, date uncertain</td></tr>
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An early experimentalist working around Kyoto during the 1940s and 1950s, Ueki was considered important but we have had difficulty finding much else about him except that he liked to hand-color his photographs, and clearly he was quite good at it. The Mem Gallery of Tokyo included Ueki, who died in 1992, in an historical show last month of members of the Kyoto Photographic Society.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Jérémie Lenoir</b>, <i>Stockage, Saint-Cyr-en-Val</i>, print on dibond, 2013</td></tr>
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Jérémie Lenoir is interested in environmental processes and the ways in which society impacts those processes. He spent several years photographing around the Great Salt Lake in Utah, with emphasis on the mineralization of the shores. The picture above is apparently a reservoir, near Orléans in central France. If it looks familiar it's probably because bears an uncanny resemblance to work by the sculptor Lee Bontecou, although the scales are altogether dissimilar. He is represented by the Galerie Guillaume in Paris.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Edward Burtynsky</b>, <i>Tsaus Mountains #1, Sperrgebiet, Namibia</i>, pigment print, 2018</td></tr>
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The Burtynsky is the final one I'll offer you in this potpourri - for the life of me I can't find any others in the entire Grand Palais worth adding to the list. But a Burtynsky is always prodigious and riveting, and I could never exclude it. For me, his work extends beyond photography; it feels like we're consorting with the gods. We last wrote about him in 2016 <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/search/label/Edward%20Burtynsky">here</a>. Our words then ring true now. He's currently at Nicholas Metivier in Toronto.<br />
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So there you have it, the 2019 edition of Paris Photo. Six pictures.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-17778015654167713922019-03-11T13:07:00.000-04:002019-03-12T00:23:24.068-04:00Cordier & Falk: the 'L'en-allée' pictures from 2012<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 13/5/12 V, 15,5 x 10,5 cm</i>, 2012</td></tr>
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In the year 2011, having completed his treatise on chemigrams, Pierre Cordier emerged from semi-retirement in the south of France with renewed vigor and found a colleague, Gundi Falk, a Brussels-based painter, to help him advance the chemigram initiative further. Together they embarked on a significant series of pictures entitled <i>Pair-Impair</i>, or Even-Odd, which they completed in phases between 2011 and 2013. In many ways these pictures embody the best of the Cordier style: calipered grids overrun by a shower of classic chemigramic embroidery, an improvised balance of lights and darks in the key squares, and the many remaining squares processed out to a mackie line of absolute zero. There are descriptions throughout this blog on how to do this but be advised, it's far from easy. Here's an early version:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4-nUV2Eg0H4ktJXSLprS68xnUhD5oaneBbT9ZcDRo4EHDTGehk9RkqC5HugAogasfOJqR58GyX7y0VyKWzLC0r7aXqM2AgD8udR4F3IRsYF74bkKd_kOJ1llqpkkr7lurbq4kg9hYAIRj/s1600/CH17_9_11pair-impairXX_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="282" data-original-width="288" height="391" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4-nUV2Eg0H4ktJXSLprS68xnUhD5oaneBbT9ZcDRo4EHDTGehk9RkqC5HugAogasfOJqR58GyX7y0VyKWzLC0r7aXqM2AgD8udR4F3IRsYF74bkKd_kOJ1llqpkkr7lurbq4kg9hYAIRj/s400/CH17_9_11pair-impairXX_web.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 17/9/11 Pair-Impair</i>, 2011</td></tr>
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And a later one:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 23.5.13, Pair-Impair</i>, 2013</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Meanwhile, the Brussels editor and gallerist Jean Marchetti approached Pierre and asked him if he could illustrate a delicate, bristly, highly charged, nearly unfathomable text entitled <i>L'en-allée</i> by the French poet Yaël Cange. It was understood now that they were a team, Pierre and Gundi, and they accepted - yet without having the vaguest idea how challenging the poems of this writer, whom neither had heard of, were to be. In the early months of 2012 they settled on a strategy of thinking about key words in both the poems and in the poet's life as a way to steer their work. Gundi took the lead in coming up with sketches and mock-ups, which together they would criticize, modify, redo, and develop further around the table in Pierre's studio. They put the <i>Pair-Impair</i> project for the while on quasi-hold.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-beQIcPOr5ZvlX1QMU8vbGhi9zUbK3ZzDQEmOOthEG8FjMGrLO0-ewRPOdYVybSmZzP4sen9Xqwbfp09orQvCvNKYm2PuVYpGENPI6jXrrTSgsBfAMeZKNOjAYxPLFygRmUIx6_aC_rJf/s1600/%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" data-original-height="455" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-beQIcPOr5ZvlX1QMU8vbGhi9zUbK3ZzDQEmOOthEG8FjMGrLO0-ewRPOdYVybSmZzP4sen9Xqwbfp09orQvCvNKYm2PuVYpGENPI6jXrrTSgsBfAMeZKNOjAYxPLFygRmUIx6_aC_rJf/s400/%25232.jpg" width="252" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 14/3/12 (detail), 10,5 x 17 cm, </i>2012</span></td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The title, <i>L'en-allée</i>, a seldom-used expression, is nowadays shrouded in high-poetic fog from the 19th century, perhaps from Valéry, and conveys the sense of 'setting out' or 'leaving for', of seeking what was once there but no longer is, yet it also contains the idea of just 'going away' or decamping, wandering, perhaps to unknown or undisclosed destinations, with many stages and hesitations. It speaks of memory and loss, and the possibility of redemption at the end of a trajectory that may be as long as a lifetime, or of the despair of not attaining it at all. In more recent literature it has been associated with the curt, aphoristic writing of the novelist Marguerite Duras. </span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0);">So when Cordier & Falk began producing material for the book, it was apparent their images would resemble 'normal' chemigram images such as seen in work across many artistic practices today, only slightly. Nor would they be expected to, given their radical assignment. </span>We are in an oneiric world here. In grappling with the tortured verses of Yaël Cange, the artists had to invent their own symbolic language of response and stake out their own territory, which may have represented also a sort of pushback, gently done, leavened at times with sly humor. We find fragments of eyes, floating gamely, of ears and lips, of railway tracks leading blindly nowhere, of stars with the softness of a child's dream, diagrams of past and future, mandalas, blips suspended in space, erasures.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEjubNUgz5yEPjICjF5nehDnU_u66l_IiXD06Bc4TVlsS7cXEwtIQVwux4uAIlDazRyBFHnNwdq_8HesWMgWehclDIJr7ZtA20iIpYZxcQU7RMFWiw2j3CXqzKnx9f66Zc46ABfvzF-cmn/s1600/%25233.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEjubNUgz5yEPjICjF5nehDnU_u66l_IiXD06Bc4TVlsS7cXEwtIQVwux4uAIlDazRyBFHnNwdq_8HesWMgWehclDIJr7ZtA20iIpYZxcQU7RMFWiw2j3CXqzKnx9f66Zc46ABfvzF-cmn/s400/%25233.jpg" width="271" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk,</b> <i>Chimigramme 22/5/12 II, 15,5 x 10,5 cm</i>, 2012</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0);">For all that, the making of the marks on paper obeys what we expect of the chemigram procedure, following the rules of the trade: a puncture is begun somewhere, a cut, an abrasion, and it grows in time and space as the paper gets alternately bathed in fixer and developer. The artists watch, terminating the action when they deem the moment right. Nothing could be more straightforward. Still, it is remarkable that Cordier and Falk have found a way to strip away years of refinement in chemigrams to arrive at an almost infantile level of attack, especially in the midst of creating their sophisticated suite <i>Pair-Impair. </i>In so doing, they have managed the unexpected feat of matching poetry with poetry. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0);">We hear that Madame Cange was well satisfied with the work.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFC_GOk-Hz0gs5YKvVzw192XZgIOiCwMVKJMpB1dAP3tfTSG0_4kIf_irYxycX478VJlQEflSLJJbkkMqhF3O5mkIlKdLYisDDfdQGfwW1PzvIG-yAB31heZqYAwk0BpvsCRxYTpIYnbxb/s1600/%25236.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFC_GOk-Hz0gs5YKvVzw192XZgIOiCwMVKJMpB1dAP3tfTSG0_4kIf_irYxycX478VJlQEflSLJJbkkMqhF3O5mkIlKdLYisDDfdQGfwW1PzvIG-yAB31heZqYAwk0BpvsCRxYTpIYnbxb/s400/%25236.jpg" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 13/5/12 VI, 15,5 x 10,5 cm</i>, 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 22/4/12 IV, 15,5 x 10,5 cm,</i> 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 14/3/12 (detail), 10,5 x 17cm,</i> 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 25/3/12 I (detail), 15,5 x 10,5 cm</i>, 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 13/5/12 IV, 10 x 10 cm</i>, 2012</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The book was printed at the end of May 2012, just days after the last chemigram left the water wash, in an edition of 600 copies on fine rag paper. It is still available from the publisher, La Pierre d'Alun, Brussels, and elsewhere on the internet. Definitely an item you may want to collect. </span></span></div>
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-62152416708949600162019-01-27T23:16:00.000-05:002019-01-28T03:32:46.106-05:00Edgar Hartley's ceremonies of chemigram magic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Hartley</b>, <i>The Warding,</i> on Adorama FB, 2018</td></tr>
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If you see a very tall gentleman striding down West 40th Street in Manhattan whispering mantras to himself in an Asiatic language, possibly a dead one, it's most certainly Edgar Hartley, known also as Upasaka Bodhisattva, absently preparing himself for a day's work in the darkroom. When I first knew him this was not on the program: he was mainly concerned then with the devising of warding sigils, amulets and protective seals for the summoning and healing of spirits - a specialized occupation to be sure - but in recent years he has transitioned smoothly into printmaking and cameraless photography. Are the two related, wards and prints? In his hands they most certainly are. In fact you probably can't truly appreciate the accomplishment of his new show, <i>Grinding Iron Rods Into Needles</i>, at Manhattan Graphics, February 1 to February 28, without seeing how they inform and interpenetrate one another. I'll let you explore those connections on your own since I admit my scant knowledge of the magick arts, yes that's a 'k', my loss to be certain. Come to the opening reception Saturday, February 16 to meet the artist and discuss your sigils with the Bodhisattva himself.<br />
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For those unfamiliar with Tang dynasty chengyu, or idioms, it's helpful for starters to shed light on the show's title. The story goes that one day in the 9th century young Li Bai encountered an old woman by a stream. She was beating an iron rod between two stones. What are you doing, Li Bai asked. I'm beating this iron rod into a needle. Let me try, he said, and he tried for a minute or two and gave up, saying this is crazy. No it's not, the woman said. If you keep doing it again and again, you will eventually have a needle, it's all about perseverance. Li Bai left her and thought about this, and later would become the greatest poet in the history of China.<br />
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So much for background. Let's turn to the work and see what we can learn from it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-SctdU3hZy4i4JtaOzfJDqVgXufiCnmhRGyUmWAQZDxe_2d-SHb7GKRvrRCYlCnpnD6yF5ixt1nxSwvsWoVWty_ZfyZMzjWQ02rebiK3dk1Ic7hGLbuNlnvN4TfwlM3KoisGJtanUnhD2/s1600/Chronos_ILWarmtoneFB+M-062.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="324" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-SctdU3hZy4i4JtaOzfJDqVgXufiCnmhRGyUmWAQZDxe_2d-SHb7GKRvrRCYlCnpnD6yF5ixt1nxSwvsWoVWty_ZfyZMzjWQ02rebiK3dk1Ic7hGLbuNlnvN4TfwlM3KoisGJtanUnhD2/s400/Chronos_ILWarmtoneFB+M-062.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Hartley</b>, <i>Chronos,</i> on Ilford Warmtone FB, 2018</td></tr>
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On <i>Chronos</i>, pictured here, Edgar has used several resists that have become popular of late (cf. our <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-power-of-soft-resists.html">post last month on soft resists</a>) including guava paste and oil spray. Soluvar by Liquitex was the hard resist, and he used varying amounts of stabilizer, or ammonium thiocyanate, on this and all the other darkroom pieces in the show. I suspect he may have dampened the warmtone here with a bit of selenium, judging from the sober quality of the red, although he's mum on that. For <i>The Warding</i> at the top, Soluvar and tape were the resists (no guavas there) but the major difference lies in his use of bleach-etch methods, a newer tool in his box, to soften the surface and give it a suitably sensuous effect.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTwkWsx_Z6fko9s0ZOiq2q2bRR_ODOf33Rx5_9WJ2CNFQyn0sLxNklMt3d2pKRazYDMv06kNQwRBPZ5-_XB686IuSKqu0MkH74r6iNUvjRMFWIbtTZ5PgHe_Ste7Qyjumw1f-7IGshdK6Y/s1600/ShiTouILWarmToneFB_M-065.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="287" data-original-width="324" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTwkWsx_Z6fko9s0ZOiq2q2bRR_ODOf33Rx5_9WJ2CNFQyn0sLxNklMt3d2pKRazYDMv06kNQwRBPZ5-_XB686IuSKqu0MkH74r6iNUvjRMFWIbtTZ5PgHe_Ste7Qyjumw1f-7IGshdK6Y/s400/ShiTouILWarmToneFB_M-065.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Hartley</b>, <i>Shi Tou</i>, on Ilford Warmtone FB, 2018</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc3NvJ79TdDrbvYj5uugxGMEbn_lZT5oKDPPVVK5mm9TuqfNB7XAmd7cgliErZBeEZDCw3L53ILwJskgJP0BIvO-SkMQXIVkCMUn7SVEdAQpYiklpuk34w-6sZei1jB6PRgroxg1VIhHXP/s1600/Unt_FomatoneClassic132+MatMG+VC+FB+baryta+M-069-border.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="119" data-original-width="324" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc3NvJ79TdDrbvYj5uugxGMEbn_lZT5oKDPPVVK5mm9TuqfNB7XAmd7cgliErZBeEZDCw3L53ILwJskgJP0BIvO-SkMQXIVkCMUn7SVEdAQpYiklpuk34w-6sZei1jB6PRgroxg1VIhHXP/s400/Unt_FomatoneClassic132+MatMG+VC+FB+baryta+M-069-border.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Hartley</b>, <i>Untitled</i>, on Fomatone Classic 132 Mat MG VC FB, 2018</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdtliSX-LSOM5E5vX84ocjH4ADyytKRGQKJtceg3qcqoMpTB9O_4j_PRhnbGHVmusI3O9lKx1PBM24RAb6jqi8BCV5PrPMnD8DFDhFLJjuD9n4GtL-jP-7KukiEG0Ly-KwwCnqG9fMsHjG/s1600/YourPhenonmenaIsNotMyPhenomena+II_AD+FB+GL_M-071.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdtliSX-LSOM5E5vX84ocjH4ADyytKRGQKJtceg3qcqoMpTB9O_4j_PRhnbGHVmusI3O9lKx1PBM24RAb6jqi8BCV5PrPMnD8DFDhFLJjuD9n4GtL-jP-7KukiEG0Ly-KwwCnqG9fMsHjG/s400/YourPhenonmenaIsNotMyPhenomena+II_AD+FB+GL_M-071.jpg" width="365" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Hartley</b>, <i>Your Phenomena Is Not My Phenomena II</i>, on Adorama FB GL, 2018</td></tr>
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To create the Fomatone image the artist used both brush and tape, although the dominant gestures arise clearly from bleach-etch, as they do also in <i>Your Phenomena</i>, where the hard resists, MSA Varnish by Golden and Soluvar by Liquitex, are barely perceptible however past the veils of floating emulsion.<br />
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As Edgar tends to work on small format paper, for a show like this, where most of the pictures are 16 x 20 inch C-prints, hi-resolution scanning can play an important role in how things get viewed and loved by the public. David at Print Space, West 21st Street, stepped in and scanned the originals at 1600 dpi and some even as high as 2400 dpi, and then did all the printing on Kodak Endura. You won't want to miss seeing the results.<br />
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It's only fair to add that this show includes an assortment of other printmaking endeavors by the Bodhisattva: paper litho, collagraphy, photogravure, etching, even silkscreen. But you know why we aren't talking about them. His website is www.edgarhartley.com.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzOTw45Fz5NkfV4ld6w8ScacXK4eLxzeK-SWcU8o5fDZDC3rmyaK8EVEp0Ql2wXOomlSOX3oSpi-FEIceaYOkhqF27hAzoaWXlnYEwNcOEc-m2Qv3Nnqx1rhyphenhyphenTPEGgKBQv3ySDh2wMBVpt/s1600/LIBAI+chengyu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="165" data-original-width="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzOTw45Fz5NkfV4ld6w8ScacXK4eLxzeK-SWcU8o5fDZDC3rmyaK8EVEp0Ql2wXOomlSOX3oSpi-FEIceaYOkhqF27hAzoaWXlnYEwNcOEc-m2Qv3Nnqx1rhyphenhyphenTPEGgKBQv3ySDh2wMBVpt/s1600/LIBAI+chengyu.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Young Li Bai and the Old Woman</td></tr>
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-13887458258755471562018-11-11T16:38:00.000-05:002018-11-11T16:38:38.908-05:00The power of soft resists<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKd2iEblI2Pt2xVkmAru0UKqYhAfU2TVAQ7oIlA1WlPQUaWZHJZFiR-eYtC7VfFSZbO5tzdhyiDbyMqWCf5XPRgr7DpcFyVBCFybhn0oknacda-fFWH82iZgENF3s-Je-iMcyx7uaeT2eW/s1600/Paloma%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="265" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKd2iEblI2Pt2xVkmAru0UKqYhAfU2TVAQ7oIlA1WlPQUaWZHJZFiR-eYtC7VfFSZbO5tzdhyiDbyMqWCf5XPRgr7DpcFyVBCFybhn0oknacda-fFWH82iZgENF3s-Je-iMcyx7uaeT2eW/s400/Paloma%25232.jpg" width="286" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Paloma Boyewa-Osborne</b>, untitled chemigram, 2018</td></tr>
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Paloma Boyewa-Osborne lives in the Morningside Heights area of Harlem. She has been painting and drawing since age 3, although none of that work has come down to us. Her family introduced her to the chemical darkroom a couple of years ago and today, at the advanced age of eleven, she knows her way around it with disarming confidence. Last week she participated in a chemigram workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York and produced a group of works in soft resists that caught our attention and then some.<br />
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A cautionary note: in sharing these, we implicitly reject the antediluvian notion that success in abstract cameraless photography (or of any art) must be linked to physical maturity, which so often is unstated and assumed. It doesn't. Paloma is living proof if you needed any, and we won't say anything further about it. Let's look at what she did, and then let's discover what we can learn from her.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLIWL86OXNvXomJV4kCY_Dki17pwfD9yUKd7js9B7w3l8MyoUMWKZFU5yCXrghuPQTE9slK2JgaXPeG7ZTCsLs-Wxg-YpKFxjepguWjNRYhlOXU94MkltbvNO3nqLiOiSuhL5b8tXjEKeI/s1600/Paloma%25239.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="246" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLIWL86OXNvXomJV4kCY_Dki17pwfD9yUKd7js9B7w3l8MyoUMWKZFU5yCXrghuPQTE9slK2JgaXPeG7ZTCsLs-Wxg-YpKFxjepguWjNRYhlOXU94MkltbvNO3nqLiOiSuhL5b8tXjEKeI/s400/Paloma%25239.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Paloma Boyewa-Osborne</b>, untitled chemigram, 2018</td></tr>
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To my eye, the first thing I'm impressed with is her assertive use of space: filling but not crowding it, respecting its margins but not afraid of them. Too often, if I can speak for the rest of us, we pull back when we arrive at the end of our paper, unsure of how to handle it, or we're embarrassed by it, or we go into a funk. We truncate, we turn around, we say goodbye. Paloma never does, or so it seems.<br />
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Related to this is her wonderful, unforced sense of composition, of putting things where they absolutely belong. Haven't we all had moments when, on reflection, our picture would be great if only it were cut off here, or if that part were placed over there? But the dynamic of the chemigram is one-way and hurtles us in the forward direction only. You can't erase, you have to live with what you get. Paloma rides this dynamic with no apparent stress whatsoever.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggg3LyzDj_P4vi_6D4HJyaXiBEJ1fYhn71N2EtP-32qAMDwu2dMofVTvW5H4O3TQME6wlot47IfDYn1-vJ5jiTvl3uKzzjwUWqi5ekUK7nn7X9eMXTCBBsV2gCVkes2JQMrvaEEVoftxCZ/s1600/Paloma%25238.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="362" data-original-width="261" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggg3LyzDj_P4vi_6D4HJyaXiBEJ1fYhn71N2EtP-32qAMDwu2dMofVTvW5H4O3TQME6wlot47IfDYn1-vJ5jiTvl3uKzzjwUWqi5ekUK7nn7X9eMXTCBBsV2gCVkes2JQMrvaEEVoftxCZ/s400/Paloma%25238.jpg" width="287" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Paloma Boyewa-Osborne</b>, untitled chemigram, 2018</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJdE9G_uNods8im0Zed0jbejqZinZEjpZ9rM_6neengaXs3nh0qhmHZNWuDf6WfukycDhyZia-50VkL6YdcWHpx5qCGpSN5yibmhkkXFCCdVyCqRwQcbXdbSp_0Z3cabBn2brSlD4ISpJe/s1600/Paloma%25231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="252" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJdE9G_uNods8im0Zed0jbejqZinZEjpZ9rM_6neengaXs3nh0qhmHZNWuDf6WfukycDhyZia-50VkL6YdcWHpx5qCGpSN5yibmhkkXFCCdVyCqRwQcbXdbSp_0Z3cabBn2brSlD4ISpJe/s400/Paloma%25231.jpg" width="296" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Paloma Boyewa-Osborne</b>, untitled chemigram, 2018</td></tr>
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She is of those who appear to favor the chaos of soft resists, which are so difficult to tame but so rewarding in the end, to the rigor of the knife and of hard resists. She is well-suited to it, that much is clear. The soft resist in chemigrams has always been the poor cousin of the hard, and in our workshops often tends to be passed over with little more than tolerance and good humor. But Paloma, by her example and the tiny corpus of work produced thus far, goes a fair distance to correct this imbalance. She should be taken seriously, her work should be taken seriously. Let us hope there will be a lot more of it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsazNhQzY-ebK2HIaZ1hZ3cpaea98Vb6Ge_FN9fiUrgcx483pkE8KwLzLDCwPj-QJRxW0ov7NrEADgHywK4l4ZChXpvu93HBh0526fauHn1jhIMpTDX-6Ru4tcVhuegh2_XS02bPiVq0kn/s1600/Paloma%25237.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="279" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsazNhQzY-ebK2HIaZ1hZ3cpaea98Vb6Ge_FN9fiUrgcx483pkE8KwLzLDCwPj-QJRxW0ov7NrEADgHywK4l4ZChXpvu93HBh0526fauHn1jhIMpTDX-6Ru4tcVhuegh2_XS02bPiVq0kn/s320/Paloma%25237.jpg" width="268" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The young artist at the trays.</td></tr>
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I asked her what her favorite soft resists were. Marshmallow fluff and peanut butter, she replied. Oh, and canola oil cooking spray, but then we ran out of it. I would have laughed at this a year ago, but no more. She has taught me something.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-63163222618269879822018-10-25T15:21:00.000-04:002018-10-28T23:23:32.322-04:00Another look at Preece's west<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Mesa</i>, 2017</td></tr>
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Nolan Preece is giving us more of what we want for the fall season to set us thinking about the natural environment - more chemigrams. His second show at the <a href="http://www.walterwickisergallery.com/">Wickiser Gallery</a> in New York, ten beautiful 16x20" prints on Epson Velvet, closed a few weeks ago, just as a new one was opening a thousand miles away at the <a href="https://www.smponline.org/">Southeast Museum of Photography</a> in Daytona Beach, Florida (October 9 - November 24). It helps to have frequent flyer miles to keep up with him. We described in <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2017/04/nolan-preece-goes-on-national-tour.html">previous posts</a> how his work in recent years has shifted from fearless displays of pure darkroom savvy and abandon (<a href="http://www.nolanpreece.com/">www.nolanpreece.com</a>) to a thoughtful treatment of the high desert of Nevada where he lives and which he cares most passionately about, along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada range. No one I know of has been working in chemigrams longer, or more assiduously and uninterruptedly, than Nolan, and it shows in the refinement of his methods. Against what we thought were the odds, he has brought chemigrams to bear on ecologic concerns: very few other chemigramists have dared undertake such an effort and none of those few have come near to achieving Nolan's success, or his drama. He has made this ground his own.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9NsTI8PtBjGfEWfAp7Wh_UZu3vEnnsj9kS-xi_AqvsRXBTY7H62hNcsFBQN3JBrzp_iqrFiDM5EbqSbyp0B037X-obHX0Z8GTYvnKDaGdzSshWOOvvfPW29J1lTLLmrA2zrJBJcXtHQgT/s1600/Highlands+2017-4%2522.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="576" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9NsTI8PtBjGfEWfAp7Wh_UZu3vEnnsj9kS-xi_AqvsRXBTY7H62hNcsFBQN3JBrzp_iqrFiDM5EbqSbyp0B037X-obHX0Z8GTYvnKDaGdzSshWOOvvfPW29J1lTLLmrA2zrJBJcXtHQgT/s400/Highlands+2017-4%2522.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece, </b><i>Highlands</i><b>, </b>chemigram, 2017</td></tr>
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The unfamiliar viewer should not confuse these images with guidebook pictures. They are the opposite, they are not landscapes but dreams of landscapes, nightmares of landscapes, hallucinations, double-takes, and riffs. They are emotional above all. Nolan, who sees the future, is working under the duress of his knowledge. If you've never seen an emotional chemigram you should look at <i>Highlands</i>, or <i>Mesa - </i>although to be fair we must make exception for <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2016/11/nikolovas-method.html">Nikolova's powerful work</a> in this regard as well.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Arroyo</i>, chemigram, 2017</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQjKWFCBeBMcftUYlNZLD99HygCn5jqpYFalfJeF3cbxyl-U934RzITJ2Gw6crO6tXzqpW5Cph3FIqZ3ZARCEi19x1CZEFBMKWJS6XSlfFNiBnQ2KMuR2fq3G08F_KsoFJo82jT1K1Tbo4/s1600/Cascade+2016+-4%2522.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="576" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQjKWFCBeBMcftUYlNZLD99HygCn5jqpYFalfJeF3cbxyl-U934RzITJ2Gw6crO6tXzqpW5Cph3FIqZ3ZARCEi19x1CZEFBMKWJS6XSlfFNiBnQ2KMuR2fq3G08F_KsoFJo82jT1K1Tbo4/s400/Cascade+2016+-4%2522.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Cascade</i>, chemigram, 2016</td></tr>
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In vain do we seek human presence here, in these canyons and arroyos, so bleak yet so beautifully detailed, but then we realize the enormity of the geologic forces shaping what Nolan has given us. Men would be nothing, they have no place in it. Understanding that may lead us to a kind of reverence, if we let it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Sierra #2</i>, chemigram, 2016<br />
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If you press me for my favorite, I will go with the one below. Rich in almost boundless mystery, it still has time to leave a wisp of dark mauve in the upper slopes, if slopes they are, as a sign of hope or prophesy, pointing to eons beyond all knowing.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Peaks</i>, chemigram, 2017</td></tr>
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-88226065153769724712018-03-31T07:42:00.000-04:002018-03-31T07:42:31.528-04:00Spring shows by several cameraless photographers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Alison Rossiter</b>, <i>Gevaert Gevaluxe Papier Velours, expired ca. 1930s, processed 2014</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Mike Jackson,</b> luminogram, 2017</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Mike Koerner</b>, <i>Coronae #9870,</i> collodion photogram on tin, 2017</td></tr>
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Today, as the weather warms along with our spirits, we post a few April and May shows by some of your photographic colleagues. It's a miscellany, hopefully an enlightened one, of what's happening in areas that you've been watching. If you need to see more of this work you know what to do: google the venue, or if the artists have been diligent housekeepers, take a look at their webpage. And we don't know everything: if we've overlooked your show, please take a moment to add it to the comments section below. Here is our shortlist:<br />
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<i>in the UK</i><br />
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<b>Pierre Cordier</b>, Tate Modern, "Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art", London, May - October.<br />
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<b>Michael Jackson</b>, Photo London, Somerset House, MMX Gallery, London, May 17-20.<br />
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<b>Michael Koerner</b>, Photo London, Somerset House, Edelman Gallery, London, May 17-20.<br />
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<b>Alison Rossiter</b>, Tate Modern, "Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art", London, May - October.</div>
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<b>Daisuke Yokota</b>, Tate Modern, "Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art", London, May - October.</div>
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<i>in the US</i><br />
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<b>Birgit Blyth</b>, Dineen Hull Gallery at HCCC, March 14 - April 21, Jersey City, New Jersey.<br />
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<b>Denis Brihat</b>, "A Celebration", Nailya Alexander Gallery, March 27 - May 19, New York City.<br />
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<b>Douglas Collins</b>, Art Intersection, "Light Sensitive", March 6 - April 21, Gilbert, Arizona.<br />
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<b>Douglas Collins</b>, ArtExpo, booth 148, Pier 94, April 19 - 22, New York City.<br />
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<b>Michael Jackson</b>, AIPAD, booth 86, Pier 94, April 5 - 8, New York City.<br />
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<b>Michael Koerner</b>, AIPAD, booth 402, Pier 94, April 5 - 8, New York City.<br />
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<b>Antonia Kuo</b>, Rubber Factory, May 26 - June 27, New York City.<br />
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<b>Nolan Preece</b>, International Museum of Art and Science, April 13 - July 8, McAllen, Texas.<br />
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<b>Nolan Preece</b>, Museum of Arts and Sciences, April 27 - August 15, Macon, Georgia.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-37212419545745582092018-03-13T17:34:00.000-04:002018-03-14T16:33:30.502-04:00Chemigrams in Tuscany<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">chemigram (as photogravure)</td></tr>
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<i>A guest post by Franco Marinai</i><br />
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Chemigrams are images produced on photosensitive material by light and photographic chemicals. They require no camera, no negative, no enlarger or darkroom. In fact, you make a chemigram in daylight. You can make it outdoors in the sun if you like, or in the shade of olive trees.<br />
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In Serrazzano, a hilltop village in Tuscany not far from Volterra, I make them in an old stable that we have restored to accommodate a printmaking workshop and a photographic darkroom. In good weather - and it is often quite good - I work outside, in the courtyard of Villa Beltrami, the manor house, or in the piazza inside the medieval walls.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Serrazzano</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the courtyard</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the piazza</td></tr>
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If we speak of the chemigram as a process, we might say that it is all about the action of photographic chemicals, fixer and developer, on the emulsion of photographic paper - or on photographic film, which I favor in my own work. It results in a unique artifact that, if successful, yields mesmerizing and otherworldly imagery like no other photographic or alternative photographic process. You have no doubt had occasion to study chemigrams throughout this blog; if you care to see a few examples of my own work transforming chemigrams to photogravure, click <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2013/11/chemigram-to-photogravure-for.html">here</a> or <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2016/01/francos-chemigrams-on-ortho-litho-film.html">here</a>.<br />
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The ancient hills around Serrazzano are rich in minerals, and in earlier times provided the semi-precious stones that embellished the furniture of the lavish villas of the Medicis. Nowadays mining is no longer pursued, but the geological wealth of the region still can be seen in the stones used in all varieties of local construction. The patterns in them inspire me, and are often reflected in my chemigram images.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyjTWZL7ZHktFkH6HcFMSthFq1s-zL3MK8UMcG8Vou4scLZfaacUmoAzd-ldmcEHNPFTeVjmQ6o7T6vVV9TdQmULFKeeyq7iHLdsaHeHvrPofqkucTzS8_2JXQEaoJR4hVbNoxCtMOqo4f/s1600/stones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyjTWZL7ZHktFkH6HcFMSthFq1s-zL3MK8UMcG8Vou4scLZfaacUmoAzd-ldmcEHNPFTeVjmQ6o7T6vVV9TdQmULFKeeyq7iHLdsaHeHvrPofqkucTzS8_2JXQEaoJR4hVbNoxCtMOqo4f/s320/stones.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">local stones</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqGbVljnBMY63JLnuXr7nl9pRxgOgwy-bYX68YTc4GqQAuJz-sMwb-6VJaqKPw8tDSmiUOaJK0-AsCPR00aTRjL3MTgMTyWMSwInAbQjXYEtQzJn1hxrPUOqhr8G2InWwvtxYhc3EN0FLb/s1600/chem_04new.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqGbVljnBMY63JLnuXr7nl9pRxgOgwy-bYX68YTc4GqQAuJz-sMwb-6VJaqKPw8tDSmiUOaJK0-AsCPR00aTRjL3MTgMTyWMSwInAbQjXYEtQzJn1hxrPUOqhr8G2InWwvtxYhc3EN0FLb/s1600/chem_04new.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">chemigram (as photogravure)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGehyphenhyphenXFKmdlzacox_tIStxHfxzvnWPd6DNxFctlEZ9gTuEv38TdKrJOG5LGb0CajWu6xgnPQjDvU-OidebOOgJO6Yb7_btTokJkGxRdCtTt7ctRLNfHc6UhDUR2pu7JxayEGMSkpI4UdXr/s1600/darkroom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="324" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGehyphenhyphenXFKmdlzacox_tIStxHfxzvnWPd6DNxFctlEZ9gTuEv38TdKrJOG5LGb0CajWu6xgnPQjDvU-OidebOOgJO6Yb7_btTokJkGxRdCtTt7ctRLNfHc6UhDUR2pu7JxayEGMSkpI4UdXr/s320/darkroom.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the darkroom</td></tr>
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While some have compared a chemigramist to a poet taking risks, tinkering with lines (the dark are developed lines, the light are fixed lines), I like to think that making a chemigram is a performance. It is a lively performance that features invention and discovery, surprises and screw-ups. The performer must plan, and also be ready to improvise and deal with chance. She needs a good dose of luck, a cool head, and the presence of mind to make decisions such as when or if to move the emergent chemigram from one bath to another, or whether to use hot water, or change the temperature of the chemicals or their concentration.<br />
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When the performance is over - after a few minutes (rarely), several hours, or even a whole night - the result is a unique object, a chemigram, which is a detailed record of that very same performance. That's because at close examination a chemigram reveals how it came about. In fact, with some experience, one can tell which outline came before another or which shape preceded another. So a chemigram is complete picture of its own history, a remarkable two-dimensional representation of the motion of time.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL8Huagz7CCGVzJYl60DfxAFS14cQnmgBh4HOpiC-9SLbZVEvV_WUt5euh1HWWWsNHML4J1iI8anL4atMXGJEzvUT08u3ZG06jb0p33Ev74dPV1Pcu6nSQxQPvzoWpQdNs7qmSl2_zM82m/s1600/chemig_FM1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="272" data-original-width="324" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL8Huagz7CCGVzJYl60DfxAFS14cQnmgBh4HOpiC-9SLbZVEvV_WUt5euh1HWWWsNHML4J1iI8anL4atMXGJEzvUT08u3ZG06jb0p33Ev74dPV1Pcu6nSQxQPvzoWpQdNs7qmSl2_zM82m/s400/chemig_FM1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">chemigram (as photogravure)</td></tr>
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Time is felt everywhere in Serrazzano, and not only in chemigrams: its quiet, steady passing is present in the very earth, the walls, and the ancient buildings. Serrazzano is first mentioned in a document from the eleventh century, but its origins go back to Etruscan times more than a thousand years earlier. After a day spent making chemigrams, I like to relax with a drink on the terrace and idly muse on things, or I may choose to get out and explore the bounty of the region, the profusion of grapes, olives, and mushrooms, in the same way Julius Caesar must have done when his legions marched through here in the first century before Christ, heading towards Gaul. Did they prepare the way for chemigrams?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmjQSgeszzVz6KFMUapxiChzWUQKxPPMrtGDyDa-M8cmQ9eYVkrnxPWDPO51KycxSzlaRajk-I95G_AOajMBcFpZIq-pVyhgPlyMxgjwMthFZEuWoAcrwZT2pa1nz1RBKLsQ-snWJ-2mXL/s1600/courtyard_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="324" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmjQSgeszzVz6KFMUapxiChzWUQKxPPMrtGDyDa-M8cmQ9eYVkrnxPWDPO51KycxSzlaRajk-I95G_AOajMBcFpZIq-pVyhgPlyMxgjwMthFZEuWoAcrwZT2pa1nz1RBKLsQ-snWJ-2mXL/s400/courtyard_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the terrace</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBaZYs7hLtc9_k3y-iB3S8WeqkMIY9yfIsvxYKBe6KslfReLuVZUGEGbxnQRlErIkxl5FfqZjiWYIjihe8jLBV1gghDjjS72axKX4A8K774GZ8-aobMStwNpywQO1_mxNxjomtoFP8fMCn/s1600/olive+tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBaZYs7hLtc9_k3y-iB3S8WeqkMIY9yfIsvxYKBe6KslfReLuVZUGEGbxnQRlErIkxl5FfqZjiWYIjihe8jLBV1gghDjjS72axKX4A8K774GZ8-aobMStwNpywQO1_mxNxjomtoFP8fMCn/s320/olive+tree.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the olive trees</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwGO8DB-lumDci73p8HF7bD1qwm0R3tSQhiqsFfJumXfpZ_haNKk8zY3ZIEgEzI8H638FSrWgMO9GL2O2hqOUpVpRhdMPYKBrZ38G3e-mC3jrMs0LEQx8ArX-fPGrKKNMyD31jcXPNCbPx/s1600/sheep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="252" data-original-width="324" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwGO8DB-lumDci73p8HF7bD1qwm0R3tSQhiqsFfJumXfpZ_haNKk8zY3ZIEgEzI8H638FSrWgMO9GL2O2hqOUpVpRhdMPYKBrZ38G3e-mC3jrMs0LEQx8ArX-fPGrKKNMyD31jcXPNCbPx/s320/sheep.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the sheep</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvNaU2DbifatJWOZJtiFm-JSSqc7wBlO94yDKtSh8yLL9riTzw9BubEfW4BVcttHst61SpknA18KIDApkQkixU1y5hIDa1aGl7Lb5jNA9PwSJMKObSEjxVYglDIneK1mGOD_AmwKeJ2ctB/s1600/fantoio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="324" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvNaU2DbifatJWOZJtiFm-JSSqc7wBlO94yDKtSh8yLL9riTzw9BubEfW4BVcttHst61SpknA18KIDApkQkixU1y5hIDa1aGl7Lb5jNA9PwSJMKObSEjxVYglDIneK1mGOD_AmwKeJ2ctB/s400/fantoio.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">an abandoned olive oil mill</td></tr>
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TwoCentsPress - Printmaking in Serrazzano is a project to give fellow artists the opportunity to work and live in an extraordinary setting at a very reasonable price. The project includes accommodations within the historic castle of Serrazzano and 24/7 access to a workshop fully equipped for all intaglio techniques and a darkroom for B&W and alternative photographic processes. Set in an unspoiled corner of Tuscany, surrounded by pristine and protected forests, it is the perfect place for an artist to concentrate and recharge. It will provide you with an exceptional experience that you will treasure and wish to return to time and time again.<br />
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Visit us online at <a href="http://www.twocentspress.com/">www.twocentspress.com</a> or on instagram at twocentspress. You can reach me directly at info@twocentspress.com. Ciao!<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-6931036360991124982018-02-24T13:28:00.000-05:002018-02-25T02:04:53.518-05:00Why is Chargesheimer so overlooked?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAwy0AL5G7a_0e-ehXmwB2RxQtQnyW2faEUoQscOAToa6q_2SU4lce9yT0FIdY1mKL9JT-uqPF0f4bjJSPXuqCXZOB-muuEZYPHUeyaDUw8y_dzInlVK14D0nCTyZ5WfmxilnlD1jZmDPv/s1600/untitled%252C+1946-50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="324" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAwy0AL5G7a_0e-ehXmwB2RxQtQnyW2faEUoQscOAToa6q_2SU4lce9yT0FIdY1mKL9JT-uqPF0f4bjJSPXuqCXZOB-muuEZYPHUeyaDUw8y_dzInlVK14D0nCTyZ5WfmxilnlD1jZmDPv/s400/untitled%252C+1946-50.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer</b>, ca. 1948</td></tr>
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He clandestinely cut out one of his lungs to avoid having to serve in Hitler's Wehrmacht. The father, who we know little of, was either a card-carrying Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer, so the young man dumped his given name (Karl-Heinz Hargesheimer), called himself simply Chargesheimer, and left home for good.<br />
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By 1942 or 1943 he was studying photography, painting, graphic arts, even set design, at different schools in Cologne, and later in Munich. Returning to Cologne, he began working the streets, photographing workers in bars, schoolkids kicking a football, lovers in doorways, mothers searching for food, and all the dispossessed and the lost who were trying to regain a foothold in life: it was the end of WW II and Cologne was in ruins.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRqRT8Eiw4Rf53rvgYOn03cn8vWq_fbLxfxQ8x0vbpCkiSWiR7ZJ1JxTeXsvAQxyevyUmpAtpgbEqgV9R1zyT2vopmsWOWK2757WPM5wPfJopu4z1PpuqeECVjwAOXllORw0pph4Rt5ET/s1600/unter+krahnenbaumen+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="241" data-original-width="324" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRqRT8Eiw4Rf53rvgYOn03cn8vWq_fbLxfxQ8x0vbpCkiSWiR7ZJ1JxTeXsvAQxyevyUmpAtpgbEqgV9R1zyT2vopmsWOWK2757WPM5wPfJopu4z1PpuqeECVjwAOXllORw0pph4Rt5ET/s320/unter+krahnenbaumen+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer,</b> <i>Unter Krahnenbäumen</i>, 1958</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWBoIwp8Kw3LukUKOmFJYeFaC4k-bTH9EDFDKzismn8xYYjWRJJHc39R7umiMQThV8dvdYNToKPMmDYZPceYMKXfhQ1j-KXd8ViJPG9tQ2clSNBwbZLUwYnL0t3VfJD9Zzl-Htv-Vz9tnK/s1600/im+Ruhrgebiet+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="324" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWBoIwp8Kw3LukUKOmFJYeFaC4k-bTH9EDFDKzismn8xYYjWRJJHc39R7umiMQThV8dvdYNToKPMmDYZPceYMKXfhQ1j-KXd8ViJPG9tQ2clSNBwbZLUwYnL0t3VfJD9Zzl-Htv-Vz9tnK/s320/im+Ruhrgebiet+3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer</b>, <i>Im Ruhrgebiet</i>, 1957</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE7kDPwRyUu9ODNEggafqsqZhWjfxdKZXdLjoJBiU1-W7KqxKa6wIK3wyopC5cmEHpkKusmJ23zX2wQmBtt7t__EAIZiXOyw8zke9hsQLDXVd5IpT3MpphKGVfpjRf56cubTTHCjuQ17RY/s1600/kissing+couple+1957+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE7kDPwRyUu9ODNEggafqsqZhWjfxdKZXdLjoJBiU1-W7KqxKa6wIK3wyopC5cmEHpkKusmJ23zX2wQmBtt7t__EAIZiXOyw8zke9hsQLDXVd5IpT3MpphKGVfpjRf56cubTTHCjuQ17RY/s320/kissing+couple+1957+copy.jpg" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 12.8px;">Chargesheimer,</b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> <i>Kissing Couple</i>, ca. 1950</span></td></tr>
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With his camera it was as if he had uncovered a resilience in his people, and he found a deep joy in documenting it. This would become the theme of a series of books, reviled at first by the city's elders as 'disrespectful' but later celebrated, that he published in the 1950s: <i>Cologne intime</i>, <i>Unter Krahnenbäumen</i>, <i>Im Ruhrgebiet</i>. To support himself meanwhile he sold photos to newspapers and ad agencies, took assignments in theater as set designer, and eventually - the curve of his early years is steep - directed productions of Eugene O'Neill, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Max Frisch.<br />
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To many people today, Chargesheimer is best remembered for another of his sidelines, portrait photography (didn't he already have enough to do?) He developed a personal style using low angles, tight close-ups and stark contrast, which had the cumulative effect of transforming his living subjects into icons or masks whose power, sometimes hinted at by just the trace of a smile, was undeniable; by the late 1960s they graced the covers of magazines across Europe. His portraits of Konrad Adenauer, Romy Schneider, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Louis Armstrong and others remain in the popular mind among his most singular achievements. Here's one though that will be new to many:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDR2zbUBVv5IceMnljSvOBcPzdo2piEhiXPn8t3krWzIS3wokqlPOVpfuWK3W0zx2tBDaahaCzEqIUX_61YtwcMm9w6Viz1fH0BobYSJupVUwvcRPmcVKiGLczlKup7qW2ytdOMEBkyObB/s1600/Josephine+Baker+1956.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="363" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDR2zbUBVv5IceMnljSvOBcPzdo2piEhiXPn8t3krWzIS3wokqlPOVpfuWK3W0zx2tBDaahaCzEqIUX_61YtwcMm9w6Viz1fH0BobYSJupVUwvcRPmcVKiGLczlKup7qW2ytdOMEBkyObB/s320/Josephine+Baker+1956.jpg" width="285" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer</b>, Josephine Baker, 1956</td></tr>
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He developed another reputation in Cologne as well, this one darker, more destructive: as the irascible rebel, the original bad boy. With glee he would spit in the face of donors and benefactors as the mood suited him; he loved to shake things up. His 1956 exposition of portraits of the city's leaders in finance and politics caused an outrage: he purposely neglected to fix the photos and in the course of the show they yellowed and deteriorated. Another time, at a certain point in the premiere of Luigi Nono's <i>Intolleranza</i> at the Cologne Opera, he suddenly projected giant swastikas and concentration camp pictures onto the backdrop and set off a near riot in the audience.<br />
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But in fact, it is his disregard for correctness that leads us to why we're talking about him today. To back up a bit, as soon as he learned how to take photographs and develop them, the much younger Chargesheimer also began experimenting with breaking the very rules he had learned. He began making photographs without a camera. What?? Yes, and he mixed materials of different viscosities with fixer or developer, smeared them on paper or glass, then developed the result. OMG. He dripped his chemistry or spun it around or raked it with improvised tools, in a freewheeling manner that owed nothing to anyone. Stop right here. Isn't this, in a way, an extension of a very old tradition going back to Talbot in 1835, passing through cliché-verres and glassprints? Well, you could argue that it is but that's beside the point: he just did what felt natural to him, and he kept pushing it in a direction where one picture led to another and another. The imagery that emerged was airy, lyrical, full of curves and swirls and streakiness, and it seemed without effort. It still remains breathtaking. We could go further: this body of work, made off and on from 1946 to 1950, comprising a few dozen pictures at most, is unique in the history of photography and stands apart from everything else he did before or after. Let's look at some examples.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdn6sitWBW0A6C84pJSaPQ1LFRlYjntqpadRoXQb4kmNBaj_MxmtcxnHfaVVGFKIX7WyzBaU8x89OEjycoTXQ9vn46Z2LsUKmVw5LfkEyGqNwqj808yXGGgqIq0q496JCsLobG_oTsTHvR/s1600/Wei%25C3%259F+%25281948%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="253" data-original-width="324" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdn6sitWBW0A6C84pJSaPQ1LFRlYjntqpadRoXQb4kmNBaj_MxmtcxnHfaVVGFKIX7WyzBaU8x89OEjycoTXQ9vn46Z2LsUKmVw5LfkEyGqNwqj808yXGGgqIq0q496JCsLobG_oTsTHvR/s400/Wei%25C3%259F+%25281948%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer</b>, <i>White,</i> 1948</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimasUExdAPG8wfshVTlWiDZ5sYbK3a9D7fOixBwT4vG-btN4mn6wYtgP1tJht20M8252qNv95xstfY3OdXKoWwQ77wOotIjk5kRJxvcICv5EDWdYaFqoGPux2kaZ9m0ud5xuKnk6oErqbU/s1600/X2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="407" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimasUExdAPG8wfshVTlWiDZ5sYbK3a9D7fOixBwT4vG-btN4mn6wYtgP1tJht20M8252qNv95xstfY3OdXKoWwQ77wOotIjk5kRJxvcICv5EDWdYaFqoGPux2kaZ9m0ud5xuKnk6oErqbU/s400/X2.jpg" width="317" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer,</b> ca. 1948</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnJb-ycQpqsquUNq_pmb6wDWBxCQryd8VrEhRqJixYo2vRW9P22TPEE8f2XFyiTUqkSGgWAhJ-YyMQH4t9zufw1iSVUbf0Gmx8rrgx8i7nL4_dMrtKZ4BiTvau_y-MOLm1pqcKCIsgKfXT/s1600/X3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnJb-ycQpqsquUNq_pmb6wDWBxCQryd8VrEhRqJixYo2vRW9P22TPEE8f2XFyiTUqkSGgWAhJ-YyMQH4t9zufw1iSVUbf0Gmx8rrgx8i7nL4_dMrtKZ4BiTvau_y-MOLm1pqcKCIsgKfXT/s400/X3.jpg" width="321" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer</b>, ca. 1948</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQdvMqiS6DKZDwWhwtxD_xilasEpGbUkoujX106ABNM_PzQ_be3ci9xtqfh-nQi_OHL59qLUwxZ7mGv6IvAc9l152I2LJSuPeOduSPuzTw4EoaxfFKCc2veYfdOCEF_Exe6kE2BGFETpJT/s1600/X4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="232" data-original-width="324" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQdvMqiS6DKZDwWhwtxD_xilasEpGbUkoujX106ABNM_PzQ_be3ci9xtqfh-nQi_OHL59qLUwxZ7mGv6IvAc9l152I2LJSuPeOduSPuzTw4EoaxfFKCc2veYfdOCEF_Exe6kE2BGFETpJT/s400/X4.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer</b>, ca. 1948</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1p689KplUICIC5QMwZV0zsEIlpPW8e5qW__DFzAmyxjrCaGv97tG_Sg4gPTLm5Sz6EXT3tOJpzpexSGJ6QpX_5bWfG8wuHFDSXjXaAW-BaIaFg63NJ_r6ATORwTaXNWkvdQlxYigJxo1u/s1600/FigurativeComposition1950.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="324" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1p689KplUICIC5QMwZV0zsEIlpPW8e5qW__DFzAmyxjrCaGv97tG_Sg4gPTLm5Sz6EXT3tOJpzpexSGJ6QpX_5bWfG8wuHFDSXjXaAW-BaIaFg63NJ_r6ATORwTaXNWkvdQlxYigJxo1u/s400/FigurativeComposition1950.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer</b>, <i>Figurative Composition</i>, 1950</td></tr>
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By the end of 1940s the rebirth of German photography was well underway. Emerging photographers were revisiting the lessons of the Bauhaus, suppressed by Hitler, and studied the teachings of Moholy-Nagy with his doctrine of the primacy of the emulsion ('the essential tool of the photographic process is not the camera, but the photosensitive layer'). Otto Steinert and Heinz Hajek-Halke in 1949 launched a movement that embraced this thinking called Fotoform, which later splintered into groups like Subjective Photography and Concrete Photography (Europeans are good with balkanization), all the while maintaining a nearly absolute commitment to abstract or non-figurative work. Chargesheimer, keeping to himself, chose his own trajectory but was not immune to the creative currents around him: he participated in the big Photokina show in Cologne in 1950 and again for several years thereafter. When Steinert invited his young student Pierre Cordier to show what Cordier had dubbed 'chemigrams' at Photokina in 1958, it's safe to assume that Chargesheimer saw them.<br />
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While all this was happening, at some point in the mid to late 1950s Chargesheimer's cameraless work changed markedly. Gone were the bold swoops, the confident strokes, the muscular attitude of the earlier period. Instead of shouting, they seemed to whisper. They were small, tentative even. He gathered this work in a one-off book entitled <i>Lichtgrafik - Monoskripturen, </i>then stopped producing altogether. This image is typical:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghE5F85aAV3SjbKLG5lIr-4cttxYkyHqsIKOeUnDGtB84GmvUc9bEpyALTCYibDCcH1t3D4GrpFu2gu-i4HIHMR4O9OwzkSvIq-iQxULiY9q5d8s58dFeIQGcKg9hyphenhyphengQgujz3mVD1bzxwD/s1600/Lichtgrafik_1+1961+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghE5F85aAV3SjbKLG5lIr-4cttxYkyHqsIKOeUnDGtB84GmvUc9bEpyALTCYibDCcH1t3D4GrpFu2gu-i4HIHMR4O9OwzkSvIq-iQxULiY9q5d8s58dFeIQGcKg9hyphenhyphengQgujz3mVD1bzxwD/s400/Lichtgrafik_1+1961+copy.jpg" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Chargesheimer</b>, <i>Lichtgrafik</i>, 1961</td></tr>
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To be generous you could call them delicate, and some of you may really like them which is okay, but you don't go to Chargesheimer for delicate and anyway it's not that, it's less. It's not known what precisely caused this change, whether it was seeing too much Hajek-Halke or whether it was something in his personal life, for he was known to suffer bouts of depression. Perhaps too, as certain critics have speculated, he could have had a foreboding of his own irrelevance with a younger generation advancing on him. His street photography changed as well, turner colder, unemotional. His last book, <i>Köln 5 Uhr 30</i>, with its complete absence of human presence, was received with incomprehension. For unknown reasons he went to the Berner Oberland in Switzerland and took photographs of basaltic rocks on the Eiger, entranced by their crystalline fractures. These were the last photographs he made. On New Year's Eve 1971 he committed suicide.<br />
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His grave in the Melaten Cemetery in Cologne was lost for years to overgrowth and neglect and was only rediscovered in the nineties. Today, a small band of followers gather each May 19, his birthday, to pay tribute.<br />
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If you have read this far and want to see more of this essential artist, by all means go the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, holders of the major chunk of his work. In America, the MoMA, the Getty, the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, and the Harvard Museums all have bits and pieces. But beware: whether through laziness, inattention, or confusion, many of Chargesheimer's great nonfigurative pictures of the 1940s, the ones we're featuring here and are excited about, are labeled 'chemigram' - a crime perpetuated unfortunately by dealers, auctioneers, curators and museums on both sides of the Atlantic, who don't know what to do with them. Of course these pictures are not chemigrams at all, as any chemigramist can see. Perhaps you have to make a chemigram to know what one is. Besides, the word 'chemigram' didn't exist back then, nor even the idea, the model, of how to do one, go ask Cordier its inventor. If you want to get all technical you could call them cliché-verres or glassprints and we'd be fine with that. Personally I prefer to call them cameraless photographs - or just plain pictures on photo emulsion. You choose.<br />
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In any event send your indignation to the appropriate museum, starting with the Getty, as of this writing.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-64457155215375124662017-12-21T11:06:00.000-05:002018-02-26T14:31:12.643-05:00Cinzia Naticchioni Rojas has an epiphany<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYlzOIKLvDHISorWhO27DSl9sT3jKVmg8Ud-E3bZR6U9DPsfyLf76t-XSdBm6oOrfLe5VbDRWHflmc-vDGqkwRjdLHPTmgwOR2-TP7ZJCH2LW_a1IzsEgBwsksZUCzssElIIVhJhXPHKy/s1600/skin%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="484" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYlzOIKLvDHISorWhO27DSl9sT3jKVmg8Ud-E3bZR6U9DPsfyLf76t-XSdBm6oOrfLe5VbDRWHflmc-vDGqkwRjdLHPTmgwOR2-TP7ZJCH2LW_a1IzsEgBwsksZUCzssElIIVhJhXPHKy/s400/skin%25232.jpg" width="267" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Naticchioni-Rojas</b>, Skins series, 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2rM7cNad98kPuNwiY06mHQDX3fM6JpGZKOR82mYBoffCZgMx7LeSn_tknkjhhc4fA7u7NZXUyN2J6ct0eU_FSlx_mVhZ3QARqgy6CVVJbrfNNNje9WO1Rlq8bXTD_okp19Tg820Lc1Bh4/s1600/skin%25233contrast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="216" data-original-width="324" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2rM7cNad98kPuNwiY06mHQDX3fM6JpGZKOR82mYBoffCZgMx7LeSn_tknkjhhc4fA7u7NZXUyN2J6ct0eU_FSlx_mVhZ3QARqgy6CVVJbrfNNNje9WO1Rlq8bXTD_okp19Tg820Lc1Bh4/s400/skin%25233contrast.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Naticchioni-Rojas</b>, Skins series, 2015</span></td></tr>
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Three years ago, in her Milan studio, Cinzia Naticchioni Rojas was working with photographic prints on ceramic tiles. She had a problem - the images started detaching and floating off their support into the water. 'It was beautiful', she says, as she observed the images floating away. She was impressed with the tough material nature of analog images, whose substance, she felt, is really the silver gelatin itself and not the paper it is bound to, a distinction often misunderstood. 'I realized suddenly that the image floating was the true and unique essence of photography. Obviously it messed up my tile work, but for me it was like an epiphany.'<br />
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Her head now a jumble of new ideas, she switched away from ceramics and embarked on a careful course of research to see how she could develop this insight. Accustomed as she was to various substrates in her photographic image-making, she continued along these lines, using the black & white liquid emulsion by Rollei (similar products are available from Rockland Colloid and from Foma). She would apply the emulsion, let it dry, put it under the enlarger, and expose images onto it of her favorite subject, clouds (Cinzia's in love with clouds, maybe it's something about their stately movement, the way their slightest displacement seems thrilling - or then maybe not, we'll have to ask her). In any event, by early 2015 she had figured out a way to peel off the emulsion, intact, from the substrate, but then what? Where to go with it?<br />
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An architect by training, Cinzia tends to think in three dimensions. She looks down at the globs of wet emulsion before her and sees a potential for creating space, for this is what architects do. Dry it, make it rigid, stand it up, wrap things in it. Call them 'skins'. She could set the emulsion free, free to dance, fall, slump, or rest nonchalantly, the way the rest of us do at our most unmindful, waiting for time to unfold. She found the emulsion had a mind of its own; she accepted this. The best part was that it was autonomous and that it seemed to revel in its own surprising existence, if we can anthropomorphize it without going too far. Representation at this stage now becomes something quite arbitrary, something we didn't need, an appurtenance, even a hindrance, something quaint and beside the point. A faint trace of her beloved clouds does remain if you look hard, staining the crumpled emulsion, roiled and tarnished and eviscerated. But no matter.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxvxBkK0P3RatILz6XWAIukeySdd4FVKR3k8iGpD1UVcogGR1r2NgeBWeJELeSeQmGxYyLyPLpfzyJZIUonoIfdiKt02Xijka6rgypy-n9bXsO2AxeHtoSx4_0xUbQJ-834cmyf4Ty6K5T/s1600/skin%25235.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxvxBkK0P3RatILz6XWAIukeySdd4FVKR3k8iGpD1UVcogGR1r2NgeBWeJELeSeQmGxYyLyPLpfzyJZIUonoIfdiKt02Xijka6rgypy-n9bXsO2AxeHtoSx4_0xUbQJ-834cmyf4Ty6K5T/s400/skin%25235.jpg" width="321" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Naticchioni-Rojas</b>,</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Skins series, 2015</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDjDTcCSyhaG-sgD4w1o6u4d6bHAE_dKDOtFOoXFnqMzHhyUIrQvJOt5gMu9ZyNTN3SymxLlFn1D38BjQQluNEpjrYYH8teEGWZ84FwCMzS-GBlAsofv6jB63t_wWsUEK1n-BwNLUSZdZr/s1600/skin%25231contrast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="216" data-original-width="324" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDjDTcCSyhaG-sgD4w1o6u4d6bHAE_dKDOtFOoXFnqMzHhyUIrQvJOt5gMu9ZyNTN3SymxLlFn1D38BjQQluNEpjrYYH8teEGWZ84FwCMzS-GBlAsofv6jB63t_wWsUEK1n-BwNLUSZdZr/s400/skin%25231contrast.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Naticchioni-Rojas</span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;">, Skins series, 2015</span></td></tr>
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And what a great distance the sky has come, from heaven's abode to the mud of the darkroom. We watch her skin-objects with fascination and awe; they are like skin-castles that we want to approach and inhabit, we want to live in them, never mind where they came from. From this moment we feel she is holding out to us something of a life without obligation, without ties and complications, like a gambol in the woods in the company of shadows.<br />
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It is on such occasions that she appears to close in on the rich tradition of cameraless photography, while advancing on it from a unique and undeveloped direction: instead of carving into the emulsion, she lets it fly, instead of creating images from gelatin and silver salts she builds structures out of them. Happily for us, she is not 'taking a picture' any more than a chemigramist or a bleach-etcher does, though some might argue, against popular sentiment, that this is the purest form of photography because is doesn't pretend in the least to represent: it is self-reflexive, it limits itself to ponder and wonder and celebrate the physicality of its own materials. We will not yet speak of beauty.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Pv_VH2aR4yO0IJz-_6JoO8FGXYX51LipgmZjtreEqNBEX_Lzt85V_begUBUzE_WoX9WMsDAahA8tAyfkgYLJlXb4LHN3wCFw9avLyoQdG0my9V4xb06G9bKeuKH6VmzWA29T2aWnxkZa/s1600/skin%25234contrast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="216" data-original-width="324" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Pv_VH2aR4yO0IJz-_6JoO8FGXYX51LipgmZjtreEqNBEX_Lzt85V_begUBUzE_WoX9WMsDAahA8tAyfkgYLJlXb4LHN3wCFw9avLyoQdG0my9V4xb06G9bKeuKH6VmzWA29T2aWnxkZa/s400/skin%25234contrast.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Naticchioni-Rojas</b>,</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Skins series, 2015</span></td></tr>
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Her work is now at a crossroads between so-called photography and real photography and it's too early to tell what she will do next (she may do all of it). The 'skins' series has given us good reasons to be tantalized.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-84055845108457950862017-10-27T09:11:00.000-04:002017-11-20T01:36:52.428-05:00Those painted photographs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOUZkhKqPH7YDg3-EJGmGQmnDuUBH-__4hyQ-8l_wKq_A-1PrS_CjMNR2IQo8c641A88rBuyxDwuF29s5oYBXH360Yr70ZobL1QzlNrjfSVgqIPv8EhyphenhyphenfSmcga3r3PcAGPnvp8ZTPIF8q/s1600/woman+in+overcoat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="128" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOUZkhKqPH7YDg3-EJGmGQmnDuUBH-__4hyQ-8l_wKq_A-1PrS_CjMNR2IQo8c641A88rBuyxDwuF29s5oYBXH360Yr70ZobL1QzlNrjfSVgqIPv8EhyphenhyphenfSmcga3r3PcAGPnvp8ZTPIF8q/s320/woman+in+overcoat.jpg" width="251" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Woman in overcoat</i>, photobooth snapshot, anonymous hand-coloring, ca 1950, private collection</td></tr>
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It's irresistible, the desire to touch the surface of a photo with brush or pen and thereby change it into something more expressive. Often this involves color, whether adding color to a color photo (which is not the same as bringing coals to Newcastle) or adding it to a black and white photo, but it doesn't have to. You may remember a rather <a href="https://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2015/02/from-zombie-prints-to-lazarus-prints.html">delirious post</a> from a few years ago on zombie prints and Lazarus prints (yes, they exist), on bringing prints back to life when you thought they were hopelessly dead. Most of the artistic interventions shown there involved using marker pens to scribble a few lines to highlight or obliterate a figure, or to make a comment, ironic or slyly humorous. Many of those lines were black or white as though in homage to the chemistry, but color works just as well - if not better. Today we're going to look at a few ways color has been exploited to further enhance photos in a variety of artistic practices in recent years, and from this it is hoped the reader may discover ideas that he or she can use in their own work.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw9s8H-6Fb2MdOX0IoLxMkMSgnqNv7LfSGINuTbA6LeyRkuaHfjJ9RNFNYp-ylkpCA5sSLDSmjBsFMDzsSg-sd4P97J0i8Wlos7lGMZnxCWvX2x4wkKjKLdoBvLqk-xXUM7mar7kqIS1Xy/s1600/martha_new.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw9s8H-6Fb2MdOX0IoLxMkMSgnqNv7LfSGINuTbA6LeyRkuaHfjJ9RNFNYp-ylkpCA5sSLDSmjBsFMDzsSg-sd4P97J0i8Wlos7lGMZnxCWvX2x4wkKjKLdoBvLqk-xXUM7mar7kqIS1Xy/s400/martha_new.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Martha Casanave</b>, <i>Girl with device</i>, albumen print, hand-colored, 2009-2016</td></tr>
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Not everyone is aware that coloring a photograph, or hand-coloring as it is commonly called (or hand-tinting), is as old as photography itself. To render the earliest portraits more realistic (always thought to be a good thing) hand-coloring appeared in the 1830s practically with the invention of photography, and soon wealthy clients had their private colorist on call, a matter in their milieu of some prestige. Methods employed by the colorists varied according to substrate, as photographic technology passed in rather short order from metal plates (daguerrotypes, tintypes) to glass plates (wet plate collodion) and finally to paper - I'm sure I'm skipping a step or two. Often a varnish or other medium was applied to the surface beforehand to insure an even adhesion, and water colors, oils, dyes, pastels each had their devotees as the main colorant vehicle. The many manuals written on these efforts are still worth the while to peruse for the serious student of hand-coloring and can be found on the internet.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK9CMk0mzYEn0IC6Kvvsd6LroC27-XMevtbjcXqlZsNHe6nV77hyphenhyphenVzK4UCyIEzxdwRyJMmNmJ34KtFDScLET2vj9QkAqgeOL3AFmRGwx2UdCNCI3CQPeYSaCDExI-bFA0UYS32m0IVcJLn/s1600/Luis+Marquez%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="177" data-original-width="324" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK9CMk0mzYEn0IC6Kvvsd6LroC27-XMevtbjcXqlZsNHe6nV77hyphenhyphenVzK4UCyIEzxdwRyJMmNmJ34KtFDScLET2vj9QkAqgeOL3AFmRGwx2UdCNCI3CQPeYSaCDExI-bFA0UYS32m0IVcJLn/s400/Luis+Marquez%25232.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Luis Vasquez</b>, postcard, hand-colored, ca 1940, private collection</td></tr>
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Yet these developments were not without their detractors in the serious photographic community: many artists saw in hand-coloring a corruption of the pure photographic tones of the emulsion, regarded as sacrosanct - although hypocritically they didn't seem to mind retouching a photo here and there with drops of inks and dyes where necessary. In any event, their fears receded when Kodak introduced the first widely available color film, Kodachrome, in 1935, and demand for hand-coloring slid into gradual decline, becoming no longer commercially viable by 1950 except within certain traditions, like the flamboyant hand-painted postcards from the workshop of Luis Vasquez in Mexico. Traditional hand-coloring, meaning a practice perpetuating the aims, concerns and methods of the earlier era, and often but not exclusively based on the use of Marshall's Photo Oils, a staple of the trade, has today become a niche artisanal activity with its own distinct rewards and pleasures, though perhaps limited in reach. An excellent example of what can be achieved is seen in some of Martha Casanave's work.<br />
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So from the sixties onward artistic intentions in the use of color shifted, with acrylics and gouache beginning to assume a more prominent role; this is especially seen in work where overpainting to the edge of opacity is more crucial than simple tinting. The painted photographs that Saul Leiter executed for his private amusement in the closing decades of the twentieth century, after making a name for himself both in fashion and in street photography, are a case in point. In their lyricism and utter abandon, Leiter has taken the notion of painted photographs to a culmination, so much so that the underlying photograph just nominally provides the support and occasion but otherwise is hardly visible.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGs0Dfct0J3JzgGj2S0f7IL0ETdbguP1hnAfKV8f7aE8kVEFfTbJn7vLctoaDyAhFcaPRG7qHbP1-w1yIFLSX6UhXcpDX2pH7QgcidMeZGDkD6rA4sFfQz2AACHc5eaY1VtDfm2kaB5ov7/s1600/Leiter_new%25233.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="373" data-original-width="299" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGs0Dfct0J3JzgGj2S0f7IL0ETdbguP1hnAfKV8f7aE8kVEFfTbJn7vLctoaDyAhFcaPRG7qHbP1-w1yIFLSX6UhXcpDX2pH7QgcidMeZGDkD6rA4sFfQz2AACHc5eaY1VtDfm2kaB5ov7/s400/Leiter_new%25233.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Saul Leiter</b>, ca. 1990</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBgSw_-4RRfYx6bY25O8T1DDwh8LxocNikzwEUzIdJPDCva8hKLH7yRx6bPLVocPbDBEEpuGq7gOTp7Mbh6LvseeGW-I4cGYsOhQ2AYniUY7znrUVBcQ6lY1yx9YSJNUatFEaGIUPK7IOx/s1600/Leiter_new+%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="207" data-original-width="324" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBgSw_-4RRfYx6bY25O8T1DDwh8LxocNikzwEUzIdJPDCva8hKLH7yRx6bPLVocPbDBEEpuGq7gOTp7Mbh6LvseeGW-I4cGYsOhQ2AYniUY7znrUVBcQ6lY1yx9YSJNUatFEaGIUPK7IOx/s400/Leiter_new+%25232.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Saul Leiter</b>, ca 1990</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPd90gn36yezdQKfKWDpJe8H57Prb994P30knWfffhTmXaLSEdRtYLEJKZomuLm3-EHDmWPxZx_QbAtDXMr5s37zYJisROLYwRVPNn5-KVTvcNwEGQaVy6hkYlfGTZN_jZjYkd2HNR7q6S/s1600/Leiter_new+%25234.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPd90gn36yezdQKfKWDpJe8H57Prb994P30knWfffhTmXaLSEdRtYLEJKZomuLm3-EHDmWPxZx_QbAtDXMr5s37zYJisROLYwRVPNn5-KVTvcNwEGQaVy6hkYlfGTZN_jZjYkd2HNR7q6S/s400/Leiter_new+%25234.jpg" width="323" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saul Leiter, ca 1990</td></tr>
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This leads us to think about other strategies for hand-coloring, if we can be bold enough to group widely disparate approaches under a common heading. We must step back for a moment. At the beginning there was the classic mode of an informed realism, filling in for the poverty of monochrome photography and using materials meant not to cover up but to enliven that photography. It is true that this later became exaggerated at times to the level of kitsch (see <i>Woman in overcoat</i>), but that is not to diminish its accomplishments, for out if it came a body of methods of extreme subtlety and finesse; some of this heritage is alive and well today and put to high artistic purpose - go back and review Casanave's picture <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2014/04/naming-wildflowers-in-desert.html"><i>Wave Machine</i></a> where only the starfish gets hand-colored, the other details having glanced off into a suspicious tangle of background.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXKc34nGNyVlKhROSLWxErDy6MWtL9R4dAzbpXzOMURwyrZFnozCtvywgb3mYW7yUbGtdiivuIYUqnV57Ir4xHOr7oPX7igEOLoilVFlkL-A51T_1vP1imnLq-amPeGh0gJvPI7vX26NA-/s1600/Klein+2_new.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXKc34nGNyVlKhROSLWxErDy6MWtL9R4dAzbpXzOMURwyrZFnozCtvywgb3mYW7yUbGtdiivuIYUqnV57Ir4xHOr7oPX7igEOLoilVFlkL-A51T_1vP1imnLq-amPeGh0gJvPI7vX26NA-/s1600/Klein+2_new.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>William Klein</b>, ca 1960-1990</td></tr>
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William Klein's aggressive daubs over contact sheets from the 1960s is a result of a different meditation, one that looks back into drawers of old prints after years and disavows or re-embraces their attitude across the gap in time with a sort of schoolboy graphism, one that prefigures Lazarus prints and confers a revivified existence while sidestepping responsibilities of ownership.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKsDbMXWBiT21ziznXCnQXCm0TbElYksHAk0TE8vhgmY6_uPI9yYABR3w0nkH3zNX_R9EoA-UUD07kaZnU-Y3GmncIe8EWB4BlW1UkbgdGtQssSfHTtdSUa0xki7tQ_-OXRTHogUKvrawB/s1600/Klein+%25231_new.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="243" data-original-width="324" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKsDbMXWBiT21ziznXCnQXCm0TbElYksHAk0TE8vhgmY6_uPI9yYABR3w0nkH3zNX_R9EoA-UUD07kaZnU-Y3GmncIe8EWB4BlW1UkbgdGtQssSfHTtdSUa0xki7tQ_-OXRTHogUKvrawB/s320/Klein+%25231_new.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>William Klein</b>, ca 1960-1990</td></tr>
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At another extreme is the work of Anselm Kiefer, especially that part of it set in a timeless ether of intellectual history and unfulfilled promise, where multiple shades of grey invoke a retreating but ever-present past. Here graphite and gouachy layers over photographs of uncertain provenance serve up the general mood; in the best of his pictures the effect is disturbing.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVniSDyVgPDhu9nTJL3A66BQWml3j8dlr5qi0oEUapDDajaPYJLKUG5a7vm6kw_5lY5RctWT7-Bc2xOcRKdHlMcp_8oY2IY4WWUA8Oqbgq_Lau81KwT-crR673BDXqo4ROAnMS2cGMDZ-p/s1600/AK+-+Liber+quadratorum+2008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="324" height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVniSDyVgPDhu9nTJL3A66BQWml3j8dlr5qi0oEUapDDajaPYJLKUG5a7vm6kw_5lY5RctWT7-Bc2xOcRKdHlMcp_8oY2IY4WWUA8Oqbgq_Lau81KwT-crR673BDXqo4ROAnMS2cGMDZ-p/s400/AK+-+Liber+quadratorum+2008.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Anselm Kiefer, </b><i>Leonardo Pisano, liber quadratorum</i>, 2008</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDd5rMwcW5lKJxReIik57QlNPrDo7QkJlemFVg8Pv8-hyNUbkSpVeS1gB5z91v0-Vk01FL1SvPIc77xd60ddanvJnCero7zXir-cAH2y27SznYVrj4Ok2KhGWDzT6b1H85fWYodeoqPvcQ/s1600/Kiefer+-+Sefiroth+2002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDd5rMwcW5lKJxReIik57QlNPrDo7QkJlemFVg8Pv8-hyNUbkSpVeS1gB5z91v0-Vk01FL1SvPIc77xd60ddanvJnCero7zXir-cAH2y27SznYVrj4Ok2KhGWDzT6b1H85fWYodeoqPvcQ/s320/Kiefer+-+Sefiroth+2002.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Anselm Kiefer</b>, <i>Sefiroth</i>, 2002</td></tr>
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Though not limited to photo-based work, one of the benefits of working with photos is that you can reprint them endlessly in trying out different painted looks or ways to proceed before you have to commit. Kim Weston in recent years has turned to overpainting his photos of models and dancers, where the method seems well suited to that theatricalized world. Here, in a talk in Carmel, he demonstrates how he can dress and re-dress his models at will, from a given photograph, to gauge the effect.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFg2Rrlxs9m82OY8bto1Wr2fQSyPOnf70Dbkl8PSP66wTmoRVvymcwc9_iANMdfUBh8A9A_uhhtT6XljVxXxi8S92m3DmI4KvhV8maH07zstIc9DiwWfdkKcZhnOFqqH_TPZ7c9ATiaKD0/s1600/Weston_new+%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="324" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFg2Rrlxs9m82OY8bto1Wr2fQSyPOnf70Dbkl8PSP66wTmoRVvymcwc9_iANMdfUBh8A9A_uhhtT6XljVxXxi8S92m3DmI4KvhV8maH07zstIc9DiwWfdkKcZhnOFqqH_TPZ7c9ATiaKD0/s320/Weston_new+%25232.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Kim Weston</b>, from a talk in Carmel June 30, 2012</td></tr>
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So a photograph is more than a picture, it is an opportunity, an open invitation. When poet and singer Todd Colby was gifted with a trove of photographer's calling-cards from the pre-WWI era, he did the natural thing, he painted them. Here are two:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1PaeiCcjrBtvpdzqd5AJ0Kqu-OYLTd5g4QXJs-zGz4dhWfhITDigUBAZPPo9GnxirekgcXcEoCRrw2n0Y7seUz7VhbwVTXI3wxDkoY7-SsXM-_U5BCForVvQWCRsgEoAXN7LAlfxn2aGj/s1600/Colby_new1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1PaeiCcjrBtvpdzqd5AJ0Kqu-OYLTd5g4QXJs-zGz4dhWfhITDigUBAZPPo9GnxirekgcXcEoCRrw2n0Y7seUz7VhbwVTXI3wxDkoY7-SsXM-_U5BCForVvQWCRsgEoAXN7LAlfxn2aGj/s400/Colby_new1.jpg" width="282" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Todd Colby</b>, hand-colored vintage calling-card, 2017</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicJpkVb2xyijl8MOJbH72klbvnBpVqpIJaFd8JFTWQBXfZxco8N2bmwUqbAx9hJmiA4j_L-Sghhs1KX6m1wRkeorTvvmDDaItAVOV1bmKGcQgupWc6e8H8H8qoe6g7Nh0f9MnJktn4mLU5/s1600/Colby_new%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="288" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicJpkVb2xyijl8MOJbH72klbvnBpVqpIJaFd8JFTWQBXfZxco8N2bmwUqbAx9hJmiA4j_L-Sghhs1KX6m1wRkeorTvvmDDaItAVOV1bmKGcQgupWc6e8H8H8qoe6g7Nh0f9MnJktn4mLU5/s320/Colby_new%25232.jpg" width="203" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Todd Colby</b>, hand-colored vintage calling-card, 2017</td></tr>
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These are extraordinary in their simplicity, and show how the artist's hand can change the prosaic into something quite dramatic, bizarre, and (maybe) beautiful. Go Todd!<br />
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To close this post let me point out what should be obvious: that hand-coloring is not limited to the subjects of the real world. In my own work of cameraless photography, untethered as it is to anything we usually call real, I find moments when I have an overwhelming inclination to smear on some paint, just to see what it does.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNIOyGWxhhMApllziKZ5ysQDUSzyM0RNAyegUGoqbkQi2iVLM8183BWHyMPQY8MczyexoXONmGMtlHO4E4LTm1aEsRSymcnLqnGT7fK2uOrfXAOdAXOis-BgqRBwbUrWOt3vqVGWfrEoCg/s1600/Collins+PP%25233.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="506" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNIOyGWxhhMApllziKZ5ysQDUSzyM0RNAyegUGoqbkQi2iVLM8183BWHyMPQY8MczyexoXONmGMtlHO4E4LTm1aEsRSymcnLqnGT7fK2uOrfXAOdAXOis-BgqRBwbUrWOt3vqVGWfrEoCg/s400/Collins+PP%25233.jpg" width="255" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Douglas Collins</b>, etched chemigram with hand-coloring, 2016</td></tr>
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A philosopher once said a picture can be a picture of anything, if you expand the concept of picture sufficiently. Or maybe Todd Colby said it.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-17419619296695479352017-07-28T05:59:00.000-04:002017-07-31T11:27:11.856-04:00'Photography in a narrow sense': Joachim Schulz<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Schulz</b>, <i>Vase with flowers after Daniel Seghers, before 1637</i>, 4/9, 2014-2016</td></tr>
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There are different ways to get into the work of Joachim Schulz, some easy, some more demanding. I took the easy route, poking through lush masses of flowers. Who is heartless enough to resist that? In my carefree summer mood the other day I didn't have a thought in the world for the past or future of photography and I was happy leaving its deconstruction to others. Today what I wanted was fragrance, vibrancy, a delicacy of depth, a fervent softness. By the merest chance some pictures by Schulz, then unknown to me, fell into my lap, the one above being one of them, and yes, that was it - I literally stopped breathing, I was gone. </div>
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But with Schulz there is always a backstory, as I was to learn. There is an object lesson, as if his pictures were moral tales, and often a tipping of the hat to another tradition, old or recent, or to a trail of perception almost lost because it had no champions to claim it until now, until Schulz came along. 'I do photography in a narrow sense,' he says. More about that in a minute - back to the flowers. </div>
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Here's what I know: he photographed, or scanned or downloaded, paintings of flowers by Flemish masters of the 17th century, which was the great period of the cartouche, the bouquet, and the garland, when wealthy burghers regarded no home complete without a painting abrim with flowers. In Antwerp, Ghent, Utrecht and Brussels the production of such works employed hundreds of artists, if not thousands - it was on an industrial scale - not to speak of gardeners because without them you'd be nowhere. While this was the time of Rubens and Breughel, most of the artists chosen by Schulz dedicated themselves exclusively to floral compositions and are not widely known today beyond a small circle of specialists and fans: de Fromantiou, Byss, de Heem. But all were excellent with brush and pigment.</div>
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Next Schulz printed out the images, but not in the usual way. He seems to have purposely jimmied the print nozzle, or perhaps he overrode the controller of the print mechanism - I haven't spoken with the artist so I'm inferring a lot here - to allow abnormal splurges of ink to be discharged onto the print media, whether paper or acetate. Some of you readers may have experienced the same thing but as a problem rather than a gift, when you had a mismatch of ink and media in your inkjet. With Schulz, this surplus ink would pool and flow randomly, to create distorted forms in some areas while leaving other areas basically intact. He didn't rest with this though but continued on, scanning the result back into his computer and printing it out again, again with the amplified print nozzle, to obtain a variation on the first print. He repeated these steps nine times, generating what printmakers call a 'variable edition' of nine. Alternatively you could call each print 'unique', which is what the <a href="http://www.vonlintel.com/">Von Lintel Gallery</a> of Los Angeles does in their current show of his work, <i>Blumenstilleben</i>, or Flower Still Lifes. The prints there are presented as archival digital prints and measure 50 x 35 cm each.</div>
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To illustrate the changes a single image undergoes with this method, below are the first four prints (out of nine) Schulz made from a picture that Jacob van Hulsdonck painted back in 1608. The evolution of the piece is fascinating; in its swerves and readjustments it recalls textbook diagrams of the development of an embryo, or of a city. The concept of time is bound up within it.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRdDbBSsPf1ay2lk5KCuZ2e9nbUmQz-e7DfPJBOqxjx26I11HbPzo42w9fWMFsaOe3AUYeKnkzS4c8cxAIUGXSsa_hddTY6bDwuu4I7_Q4kalf0kaIGl-OExS-yWB7Xn9ut9vAuyx6GAB/s1600/Jacob+van+Hulsdonck+ca+1608+1-9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="338" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRdDbBSsPf1ay2lk5KCuZ2e9nbUmQz-e7DfPJBOqxjx26I11HbPzo42w9fWMFsaOe3AUYeKnkzS4c8cxAIUGXSsa_hddTY6bDwuu4I7_Q4kalf0kaIGl-OExS-yWB7Xn9ut9vAuyx6GAB/s400/Jacob+van+Hulsdonck+ca+1608+1-9.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Schulz</b>, <i>Flowers in a glass vase after Jacob van Hulsdonck, after 1608</i>, 1/9, 2014-16</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Schulz</b>, <i>Flowers in a glass vase after Jacob van Hulsdonck, after 1608</i>, 2/9, 2014-16</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Schulz</b>, <i>Flowers in a glass vase after Jacob van Hulsdonck, after 1608</i>, 3/9, 2014-16</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL34DpGAjMGr6cuct8UwOdQqf387jo_MuUtfputVtjCtYLblxK8u-w0ZFdxHqbKmd5OgvWovkbGrbn4AoebXZJRXtWtQ7PpUz1I2s_ZAbhBvTbzrUppUr2x1wZN8OeMXroue31SBIU3ZtQ/s1600/Jacob+van+Hulsdonck+ca+1608+4-9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="338" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL34DpGAjMGr6cuct8UwOdQqf387jo_MuUtfputVtjCtYLblxK8u-w0ZFdxHqbKmd5OgvWovkbGrbn4AoebXZJRXtWtQ7PpUz1I2s_ZAbhBvTbzrUppUr2x1wZN8OeMXroue31SBIU3ZtQ/s400/Jacob+van+Hulsdonck+ca+1608+4-9.jpg" width="293" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Schulz</b>, <i>Flowers in a glass vase after Jacob van Hulsdonck, after 1608</i>, 4/9, 2014-16</td></tr>
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Schulz brings to the task an incisive sense of modern themes and issues, from the seriality of the variable editions to his repetitive, almost industrialized method of production, in passing by the use of appropriation - taking earlier art and reworking it - a strategy as old as art itself but which in the right hands can still seem fresh and impudent. He is foremost an experimentalist, and his work raises questions about what it is that we're looking at when we look at a photograph: are we the subjects after all, in the end, as we try to build an image from what the world has given us? His earlier work could be viewed as a fairly odd set of photographic queries or conundrums that circle this, without ever arriving: from studies of the faint light emanating from the stage curtains of old movie houses to an essay on the patina coating decaying German bunkers as they slip into the sea.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Schulz</b>, <i>o.T. #3</i>, framed behind glass, 72.5 x145.2 x 4.8 cm, 1999-2001</td></tr>
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As to his flower still lifes, with their quirky shapes drifting lazily off the edge of the paper, their riotous color, it all makes for a highly engaging experience, rivaling what <a href="https://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2014/09/lumens-photograms-chemigrams-new.html">Bobby Bashir</a> is doing more naively out in central California, and so unexpected too when considering his past efforts which make for somewhat dry viewing, truth be told. But these flowers! I wish he would tell me that it's OK to love them. <br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-22108629491377628442017-06-19T10:39:00.001-04:002017-06-19T16:06:21.543-04:00 Push and chance in the work of Song and Yokota<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Ajuan Song</b>, <i>Everything You Know About Love #5</i>, Fuji Crystal C-print on acrylic and dibond, 11x14", 2016</td></tr>
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There is a restlessness, a wayward energy, among young photographers today that we can no longer ignore here at the blog. It is an energy which will take us forward to the next stage of photographic deployment, you can be sure of that; even if we don't always understand it, it is to be applauded. It drowns all our efforts to be meticulous about pictures in the old ways. It has been said that to invent the new you have to break all the rules. But more and more, to our alarm and frozen fascination, it seems the young don't want to even learn the rules, they want to write their own.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Daisuke Yokota</b>, <i>untitled</i>, 39 1/4 x 31", archival pigment print, 2015</td></tr>
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Take Ajuan "AJ" Song, a young Brooklyn-based artist. She owns a Rolleiflex but she hardly uses it anymore: when she points it at a subject she complains that too much of her world, her dreamworld, is left out. She likes the rolling chaos instead that is the chemigram, its unpredictability, its pushback, its surprise, and the thrill she gets when at a critical moment she finds ways to intervene and subdue it - or not subdue it, because that can be fine too, she'll live with that, it's like riding a wave, it's nervy. <br />
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AJ belongs to a tradition that dates back to the origins of the modern ethos. John Cage had said somewhere that clarity is an obstacle to understanding; we can invent our way out of it. In a sense that's what we do with chemigrams and it's what AJ is joyfully grappling with, splashing chemistry with abandon, consorting with ghosts. When you see some of her pictures in the current group show at the Arte Ponte Gallery on West 20th Street (<a href="http://arteponte.com/">arteponte.com</a>) you realize something else too: she has elected to display her work in the very chic and contemporary mould of heavy acrylics and dibond, not in the shopworn, fusty scheme of 'unique original work' so clamored by a diminishing handful of galleries nostalgic for an outflanked model. There is a split in the ranks and AJ has unabashedly chosen her side.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Ajuan Song</b>, <i>Everything You Know About Love #2</i>, Fuji Crystal C-print on acrylic and dibond, 11x14", 2016</td></tr>
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Daisuke Yokota is of the same generation as AJ but has been subverting and reinventing the norms for nearly a decade and he hasn't slowed down yet. Performance art, installations, photography, and photobooks have all been radically reimagined by him; often for example he will create a photobook on the spot before an audience and sell out the limited edition before leaving the building. In 2015 he created a large series of color abstract photographs called, appropriately, <i>Color Photographs</i>, using layers of large-format color film stock which he 'developed' cameralessly and abusively with heat, light, and perhaps acids (help me out here, readers!), then scanned, blew up, possibly re-photographed (a favorite strategy of his) and printed as archival pigment prints. The best of them have a raw unworldly beauty unlike anything I have seen. In interviews however Yokota skirts the word 'beauty'. He speaks of exploring the materiality of film, much the way some of us do in the chemigram community when speaking of the stubborn thereness of the photographic emulsion. An interviewer asked him whether his work channels emotions. 'I never trust the emotional feeling in making works,' he said. 'It's too vulnerable. I don't make work to express my feelings; it's more like burning them.' <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Daisuke Yokota</b>, <i>untitled</i>, 78 x 64", archival pigment print, 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Daisuke Yokota</b>, <i>untitled</i>, 78 x 64", archival pigment print, 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPOCpke4xjK9ArxkulH9HfP-QmsX2SAPuvSP6SZdRyALM3uXDUXuoYgk8od8jebU43XS3zGJJvmVGLWWyJiG2FUwXAQdnNoeurXXJu2XdOywaECFwCU0IA4SxRZn6hbvPO4LU5ZE7n3GFZ/s1600/DY+9-42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="324" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPOCpke4xjK9ArxkulH9HfP-QmsX2SAPuvSP6SZdRyALM3uXDUXuoYgk8od8jebU43XS3zGJJvmVGLWWyJiG2FUwXAQdnNoeurXXJu2XdOywaECFwCU0IA4SxRZn6hbvPO4LU5ZE7n3GFZ/s400/DY+9-42.jpg" width="306" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Daisuke Yokota</b>, <i>untitled</i>, 39 1/4 x 31", archival pigment print, 2015</td></tr>
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Yokota's work has been seen at Paris Photo, Photo London, Rencontres d'Arles and elsewhere, even at ICP in New York. Most recently the Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam (<a href="http://foam.org/">foam.org</a>) sent a group show to the Red Hook Labs in Brooklyn (<a href="http://redhooklabs.com/">redhooklabs.com</a>) featuring Yokota, among others of similar avant-garde bent. He lives and works in Tokyo. His gallery is the <a href="http://gptokyo.jp/">G/P Gallery</a> of Tokyo.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-58870854331095553772017-05-22T00:03:00.000-04:002017-05-24T10:41:06.987-04:00Denis Brihat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Brihat</b>, <i>Lichen</i>, oxidation, 40x50 cm, 1975</td></tr>
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Denis Brihat, once you see his work in person, and you really must - there's no other way to appreciate it - never leaves that part of your brain that thinks about photography. Even when you're right up into it, even when you're literally breathing on his immaculately sculpted surfaces, you have to persevere to truly comprehend it. How can it be so intense and focused, yet so delicate?<br />
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His subjects, they are simple: flowers, fruits, and vegetables from the garden outside his back door in the south of France - but it's then that you realize you've never seen these subjects quite in this way before. They are transformed. The poppies, spurges, dandelions, onions and lichens are as if touched by a hand and an eye that believes unreservedly in them, that wants nothing more than to give to these humble organisms underfoot a merited reverence in the pantheon of nature. He places them at center stage, rendering them an austere homage. And Denis, in ways substantially unchanged, working slowly at the rhythm of the change of seasons in the country, has been doing this for more than forty years. His accomplishment is extraordinary.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIu-h7zJaIWYGCbd0d8DyL8JNaLYZKO55YnEMePAQcoqGCEaYgJk0lxisWVNLofA0Spq_UzgCuxUapMfJLJG-JqsMHPNI5XYlYFF4evDjhAXCLDR3mpojLvmMJGIJMxcMp9ybtiCuZhqR/s1600/p.134+%2527color+doc%2527+scan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIu-h7zJaIWYGCbd0d8DyL8JNaLYZKO55YnEMePAQcoqGCEaYgJk0lxisWVNLofA0Spq_UzgCuxUapMfJLJG-JqsMHPNI5XYlYFF4evDjhAXCLDR3mpojLvmMJGIJMxcMp9ybtiCuZhqR/s400/p.134+%2527color+doc%2527+scan.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Brihat</b>, <i>Lichen,</i> photographic etching, 13x18 cm, 1981</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqEsKRGUo6NtpSsFJ3yirGVhB8RxrZ_inK9gyS5qgi6DHsConJ23olE9y0ZeAkUFKGSxiwn4i_KW_BVHx2ablREBps10mTx6wkTOTiW0K_TZO7kCC-WTM5gEF9QmNmJxAzwKTRsWxNM5lz/s1600/p.207.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqEsKRGUo6NtpSsFJ3yirGVhB8RxrZ_inK9gyS5qgi6DHsConJ23olE9y0ZeAkUFKGSxiwn4i_KW_BVHx2ablREBps10mTx6wkTOTiW0K_TZO7kCC-WTM5gEF9QmNmJxAzwKTRsWxNM5lz/s400/p.207.jpg" width="387" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Brihat</b>, <i>Wild Carrot Blossom</i>, photographic etching, 50x60 cm, 1988<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz3p64EXt4Fg2AMr9Fs_mh9O2_8vNyT-kby53LhV3IDvYlDRxBlbky0wZEzDRAlUXUAHdve5SiL7eYCyODDlIzUdd_Jw2aHCxle4YwrtBAKwaow9P6ZkOrdnCz2muViBvcbrgUWYqL_CME/s1600/p.184.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz3p64EXt4Fg2AMr9Fs_mh9O2_8vNyT-kby53LhV3IDvYlDRxBlbky0wZEzDRAlUXUAHdve5SiL7eYCyODDlIzUdd_Jw2aHCxle4YwrtBAKwaow9P6ZkOrdnCz2muViBvcbrgUWYqL_CME/s400/p.184.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Brihat</b>, <i>Slice of Kiwi</i>, iron toning, 50x60 cm, 1990</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaicHdfVnOyms4JgNIMzYfZ5bU3FxhhctflzopdGKA7ySjzKB24D5Cs-XcwO5MPVbIMGjfuPon-DD9XICfYe9JXaF8P8TDbxPPdEGl2_g50YlvLsxY4uP8Evji7ire-cRTy9REw2ZSf5W/s1600/p.185.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaicHdfVnOyms4JgNIMzYfZ5bU3FxhhctflzopdGKA7ySjzKB24D5Cs-XcwO5MPVbIMGjfuPon-DD9XICfYe9JXaF8P8TDbxPPdEGl2_g50YlvLsxY4uP8Evji7ire-cRTy9REw2ZSf5W/s320/p.185.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Brihat</b>, <i>Crumpled Poppy</i>, gold toning, 30x40 cm, 1994</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3RqDd-lYBDmsarVU9qOXzXCxrm5LhJug9JhKo1VrTQwoSIbF4o0-DFnJRLI05YFktAi-I4ScR9DHByNGwzpDxkD3BS0wLNKpxwuYAeI3M_1UVK6w5q3nkbomdMpkjjvN-69c0dL3AXpZx/s1600/p.227-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3RqDd-lYBDmsarVU9qOXzXCxrm5LhJug9JhKo1VrTQwoSIbF4o0-DFnJRLI05YFktAi-I4ScR9DHByNGwzpDxkD3BS0wLNKpxwuYAeI3M_1UVK6w5q3nkbomdMpkjjvN-69c0dL3AXpZx/s400/p.227-2.jpg" width="346" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Brihat</b>, <i>Heart of Buttercup</i>, sulfuration, 40x50 cm, 1999</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvfOneyULFqQgPMuNa6NvlTiJg6zNK91uGYtt97RKZ-fG0gPkeK_DOT94NVi1pTHIXVYFyhQHw7_KhknF0ovHEV8qKlrT46F_RmajrIYWv4Y2L0w5MRBEOLMgmmRNDe1-CemUX7E8r5KME/s1600/p.208-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvfOneyULFqQgPMuNa6NvlTiJg6zNK91uGYtt97RKZ-fG0gPkeK_DOT94NVi1pTHIXVYFyhQHw7_KhknF0ovHEV8qKlrT46F_RmajrIYWv4Y2L0w5MRBEOLMgmmRNDe1-CemUX7E8r5KME/s320/p.208-2.jpg" width="241" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Brihat</b>, <i>Yarrow Blossom</i>, photographic etching, 10x15 cm, 1970</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF46IoqdXCUThGY0TlMRzTR7EshHfSubq-r0sTxUQNnzVuE8fKMTgkVcyBK4HaZiGLlRyF1TKVkUQP_Ni-Wjmgc4Oe5YZOSZOAogijRXHGwlABfPN4AYWxfr4ppr7GOXTdIJMUk3deA_FW/s1600/p186+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF46IoqdXCUThGY0TlMRzTR7EshHfSubq-r0sTxUQNnzVuE8fKMTgkVcyBK4HaZiGLlRyF1TKVkUQP_Ni-Wjmgc4Oe5YZOSZOAogijRXHGwlABfPN4AYWxfr4ppr7GOXTdIJMUk3deA_FW/s400/p186+.jpg" width="297" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Brihat</b>, <i>Heart of Poppy</i>, selenium and gold toning, 40x50cm, 2000</td></tr>
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His pictures start life on black and white photo paper, but he often modifies the images through toning, beginning with selenium and marching through a fair list of the transition metals, well known for their ability to form colored compounds: gold, iron, vanadium, copper. He also has developed his own method for treating images with sulfur compounds, which he calls sulfuration. At its simplest, think of silver sulfide, which if left on an image after incomplete washing will produce a brownish cast. You can arrive at sulfiding by using sodium sulfate, thiourea, or other materials, and by adjusting temperature, agitation, and concentration you may wind up, if you wish, with some nice sepia tones. If you're new at this, try <i>The Photographer's Toning Book</i> (2003) by Tim Rudman, which has all the information you'll need. Of course when Denis was starting out he didn't have that, and had to discover methods on his own. Still, some of the books of a general nature from that earlier era remain incomparable - I'm thinking of Pierre Glafkides' <i>Chimie et Physique Photographiques</i> (1976, 4th ed.), which very likely inspired him in his researches.<br />
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So from the beginning, in the 1960s, Denis found himself engaged in a private, unremitting dialog with the silver gelatin of the photographic emulsion. The primacy of silver was overthrown; in its place other metals were given their say. Soon he began to question the place of gelatin itself. He and his friend Jean-Pierre Sudre, similarly motivated, studied early reports on the manipulation of gelatin and gained insights from clues widely scattered over the literature. A researcher at Kodak in England named A. Marriage had published in the<i> British Journal of Photography</i> (1944) a description of a way to excoriate the gelatin wherever silver grains had formed while leaving the white areas untouched, and with this in mind, or ideas very much like this, the pair embarked on a long course of experimentation, trading ideas and results over many Provençal dinners. In time they chose what worked best and settled on a methodology, Brihat naming it 'grignotage' while Sudre favored 'mordançage'. They shared an approach: copper chloride, hydrogen peroxide, and acetic acid, and each took it in a direction in tune with their vision. [A modern practitioner is Brittany Nelson some of whose work can be seen in a <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2011/06/iterative-art-of-brittany-nelson.html">blogpost here</a>.]<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from a retrospective in Campredon, 2012</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a nook in the studio</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denis Brihat</td></tr>
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Eventually, for Denis, the surface of a picture which had been treated with this new process - for convenience and for now we shall call the process 'bleach-etch', a name given to it by some of the first researchers - was suggestive of the acid-biting of an etching on a copper plate, with its reliefs and depressions. He dropped 'grignotage' (nibbling) and renamed it 'gravure photographique' or photographic etching. He liked the feeling of a third dimension, the feeling that, in a small way, it approached sculpture; it seemed to validate the notion that these fruits and flowers exist within the world, not on a flat surface, that the depth (however small) gives them the power they deserve. Several pictures above use the technique, although the evidence is hard to demonstrate unless the reader is already intimately familiar with the technique's capablities and limitations - a large subject best left for another time. In the hands of Denis Brihat, a consummate craftsman as well as artist, the telltale signs are concealed by his rigorously controlled redeveloping after bleach-etch, and perhaps by his fiddling with his beloved metal salts.<br />
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We are thus led back to our point of departure, that this work must really be seen to be appreciated. You could say this of much that is great, but this time we insist. In Paris his dealer is <a href="https://www.galeriecameraobscura.fr/">Galerie Camera Obscura</a>. In New York it is the <a href="http://www.nailyaalexandergallery.com/">Nailya Alexander Gallery</a>.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-7442455878510517772017-04-08T07:51:00.000-04:002017-04-08T15:51:15.794-04:00Nolan Preece goes on national tour <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>High Tide</i>, 16x20", 2016</td></tr>
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Nolan Preece's chemigrams have acquired a new look in the past couple of years, and if you haven't been paying close attention it's time you did because they are as beautiful as they are accomplished. We first noticed his explorations into landscape in <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2016/06/preece-at-wickiser-gallery.html">his show at the Wickiser Gallery</a> in 2016, and this penchant is now on full display at the New York Hall of Science in a sweeping exhibit of 30 works which runs until May 21 before continuing on a national tour. <br />
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So what is new? Well, in a way everything. First, he has succeeded in achieving a consistency of theme that had eluded him earlier as he pursued the many delights of the darkroom. He has managed to mesh his newfound ecological focus with a quietly balanced imagery and a more sober palette. Gone, for now at least, are the flashy, often wanton displays of pyrotechnics that made him a revered master in both the cameraless community and among surrealists but probably cost him points with gallerists and critics. His long career as ecologist, teacher, backpacker, and picture-framer in the High Sierra desert of Nevada has closed on him and grown its way into his art: he has begun to feel his responsibilities and they are heavy. In the best sense his present production is a work of engagement and resolution.<br />
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So if you can't get out immediately to Queens to see it at the NYHS, we'll try to satisfy you with a few of these superb pictures. Here goes.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoWriMbItBaW4ERVIQ6zbZgY9Nm38uFJZM0cYWJEO81gNGDDvPMSDKFhyphenhyphenHmijltsDl6jM6VYiMY4F_JtYBMbbezkOc2lhhWjLxbzlxk-W8n-3PceL3CTvFjkLDl7hjwuAmxok5GOTiow7y/s1600/In+The+Thicket_WR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoWriMbItBaW4ERVIQ6zbZgY9Nm38uFJZM0cYWJEO81gNGDDvPMSDKFhyphenhyphenHmijltsDl6jM6VYiMY4F_JtYBMbbezkOc2lhhWjLxbzlxk-W8n-3PceL3CTvFjkLDl7hjwuAmxok5GOTiow7y/s1600/In+The+Thicket_WR.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>In The Thicket</i>, 20x16", 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDgBR7gIhF70be8-UeRumXHKY_s5NUKP3uYG86W09oeFdxAsLiPaVhOAbIY0VuAkbLFwiE3tP4HmxLbLiu7mWGKdDfKww2P7HfBHmZD6Db_YYg-_pfCmIEMswSRgOlVsd4s67BcBhE_32p/s1600/Summit_WR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDgBR7gIhF70be8-UeRumXHKY_s5NUKP3uYG86W09oeFdxAsLiPaVhOAbIY0VuAkbLFwiE3tP4HmxLbLiu7mWGKdDfKww2P7HfBHmZD6Db_YYg-_pfCmIEMswSRgOlVsd4s67BcBhE_32p/s400/Summit_WR.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Summit</i>, 16x20", 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirZT8upOhefXRV8BARuD_bgu0i5Bqqx5aQz7Ffbfu5wRrQ3yHD1kuVksGmEKTMSkV7YncrCijmuk5Z23CRf8YgPKEbQiFwWioLVOfsIiwZtyGMmCks9kyhhMHfeNiVLjLnvVEJ4yh3uikf/s1600/Cavern_WR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirZT8upOhefXRV8BARuD_bgu0i5Bqqx5aQz7Ffbfu5wRrQ3yHD1kuVksGmEKTMSkV7YncrCijmuk5Z23CRf8YgPKEbQiFwWioLVOfsIiwZtyGMmCks9kyhhMHfeNiVLjLnvVEJ4yh3uikf/s400/Cavern_WR.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Cavern</i>, 16x24", 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK4yyjbDc_fxHKiZWbDY41V2oaeSoPU18yQpZdSdB7xbseyM0douDgxFtR8so_HIHdiQtMxc08LDVoZw1GtfjZEBlpv3MafHm-86ZDatk-g5wYUhYhHOmoumf2Atr2ta1xEb5O9Q0uel9b/s1600/Riparian_WR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK4yyjbDc_fxHKiZWbDY41V2oaeSoPU18yQpZdSdB7xbseyM0douDgxFtR8so_HIHdiQtMxc08LDVoZw1GtfjZEBlpv3MafHm-86ZDatk-g5wYUhYhHOmoumf2Atr2ta1xEb5O9Q0uel9b/s400/Riparian_WR.jpg" width="396" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Riparian</i>, 16x16", 2016</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggsdwLHmVanBE4Xme4IPvLEWcXEtYLz7YSVxm34wKWgM8VyTYtXE3NukG1wH7zuoqQvVpv2B3BiEGfQmVP3VF1lxIpPzmsVachE0CJ7YgXDv6M2CDXxEQ1_HOzAaV5CK5hgUMqs_3f1lui/s1600/At+Forest%2527s+Edge_WR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggsdwLHmVanBE4Xme4IPvLEWcXEtYLz7YSVxm34wKWgM8VyTYtXE3NukG1wH7zuoqQvVpv2B3BiEGfQmVP3VF1lxIpPzmsVachE0CJ7YgXDv6M2CDXxEQ1_HOzAaV5CK5hgUMqs_3f1lui/s400/At+Forest%2527s+Edge_WR.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>At Forest's Edge</i>, 16x20", 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivcPZn50DXuCr3vW1Zk5SSccXf_BQpkDeALR6fMYN4VeExl9ggLnMpT9HkVpAYJv1-mNnf2kdlFZgnOaovN0TcegiEUCFHod76u37hrCJLs51I31B_kBjjbq0PyUMxsMS7j3qZyLDPGC5s/s1600/Woodland_WR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivcPZn50DXuCr3vW1Zk5SSccXf_BQpkDeALR6fMYN4VeExl9ggLnMpT9HkVpAYJv1-mNnf2kdlFZgnOaovN0TcegiEUCFHod76u37hrCJLs51I31B_kBjjbq0PyUMxsMS7j3qZyLDPGC5s/s400/Woodland_WR.jpg" width="325" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Preece</b>, <i>Woodland</i>, 20x16", 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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The prints are taken from the original chemigram plates as archival pigment prints on either Epson Velvet or Epson Exhibition paper in editions of 10, using the K3 inkset. The tour will make stops, substantially unchanged, in Gadsen, AL, Anderson, IN, Elko, NV, and Macon, GA, among other destinations. For further information contact Nolan Preece directly through his website.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-22799531809059403872017-03-09T03:50:00.000-05:002017-03-10T03:07:58.468-05:00A few facts about this picture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieQxcil3z08oihdf3JsZmOWjmWRwB-1RR2s1iWOuMjU92LH6PfgoY-oON3bvaYnPwd6ThOGiLV5AeXUevNYNANH0xQvTAGeKL3k5Lkrz6DOo8fql9kwl5odTakNj_stwOxiYiVSyNJLmr0/s1600/081516CH-8-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieQxcil3z08oihdf3JsZmOWjmWRwB-1RR2s1iWOuMjU92LH6PfgoY-oON3bvaYnPwd6ThOGiLV5AeXUevNYNANH0xQvTAGeKL3k5Lkrz6DOo8fql9kwl5odTakNj_stwOxiYiVSyNJLmr0/s1600/081516CH-8-web.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Douglas Collins,</b> <i>untitled chemigram</i>, 2016</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
An exhibition of chemigrams has just gone up in the project space at Manhattan Graphics Center, curation by Rich Turnbull, featuring a handful of in-house artists active in this flourishing (and doggedly frustrating) area: Edgar Hartley, Franco Marinai, Jay Judge, David Thomas, myself, and Rich. Just local work by local folks. Though it's only been up a few days (it runs to the end of March), it's already attracting notice around the city, not the least for the picture above. Let me make a few technical comments about this picture, just so you don't have to keep asking and we can silence the chatterers. <br />
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First off, it's on Foma FB, my go-to paper for chemigrams after years of experimenting with others. To be precise - I go off precision on this quite easily - I believe it was the Foma VC FB 132 warmtone matte I was using, from an open box laying about in my chemigram shed deep in the mountains of the central California coast, but it could have been another. It could have been the 532-II VC warmtone as well, or one of the others on baryta paper; I binge on Foma from time to time and try them all. In this case I'm going to stick with the 132. Or was it the 131 - but what's in a digit?<br />
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While I often can't distinguish all the subtleties in the various types of Foma, this I will say: the esteemed company's literature on what I will now call 'my paper' actually confirms my experience of it, and so I'm happy to quote them directly:<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The paper is manufactured using a special silver chlorobromide emulsion
that gives the silver image a brown-green to warm-brown tone that can further
be influenced by the type of developer used. The paper base involved is colored
in compliance with the tone of the developed silver. This accentuates a rich
scale of warm halftones ranging from light cream up to saturated brown-to-green
black ones. </span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Note the second sentence. It seems to say that the paper takes cues from the tone of the silver, on a shifting and certainly sliding scale friendly to brown and green<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">; even more,</span> it hints </span>that secret signals are being passed for which we can only be passive spectators<span style="font-family: inherit;">, that cause and <span style="font-family: inherit;">effect are here incalcu<span style="font-family: inherit;">lable or <span style="font-family: inherit;">at least radically nonlinear. </span></span></span></span>P<span style="font-family: inherit;">retty amazing if true.</span> Those Czechs !<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>And I haven't even gotten to <span style="font-family: inherit;">flagging the first sentence about the <span style="font-family: inherit;">tone push</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">by</span> the type of developer,<span style="font-family: inherit;"> which is a job for a separate blog post altogether<span style="font-family: inherit;"> and perhaps a major experiment by our testing lab, the N<span style="font-family: inherit;">FP</span>TL.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'll <span style="font-family: inherit;">give</span> you a detail that ill<span style="font-family: inherit;">ustrates how attractive this paper can be. Here's the bottom <span style="font-family: inherit;">left</span> corner <span style="font-family: inherit;">blown up:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-2fE1VNFSyLwNeAeeWPY7tDwDTzimTw0IHaRIoKVYEOis_t2yjTHz_l4nkH1GqiQAE750GR_1X0azruQLmPaWE1RWGtvxCyECgK24zjHJKzlotCxr7WYfVbcrh606bPLKbclNIQ2pDDQ5/s1600/detail-2-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-2fE1VNFSyLwNeAeeWPY7tDwDTzimTw0IHaRIoKVYEOis_t2yjTHz_l4nkH1GqiQAE750GR_1X0azruQLmPaWE1RWGtvxCyECgK24zjHJKzlotCxr7WYfVbcrh606bPLKbclNIQ2pDDQ5/s1600/detail-2-web.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, lower left corner</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When the large black area was exposed - all at once - to the action of<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>concentrated developer<span style="font-family: inherit;">, the silver halides in the emulsion<span style="font-family: inherit;"> w<span style="font-family: inherit;">ere</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">stripped of their halogens</span></span> in a sudden <span style="font-family: inherit;">rushed</span> explosion of activity<span style="font-family: inherit;">;</span> now extremely dense<span style="font-family: inherit;"> and dark and still carrying chemical momentum</span>, some molecules appear to have s<span style="font-family: inherit;">kidded</span> off, to tarnish and embed themselves in the surrounding fringe areas previously blanched by fixer.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;">And</span> I confess, this is an effect I often seek in my work, as those who know me will recogniz<span style="font-family: inherit;">e: it doesn't happen by accident <span style="font-family: inherit;">On one level, t</span></span>his particular piece could be said to derive its drama from exactly this and no more.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But we should go further, we should withdraw to a <span style="font-family: inherit;">larger vantage point<span style="font-family: inherit;"> to discuss other <span style="font-family: inherit;">qualiti<span style="font-family: inherit;">es in th<span style="font-family: inherit;">e</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">p<span style="font-family: inherit;">icture</span></span>.</span></span></span> How about resists, what can we say <span style="font-family: inherit;">about them</span>? How d<span style="font-family: inherit;">id they fare? There were two resists, a large flat homogeneous one in the lower part<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">, </span>which was Golden MSA varnish applied at full strength with a sponge brush, and a spray of Golden MSA from a pressurized can in the upper part.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> The spray was applied sparingly and at an angle, so that i<span style="font-family: inherit;">t was least concentrated at the top and formed a penumbra at its lower border. <span style="font-family: inherit;">During the <span style="font-family: inherit;">to<span style="font-family: inherit;">-and-fro of the chemigram procedure, this area gradually acquired its tone, a soft mixture of lights and darks. </span></span></span>To get th<span style="font-family: inherit;">is right wasn't easy, and several attempts were discarded or confined to derivative pi<span style="font-family: inherit;">ctures.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> As <span style="font-family: inherit;">for</span> the large flat <span style="font-family: inherit;">resist</span> below it, the<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;">challenge there was to remove it in a single <span style="font-family: inherit;">attack</span>, as one piece, and keep <span style="font-family: inherit;">the area beneath </span>untouched by any chemistry until the last moment, when it was finally plunged into developer and su<span style="font-family: inherit;">bmerged uniformly. Again, not especiall<span style="font-family: inherit;">y </span>easy.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6HWuZndBjnqtMDWSWuEhSIN0KGWckul4izbKL0At7n5ZjjISZYkM5COnkvKDsYbgT_wEGD6x0Bim0uZDYXPXP2Vt1qZSKL9WHcikxm6qsa0ALk-o12AjWeD9qAnMcXy4F8_gGAkVNfpoc/s1600/detail-1-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6HWuZndBjnqtMDWSWuEhSIN0KGWckul4izbKL0At7n5ZjjISZYkM5COnkvKDsYbgT_wEGD6x0Bim0uZDYXPXP2Vt1qZSKL9WHcikxm6qsa0ALk-o12AjWeD9qAnMcXy4F8_gGAkVNfpoc/s200/detail-1-web.jpg" width="170" />O</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, interface</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A f</span>inal <span style="font-family: inherit;">word</span>: <span style="font-family: inherit;">i</span>t w<span style="font-family: inherit;">as printed in an edition of 4 <span style="font-family: inherit;">as a<span style="font-family: inherit;"> pigment print on Ha<span style="font-family: inherit;">hnemuhle R<span style="font-family: inherit;">ag<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> using the extended UltraChrome inkset for the Epson Stylus Pro 11880 printer.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span>T</span>he original plat<span style="font-family: inherit;">e, slightly smaller but otherwise identical, <span style="font-family: inherit;">remains</span> on display at Art Intersection in Gilbert<span style="font-family: inherit;">, Arizona, <span style="font-family: inherit;">thro<span style="font-family: inherit;">ugh April 15</span></span>.</span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * * *</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i><span style="font-size: small;"><u>other current chemigram shows in New York City</u></span></i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Mille Falcaro</b>, Soho Photo, February 8 - March 4</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>sohophoto.com/exhibitions/archive/february-2017-exhibitions/ </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Eva Nikolova</b>, Columbia University, Wallach Art Gallery, Feb 18-May 13</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>columbia.edu/cu/wallach/exhibitions </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Nolan Preece</b>, New York Hall of Science, March 4 - May 21</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>nysci.org/event/nolan-preece-chemigram-landscapes/</i></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></span>
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-11925130507356785112017-01-22T08:12:00.000-05:002017-05-25T20:06:13.756-04:00Martha's tears, on view in Arizona<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Casanave</b>, <i>Anatomy of a Tear, No. 932</i>. 2016</td></tr>
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Martha Casanave has been a friend and colleague for many years and today occupies a distinguished place in the community of the cameraless. What we didn't know about her was that some while ago she had conceived a most peculiar and private project: she'd been collecting her own tears in little vials, day in and day out, and storing them on microscope slides. No one knew! Nor can we even begin to guess at the cause of these tears, whether grief, sorrow, loneliness, disappointment, the lightness of being, existential joy - or all of that and possibly more, thrown in together. According to those who know her best, never over this period did she make any outward display of heightened agitation or exaltation, bereavement or crush: nothing worthy of a tear. If we'd known of her true state, we might have considered intervening. In public she has always seemed fairly normal and unruffled - outspoken, yes, but that's no reason for choking up. Yet here we are. Her private life was deeper that we thought.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the artist collects a tear</td></tr>
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Happily for us, she recently chose to shed the veil of secrecy and offer her tears to the world. She has printed a selection of them, using a special microscope devised by her friend Chris, an equipment guru, and are on display at Art Intersection outside Phoenix until February 25, within a larger show called <a href="https://artintersection.com/event/independent-presence-exhibition/">Independent Presence</a> that features current work by a band of woman photographers from Monterey, California. With a nod to the pioneers of microphotography of the Victorian Age - several of them it turns out were women - Martha's contribution is entitled <i>Explorations through a Fabricated Microscope: A Compendium of Tears</i>.<br />
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In looking at these beautiful images, we tread carefully: we feel we are somehow going where we are not allowed, but we can't help ourselves, we are powerless, we are drawn in. It feels a bit obscene. And yet there is a curious properness to everything too, a modesty, a primness, even though she is baring intimate recesses of her soul. Very nineteenth century you could say. She'll reply by telling you that's her favorite place in time because that's when photography was invented : it's her crowd. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwIkNNWWwtXPlGagFvw1QUq2mTrouKMw6M5kcF3Q9_PCpOrAJDJDv6ya0OXKVCiqbVmdlhlXCaDlHek_ryTodI3WpHRQdLuv2IYYR7ytY96hzTHkL-tW6xIypHai89SEn7aUc4hHc5in2C/s1600/%25231012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwIkNNWWwtXPlGagFvw1QUq2mTrouKMw6M5kcF3Q9_PCpOrAJDJDv6ya0OXKVCiqbVmdlhlXCaDlHek_ryTodI3WpHRQdLuv2IYYR7ytY96hzTHkL-tW6xIypHai89SEn7aUc4hHc5in2C/s400/%25231012.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Casanave</b>, <i>Anatomy of a Tear, No. 1012</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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A whiff of victoriana in fact is everywhere in the presentation: in the vignetting of the images, in the
cursive script of the identifications, adding further to the
charm. Has she decorated her work in this way to distance herself from the intensity of the emotions behind the tears, enabling her at last to go public with them? We cannot say, but it's plausible. The separation in time to the present from underlying events can be seen as an additional buffer. Despite this, she reports that in finally printing them last year, after so long a wait, the emotions often came flooding back and the experience of doing it was stressful and upsetting in the extreme.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5g9zFqOydj_Fdxzmncp7Wvheyr3No0nQCL_SfumerC_cgsHeIoUPxTh2gY91RHeRln0SCp3odRMWKxOdA72mw9RtnQWzm-krZwdYUzIby4jgYgagGSzFeUN6KxPv-Oi1Z2Pt_FyWBOgf/s1600/%2523908.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5g9zFqOydj_Fdxzmncp7Wvheyr3No0nQCL_SfumerC_cgsHeIoUPxTh2gY91RHeRln0SCp3odRMWKxOdA72mw9RtnQWzm-krZwdYUzIby4jgYgagGSzFeUN6KxPv-Oi1Z2Pt_FyWBOgf/s400/%2523908.jpg" width="398" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Casanave</b>, <i>Anatomy of a Tear, No. 908</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Casanave</b>, <i>Anatomy of a Tear, No. 1005</i>. 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1klAcET-sPQgsPKGX-DHQxTecnG-YLPDixy383dyP5i2purCyTsRe39HDPt_5kLauaM2q-j_aJJp5JH9zW09bv70ViB0sBrMnxzejbpVjKSPWxXqZHEJ0hPj-dDaMfkM56iZgtVUB_cAw/s1600/%2523980.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1klAcET-sPQgsPKGX-DHQxTecnG-YLPDixy383dyP5i2purCyTsRe39HDPt_5kLauaM2q-j_aJJp5JH9zW09bv70ViB0sBrMnxzejbpVjKSPWxXqZHEJ0hPj-dDaMfkM56iZgtVUB_cAw/s400/%2523980.jpg" width="395" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Casanave</b>, <i>Anatomy of a Tear, No. 980</i>. 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGKWuQm1gRJLiHmIbYt85L9FWx2dfgBHpoKKelMLCT-ne9YFOiK1qlGA7HnvQQDGz8iZEiOAONGKIQTib7keY6etWy5QJI5ks3KtTzEcTAep5hnxJRjuINQTpwH6zsQAdYpLQTC_jHGwo/s1600/%2523957.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGKWuQm1gRJLiHmIbYt85L9FWx2dfgBHpoKKelMLCT-ne9YFOiK1qlGA7HnvQQDGz8iZEiOAONGKIQTib7keY6etWy5QJI5ks3KtTzEcTAep5hnxJRjuINQTpwH6zsQAdYpLQTC_jHGwo/s400/%2523957.jpg" width="387" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Casanave</b>, <i>Anatomy of a Tear, No. 957</i>. 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5h2qr4rc7MMQTezVoSgb_XTq0301MDuzwJUF4Ig8ExtjxfyL1VjpxOHSgseDzIKviN0GDo9kjDN-YqUmBmd_VaZ0OPVqyQubABjbvpBCgKV1FDpKhTCxCqcSRKmCCaciiQJQ8M_8ys4d/s1600/%2523942.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5h2qr4rc7MMQTezVoSgb_XTq0301MDuzwJUF4Ig8ExtjxfyL1VjpxOHSgseDzIKviN0GDo9kjDN-YqUmBmd_VaZ0OPVqyQubABjbvpBCgKV1FDpKhTCxCqcSRKmCCaciiQJQ8M_8ys4d/s400/%2523942.jpg" width="398" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Casanave</b>, <i>Anatomy of a Tear, No. 942</i>. 2016</td></tr>
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For the poets, the tear has long held a special position as poetic object, helped by its pearl shape and its unexpected appearance in the eye of the beloved. John Donne, writing in 1601 in <i>A Valediction: Of Weeping</i> to the lady he would marry, gets right into it: 'Let me pour forth my tears before thy face.' Tears are as metaphors for the round globe of the earth, everything
is reflected in their concave surface - you, your face, your world, and my tears are a part of you because they come from you, as yours do from me; and when they join, 'heaven is dissolved'. Tears lead to a rapturous dissolution, all tears do. You stagger, you have grown suddenly weak, you fall down, but in bliss.<br />
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When Martha was asked which tears she found the most beautiful she said the saddest ones. She didn't hesitate.<br />
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Of her books, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Martha-Casanave-Explorations-Imaginary-Coastline/dp/155595278X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485082869&sr=8-1&keywords=martha+casanave"><i>Explorations along an Imaginary Coastline</i></a> (2006) is the one closest in feeling to this new work, and should be added to your collection. <br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-22797007648589510212016-12-26T16:27:00.000-05:002017-01-01T08:57:22.524-05:00Edward Burtynsky's new pictures: his best yet?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Burtynsky</b>,<i> Salt Pan #16, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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I dropped in on <a href="http://www.howardgreenberg.com/">Howard Greenberg</a> the other day on my way home from Tom Gitterman's, since they'd lately been showing some alchemic things designed to add, as I imagined it, a needed chunk of spice to the usual fare of big-name conventional shows, and I wanted to see more of that. I'm referring specifically to their alternative show of last September, curated by Jerry Spagnoli, with <a href="http://www.howardgreenberg.com/exhibitions/a-new-and-mysterious-art/selected-works?view=slider#2">Adam Fuss's daguerrotypes</a> and <a href="http://www.howardgreenberg.com/exhibitions/a-new-and-mysterious-art/selected-works?view=slider#24">Sally Mann's wet-plate ambrotypes</a> catching my eye in a great, unanticipated feast of alternative on East 57th Street. I had no right to expect to be blessed twice in a year but that's no reason not to hope.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Burtynsky</b>,<i> Salt Pan #23, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, <i>Salt Pan #25</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Burtynsky</b>,<i> Salt Pan #5, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India</i>, 2016</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Burtynsky</b>,<i> Salt Pan #29, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, <i>Salt Pan #25</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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So frankly I was blindsided by Edward Burtynsky's new pictures, the <i>Salt Pan</i> series, on display till the end of the year (a parallel, broader sampling of his work was running until recently at the <a href="http://www.brycewolkowitz.com/">Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery</a> in Chelsea).<br />
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Burtynsky is an inescapable presence these days in the swankier venues and the best museums. He has been making outsized prints of blasted, ruined landscapes for quite a while, of oil derricks, open-pit mines, iron scrapyards, effluents, slagheaps, often at herculean scales or from helicopter perspectives. Because of this, or partly because of it, humans are nowhere to be seen - they would be dots at best - but this absence becomes both a vengeful ghostly presence and, predictably, an indictment, and is at least as striking as the marks which human appetites have left on the face of the earth. So while these pictures, in their hi-megapixel magnificence, may be impeccably drawn and fastidiously detailed thanks to processing at <a href="http://www.torontoimageworks.com/">Toronto Image Works</a>, it's their implicit form, a backstory of flat-out human degradation and greed that suggests why they convey the impact they do. The lives of the Gujarat salt-harvesters represented here are short and brutal; that of their owners and bankers, soft and luxurious. Some have called these eco-pictures but I would disagree and go further: behind an aesthetic mask, they are an outraged condemnation of capitalism.<br />
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Now that I've said that, let me take back what I just said even though it's also very, very true. These pictures would be great even without being eco-pictures. They're great, it seems to me, because they are less photographs than most of his previous work, and more akin to paintings. There, I've said it: paintings. With them he at last begins to liberate himself from the constraints of a reactive photography that receives signals and records them, and moves to a position where he combs the world for materials for a composition all his own and seizes upon them. Acknowledging a debt to abstract expressionism (or his take on it anyway), he is mastering ways of using the fullness of the plane, the suggestiveness of the line, the control of an acerbic color palette. He brings with him an idea, an abstract idea, formed of painted dreams, then looks to find ways to express it in what nature gives him as data or input, the rest falling where it may.<br />
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And to think we thought all this time he was just documenting stuff. <br />
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We're not going back to the gum-bichromates of a century ago, to pure pictorialism. This is important. There's no danger of that. The moral imperative remains, the lessons, the openness. The sheer contemporary grandeur. But if you come to these new pictures looking for photographs, you are left grasping at nothing familiar and it's hard to understand them on those terms. I'll give two examples that struck me on first seeing them. Examine the white lines in the last detail from <i>Salt Pan #25</i>. Notice how they stutter, then widen and billow, then resume: a highly painterly effect, uncanny in a photograph. I thought at first they had been drawn with a white pen marker, but when I swooped in on that same salt pan with Google Earth I realized that was how salt looks raked up in little rows and piles. Stock photos of the Gujarat salt-harvesters show the same thing:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH9P_aDfluEzS0b5Yo7PbP021LWjZ7hQWGaXJGLnMLDhZ-M5vwDVEEfg4G2mhqyrHgysCGMG23ZZmxVJmT11N_0roELpt3CipOYdPoDViCCTtMevINBYWAeGaaaTOhZCQOKZp_GvMVYQNf/s1600/Little+Rann+of+Kutch+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH9P_aDfluEzS0b5Yo7PbP021LWjZ7hQWGaXJGLnMLDhZ-M5vwDVEEfg4G2mhqyrHgysCGMG23ZZmxVJmT11N_0roELpt3CipOYdPoDViCCTtMevINBYWAeGaaaTOhZCQOKZp_GvMVYQNf/s320/Little+Rann+of+Kutch+.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">salt-gatherers in the Little Rann of Kutch</td></tr>
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Another example of Burtynsky's skill in making a picture is in his control of tonal range. In salt pans elsewhere (San Francisco, Morocco) and even in the Little Rann of Kutch, bacteria and algae color the evaporating water variously according to the level of salinity in a particular pond. Colors will range from blue to green to orange and red (<i>dunaliella</i> sp., <i>archaea</i> sp.) to, eventually, black, when the organisms have died, to white, when microbes have cleansed the salt crystals. Seeking a muted palette for his <i>Salt Pan</i> series, Burtynsky waited until light conditions were favorable, the desert darkening somewhat and the boldness of some of the ponds' colors attenuating. He may have chosen to photograph toward the end of the harvest as well, to assure a preponderance of blacks and whites.<br />
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I am reminded in looking at his results of certain works of postwar British abstraction. Here's one from the 1960s by Roger Hilton. Even its moody title, <i>October</i>, echoes Burtynsky.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Roger Hilton,</b> <i>October</i>, 1965</td></tr>
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In the past, Burtynsky's interests have swung from what could be taken as activist environmentalism, all the way to a pure geometric, almost tantric, contemplativeness. The latter include his series on Borromini's ceiling at Sant'Ivo (1999) and his <i>Pivot Irrigation</i> series from the Texas Panhandle (2012), which, until he produced his <i>Salt Pans</i>, was one of my favorites. But with this new work, everything has changed.<br />
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Near the end of a recent radio broadcast on the BBC, he characterized his work, perhaps all his work, as a lament. Is there a deeper sense of life than that? <br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-34745715686441641632016-11-26T14:47:00.000-05:002016-11-27T04:53:45.092-05:00Nikolova's method<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Eva Nikolova</b>, <i>Untitled III</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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For a long time now I've wanted to get down into the trays with Eva Nikolova, and I know I'm not alone in this. Folks have been writing me, stopping me in the street - ever since we began publishing her tortured paeans to memory, loss, and deracination, first in <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2013/10/chemigrams-in-prague-and-brooklyn.html">our post in 2013</a> and <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2015/11/cameraless-at-soho-photo.html">another in 2015</a> - to ask how she makes these pictures. Some of the early ones looked like drawings with a smudge of chemigram thrown in, here and there, for mood, like Edmund Teske used to do in the 1960s in his faux-heroic portraits of Kenneth Anger, yet they were always beautifully and confidantly executed, charting a path of moral witness totally without precedent in cameraless photography. When we noticed there were no people in these pictures (for even conventional war-zone photos coming to us from Aleppo had people in them, or their ghosts, adrift in the ruins) we grew to realize that here it was the artist herself who was the lone survivor of her particular armageddon, the one with the tale to tell, she who would live to imprint it with the human stamp.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, <i>Untitled III</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSc4T4Fo8Y2S6uzSzTsUb_7FHm5vDpHxOGPiJ_4dTa9plbWRN6LdYf4Y2fXnaKmh4rWvNeoT-oQk_US8JKc4FK5LZpMdXmnbeEvGy_iLfbMO70KL6ju4VJA-qNnhRJLec91XIUwsOGIgxC/s1600/detailwebread%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSc4T4Fo8Y2S6uzSzTsUb_7FHm5vDpHxOGPiJ_4dTa9plbWRN6LdYf4Y2fXnaKmh4rWvNeoT-oQk_US8JKc4FK5LZpMdXmnbeEvGy_iLfbMO70KL6ju4VJA-qNnhRJLec91XIUwsOGIgxC/s1600/detailwebread%25232.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, <i>Untitled II</i>I</td></tr>
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Her methods have matured and will continue to do so, but her project remains. This past summer she embarked on a series called <i>21 Fragments of Yesterday and Tomorrow, </i>one of which, <i>Untitled III</i>, was a selectee in the recent Alternative Process Photo Competition at Soho Photo in New York. We decided to investigate what goes into making these pictures, just how they are formed. Unsurprisingly, it turns out they begin as drawings (we were right), but the tools she is using now are chosen with a view toward a <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/search/label/Christina%20Z.%20Anderson">bleach-etch</a> and <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2011/04/major-glassprint-show-in-san-francisco.html">glassprint</a> endgame, so that as she works, photographic constraints and opportunities are forefront in her mind. It's best to let her tell it.<br />
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'I start on a medium-weight drawing paper using graphite, charcoal, white chalk, and thin sharpies, often overlaid with a cross-hatch of white gel pens and maybe even a touch of white oil pastel. I like to mix different materials when I draw, but because the visible tones of the materials do not coincide with their opacity - this is what matters when making a negative to print from - I photocopied the drawing onto ordinary printer paper, then contact-printed it under the enlarger.'<br />
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Since the resulting print had plenty of blacks, it was easy for her to bleach-etch, most apparent in the dramatic upper part of the picture. The reader may wonder why the blacks in the lower part didn't bleach-etch as well and the answer lies largely in her strategy of mixing tones in the original drawing, that dense cross-hatch of white and black lines that she spoke about. She articulates it so well: 'What preserves some of the blacks from lifiting off are tiny islets of white that act as anchors.'<br />
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Because the black areas therefore were impure, the etch was insufficient to affect them to any great extent. Furthermore, she brushed on developer to these areas after the first etch to solidify the blacks found there. For the upper part of the picture, the sky, now dense with veils, she delicately applied a weak and contaminated developer in an effort to bring out color, then left it to redden in the summer sun.<br />
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There is a lot to admire here for practitioners, and to learn from. And we haven't begun to speak of the impact of her work on a viewer, which can be altogether staggering.<br />
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Contact the artist at her site, www.evanikolova.com for more information.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-78058075394313887642016-11-07T10:02:00.000-05:002016-11-10T08:18:35.629-05:00A fascinating piece at Soho Photo by Michael Koerner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Michael Koerner</b>, <i>Escape</i>, chemigram from wet-plate collodion positive, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Escape</i>, detail</td></tr>
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Once you get past dipping and dunking - mind you, great works can be made that way, think of Alison Rossiter for starters - the most important concept you need to grasp in making a chemigram is that of the resist. A resist is something that blocks the action of developer or fixer. Tape, glue, friskets, varnish, wax, polish, clay, much of the food we eat, are all resists. Hard bulky objects can be resists too, a pair or scissors, a hammer, a bottlecap, as in the old photograms of the 1930s. As long as it sits squarely on the surface of the photo paper and doesn't let much chemistry in underneath, it qualifies.<br />
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But most resists are of the type that under the gradual, unrelenting action of chemistry will erode and dissolve. It may take just a few seconds, as with glue, it may take hours for certain varnishes, but eventually the resist is gone. This is a good thing, because by activating the mark-making potential inherent in the resist, erosion creates expressiveness. You will want expressiveness: it's the enabler that lets you say what you want to say with your art. If the resist is recalcitrant and doesn't want to come off it's quite okay to give it a nudge; what is less obvious is that it's also okay to leave it in place even through the final wash, and so incorporate it into your picture as if it were a cousin to hand-coloring or toning (see <b>figure 7</b> in this <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-recent-chemigram-workshop-at-icp-with.html">post from November 2015</a>). On the other hand, if you have an obdurate resist and don't remove it at all, you may want to treat it as a stencil, which is also a kind of resist, a decisive, permanent one, and it too may find a home in your toolkit. Again, refer to the old photograms.<br />
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Christina Z Anderson's tutorial article at <a href="http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/chemigrams/the-chemigram">alternativephotography.com</a> shows a refreshing medley of resists that you will swoon over: cooking spray, toothpaste, hummus. In England, Daniel Berrangé's <a href="https://fstop138.berrange.com/2015/05/an-introduction-to-the-chemigram-process/">blog f/138</a> takes a systematic look at a number of resists and their governing strategies and is well worth consulting for the beginner.<br />
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What is totally unexpected about Michael Koerner's work, on display this month in the Alternative Process Competition at Soho Photo in New York, is the way he thinks about resists. A chemist by trade, his world is one of diffusivities, of phase states. Matter is considered not only spatially, by its location, or by its mass and density, but also thermodynamically, by what form it appears in at a given temperature, whether solid, liquid or gaseous. If you put yourself in this frame of mind it's a short jump, but a major insight, to view the solid-to-liquid transition as a porous barrier to the migration of fixer or developer.<br />
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In his system, wet-plate collodion, you first pour collodion over a metal plate, then you immerse the plate in a silver nitrate solution. An exchange reaction occurs and the bromide and iodide ions in the collodion form salts with silver. The plate is flashed on the enlarger and minuscule grains of silver begin to coalesce, though not yet manifestly visible. If you're making a chemigram you would have likely laid down a pattern of resist on the plate by now and then commenced applying your developer and fixer, in a sequence of your own invention, leading in due course to a completed chemigram. Koerner does it another way. He freezes the plate, which is still wet, and a very thin layer of ice forms on its surface. It is this new surface, ice, that becomes his canvas. He paints on it with fixer and developer, now with one, now with the other, and they attack the underlying plate and its emulsion in a slow ballet governed by rates of diffusion and of melting. As the process unfolds and chemistry seeps down, regions of fractalization appear, driven by forces which, though quantifiable and controllable in theory, in practice partake of a good measure of randomness.<br />
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In all of what are called positive wet-plate collodions, also known as tintypes, which is what we have here, the area where developer strikes the exposed emulsion appears white, not black as in conventional b&w photography, and the same inverted appearance holds for fixer. Thus in <i>Escape</i>, above, the white filigree on the far left represents developer activity. By using ice as a resist Koerner gains another advantage as well: he immobilizes the collodion-nitrate solution which otherwise would still be wet and displaceable, so that now he can focus his chemigramic interventions with a reasonable expectation of outcome. Those pustule-like structures seen best on the detail view are spots where the artist dropped in extra developer with a pipette, and could only have been done on a surface that was immobile.<br />
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Koerner gives us hints about his chemistry, which is not straightforward. For developers he favors those using metol or hydroquinone as reducing agents but has formulated a wide range of others, paying particular attention to the restrainers and accelerators present in the recipe, as these give him a tailor-made control over various aspects of an application, such as the amount of aggresiveness or submission needed. Astonishingly, he will often employ three or more developers on a single picture. Similarly for fixers, where a study of early literature has led him to some formulations well beyond, or prior to, the ammonium and sodium thiosulfate warhorses, in an effort to precisely calibrate the kind of black he wants.<br />
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This work is suggestive, mysterious, and thought-provoking. I urge you to explore his webpage at <a href="http://www.photoexperimentalist.com/">www.photoexperimentalist.com</a>. <br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-51228788715230825462016-10-13T09:26:00.001-04:002016-10-14T00:44:30.309-04:00All-silver excitement in Virginia City<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOnX0Cu4NIZ2_1KhxQGWhgqRt6zqbtPrpC9WzWg2lUpmKHAXbovIslAXngFUYyEKy4G0W2gbJMDxMkRq9boBatdK9Uc2c7bzlrx8eQpAj3A85XcFuPfb85bZ912J4Q98yCxNL06IneM8Wz/s1600/Jeanne+Chambers_dark_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOnX0Cu4NIZ2_1KhxQGWhgqRt6zqbtPrpC9WzWg2lUpmKHAXbovIslAXngFUYyEKy4G0W2gbJMDxMkRq9boBatdK9Uc2c7bzlrx8eQpAj3A85XcFuPfb85bZ912J4Q98yCxNL06IneM8Wz/s400/Jeanne+Chambers_dark_web.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Jeanne Chambers</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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High in the scrub desert above the Truckee River basin, the old silver mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, was already a legend in the 19th century when fortunes could be made there overnight, then squandered by daybreak in the saloons of C Street. In a way, not much has changed except that fortunes today are made only in selected of salts of silver, those famously light-sensitive ones - silver bromide and silver chloride - couched in the emulsion of photographic paper. You dig out the pure stuff not in rocky red igneous earth as in the wild west days but in darkroom trays. Yes, we're back in the wonderful world of chemigrams.<br />
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The annual Nolan Preece chemigram workshop, three days and nights at the end of September, was all silver, nothing digital: the tenacious ghosts of Virginia City wouldn't have it any other way. Ten students gathered from as far away as Massachusetts and California with Nolan at the helm, in the spacious, well-appointed, and, according to some, possibly haunted St Mary's Art Center.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh11kJA2AyckIInzhkrKPMqaaFxaC6GojeVQBPlyBR_lpOsCFtqSX_nLxEt_WNyezdtYyZ3A2A1PmE0_qOhP8RJHnC3Z2TufVRKyRyrs9U6hSB8djJmeNNGbSOEk34slGtEsLAw1Mu66GJc/s1600/St+Marys+ACwebready.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh11kJA2AyckIInzhkrKPMqaaFxaC6GojeVQBPlyBR_lpOsCFtqSX_nLxEt_WNyezdtYyZ3A2A1PmE0_qOhP8RJHnC3Z2TufVRKyRyrs9U6hSB8djJmeNNGbSOEk34slGtEsLAw1Mu66GJc/s320/St+Marys+ACwebready.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Mary's Art Center, Virginia City</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Virginia City</td></tr>
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We could go on - but won't - about the accommodations in this unique building, constructed during the bonanza heyday 150 years ago and now converted to printmaking and photographic residencies. You gather a sense of it from the size and airiness of the studios.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVdYEm5EwFnoIJsPhmUTxq46U26jQit6mK5m-_hRf_CNQX753lJmuorpVifwGjAYqBBuvnHLHh5w1xwku91t2U49MMy5FndxtmGaGMjfVwO4tLBCMQuk7p2r37OAvqE4RoHmHXg9PphKaS/s1600/ChemClass2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVdYEm5EwFnoIJsPhmUTxq46U26jQit6mK5m-_hRf_CNQX753lJmuorpVifwGjAYqBBuvnHLHh5w1xwku91t2U49MMy5FndxtmGaGMjfVwO4tLBCMQuk7p2r37OAvqE4RoHmHXg9PphKaS/s400/ChemClass2016.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">chemigram workshop at St Mary's, September 2016</td></tr>
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We will want rather to get into the work itself. <br />
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Nolan designed a curriculum to cover all bases of the modern chemigram: dip and dunk, soft resists, hard resists, the effects of various polishes and varnishes, hybrid methods, exotic developers and papers and more, much of which has been touched on elsewhere in this blog. To witness the refreshing variety of chemigramic response he was able to elicit in just three days made us think of one of the big differences between chemigrams (and other contemporary cameraless procedures) and the methods of craft photography often presented under the label of alt-photography - and that is that once you have a fundamental understanding of where the process is going, you can, in fact you must, sooner or later, break the rules you've just been taught in order to make your own artistic statement. And that is because it is an art and not a craft: fidelity to rules will lead only to rote applications, to trite expression. The goal is to overcome that.<br />
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Remarkably, in this workshop we already see signs of a stirring in that direction, a pushing at the boundaries.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCP59hsDxLKpzkfQnajZswpdJkuCqA9JnSvcLOptmq1KrrFK5f8eOYPP6I8WvBv9zc4lh36BUMqeN1hIuIUgz5NpXBxFeGnUWRASksByjSkQmcoJKpDo_WOEkWuYx446TBgLt1RwpqzZXQ/s1600/Mike+Clasen_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCP59hsDxLKpzkfQnajZswpdJkuCqA9JnSvcLOptmq1KrrFK5f8eOYPP6I8WvBv9zc4lh36BUMqeN1hIuIUgz5NpXBxFeGnUWRASksByjSkQmcoJKpDo_WOEkWuYx446TBgLt1RwpqzZXQ/s400/Mike+Clasen_web.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Mike Clasen</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIVF8u-uZdofYsbizPoftRI_RrEJMeetod0Hll5KZf82s0Nn9n4Ez0KuFD6CMF8Bp5FGQt-Sd9OZbSUHHPNduvK6lcRHt3zdXF3VHjUmybZgu5eydAiy0-1E7_ejXBJp4Ce48RC5eH0eYA/s1600/Nancy+Raven_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIVF8u-uZdofYsbizPoftRI_RrEJMeetod0Hll5KZf82s0Nn9n4Ez0KuFD6CMF8Bp5FGQt-Sd9OZbSUHHPNduvK6lcRHt3zdXF3VHjUmybZgu5eydAiy0-1E7_ejXBJp4Ce48RC5eH0eYA/s1600/Nancy+Raven_web.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Nancy Raven</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg-GyE7VLw9vsrANtBu1RJNpIwY_yF-wkZyVyOmJ-qOwFG8-nM_k0gle6g31PkqIy9bziVFZ6EvkLL4N03TKR6R3stYx7MqVR8WFhaxOsqYkU4vi-ibg2JsmhD7TJMwvulQ9lNPvMyL-by/s1600/Albertson_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg-GyE7VLw9vsrANtBu1RJNpIwY_yF-wkZyVyOmJ-qOwFG8-nM_k0gle6g31PkqIy9bziVFZ6EvkLL4N03TKR6R3stYx7MqVR8WFhaxOsqYkU4vi-ibg2JsmhD7TJMwvulQ9lNPvMyL-by/s400/Albertson_web.jpg" width="315" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Greg Albertson</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2HYlcoVVdqgJUJPiLXmzBdWL8DbANZGDiM0u0hc0aEsu0MoI5A55sFRx4u9vAp-SEnNJf71QETCKBFWjf245ImgTG_82vCO2epxQNH3a6nbUpxCy-SBc9mwWz0ehdGBvKmqUaN-uzBoPH/s1600/Debbie+Wolff_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2HYlcoVVdqgJUJPiLXmzBdWL8DbANZGDiM0u0hc0aEsu0MoI5A55sFRx4u9vAp-SEnNJf71QETCKBFWjf245ImgTG_82vCO2epxQNH3a6nbUpxCy-SBc9mwWz0ehdGBvKmqUaN-uzBoPH/s400/Debbie+Wolff_web.jpg" width="317" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Debbie Wolff</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Diane Kaye</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Vanessa Stephens</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Susan Watson</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYIE3bWkFTTw3D6WCR8b90dFc7HZZSg7e9mFvtoBr9_DfDbwVM4lzv2gDNh2lrq-89sCDs7qp9xhrMb_Lptku3Wh3F7xmGRpTWFF_EwywCND9d5_H61X7qcx_U8qo7TGwdT-GJ4qI9VLBO/s1600/Piera+Bernard_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYIE3bWkFTTw3D6WCR8b90dFc7HZZSg7e9mFvtoBr9_DfDbwVM4lzv2gDNh2lrq-89sCDs7qp9xhrMb_Lptku3Wh3F7xmGRpTWFF_EwywCND9d5_H61X7qcx_U8qo7TGwdT-GJ4qI9VLBO/s400/Piera+Bernard_web.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Piera Bernard,</b> 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbqBX7guLYljbn8-nGAxWJPkP7rDFoUFW3O4odXvAPrLQUclS032wBsGH9qJQBmkYwllOE4_6Q6x03HG8Ewy1NGluZc4QxmsrSlNneGG_F5VAo2DwKnR6bp-1APZLuEl0pHG57D3f1jIY3/s1600/David+Laws_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbqBX7guLYljbn8-nGAxWJPkP7rDFoUFW3O4odXvAPrLQUclS032wBsGH9qJQBmkYwllOE4_6Q6x03HG8Ewy1NGluZc4QxmsrSlNneGG_F5VAo2DwKnR6bp-1APZLuEl0pHG57D3f1jIY3/s400/David+Laws_web.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>David Laws</b>, 2016</td></tr>
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On a technical note, many of the papers provided in the workshop were expired - Kodak, Forte, Luminos, Agfa, Azo - and purposely so, as this is known to be a productive path to follow in chemigrams. Everyone was encouraged to explore the ways these handled and colored, and to discover the paper's individual signature. </div>
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The work turned in by these workshop participants is of a high order indeed, and I believe many veteran chemigramists will come away impressed by it. Let us hope they continue, for this is just the beginning, not the end. Each of these artists has taken steps that will become more momentous the further they go, toward an emergent vision, toward something which today they only dimly see but which will unfold as they develop and as the monotonies of the everyday recede. They arrived with imagination, and now they have the tools to nourish it as well.</div>
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If you have questions on particular methods, you may contact Nolan through his website www.nolanpreece.com.</div>
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Nolan will have a solo show at Missouri State University's Brick City Gallery, Springfield, January 24 - February 22, 2017, and a two-person show at The Loft at Liz's, Los Angeles, February 18 - March 20, 2017. </div>
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-31695899284276774032016-09-13T17:55:00.000-04:002016-09-14T06:29:24.931-04:00Some more Michael Jackson<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Jackson</b>, <i>#444</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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A year ago we introduced you to a fellow to watch named Michael Jackson. We told you he was out in the UK's west country doing interesting things, photographing ripples in the sand, building paper constructions of mysterious hulking islands, and best of all, playing with light and shadow in the quiet of his darkroom. He is a prolific artist, we even had trouble trying to calculate how many pieces he'd created - something like one per day was our best, not terribly well-informed, guess, a testimony to both the confidence he has gotten in his system of production and to his obstinate, unflagging energy and creativeness. At anything near that rate a new Jackson show was a surefire necessity. Earlier this summer London's MMX Gallery rose to the challenge and exhibited a batch of recent work. It was a good moment to catch up with him to see how he's doing.<br />
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We're talking of course about that part of his output which he terms luminograms, as if to emphasize the primordial role of light in their making (another might call them <i>photograms</i> or <i>skiagrams</i> for similar reasons but let's not get into <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2016/08/mark-making-in-light-and-shadow.html">that discussion</a>) and to distinguish them from the rest of his photographic corpus, which uses light as well, just not primordially. A slip of theory underlies it: the idea that light, by bending and twisting and refracting, can so to speak show itself, that it can reveal to us something hidden about itself, its inner nature. So there is a definite quest for knowledge, a search that will have no end because on this earth it seems we can never learn enough; and its waypoints must be intuited, as the knowledge to be found is more likely spiritual than scientific. <br />
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This is very like Mike, his inquisitive frame of mind turning to awe in the face of natural phenomena: he is at home with the big questions and the small to the point of reverence - or innocence. So that the record of his search becomes the work of art itself, the very pieces we have before us, at once both as documentation and object. In this examination of his materials - light - Mike can be said to strike at the extreme end of modernism, along with painters like Jasper Johns, Robert Ryman, or Barnet Newman, each with their own quite disparate material obsessions in their day, or of photographers such as the under-recognized Jack Sal. We can perhaps be grateful, however, in 2016, that his work is less austere than those, and far more sensuous, because the times have changed. Here are some pieces from the MMX show. There were 21 in all, each unique, 12 x 16 in. unframed, each of an uncanny beauty.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Jackson</b>, <i>#396</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Jackson</b>, <i>#447</i>, 2016</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Jackson</b>, <i>#485 (Valley Landscape)</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Jackson</b>, <i>#524</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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In the year 1225, Robert Grosseteste wrote a treatise at Oxford in which he said that light extends matter by spreading itself infinitely in every direction and so forms material bodies. It projects, it induces, it calls into being, it envelopes and continues on. Mike understands this. 'In a certain sense,' Grosseteste wrote, 'each thing contains all other things.' Mike gets that too. He would have been a star pupil. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jackson toying with light and shadow</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jackson in his studio</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">installation view at MMX Gallery</td></tr>
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The discoveries he makes are not those of the great modern Swiss artists of the photogram, Humbert, Mächler and others, whose results were astounding and simple, astounding in fact because they were so simple. Rather, he moves from the real world (but what is real about shadows?) to the fantastic and then back again, confusing the two, confounding us in the process and dragging a great deal of references with him, and much of his charm is that his path never fails to astonish. Jackson is a magician. Light beckons and he follows wherever it may lead. 'There are senses of reality [in my work],' says Jackson, 'but the rest is so fantastical that it could never be.'<br />
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For more information on his motives and methods, check out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5zLkXHrhKE&feature=youtu.be">this video on YouTube</a> produced by the gallery. I'd like to say 'illuminating' but we're pun-free at the blog.<br />
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His website is <a href="http://www.mgjackson.co.uk/">www.mgjackson.co.uk</a> <br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-60315786526951225782016-08-16T14:05:00.002-04:002016-08-29T22:37:29.695-04:00Mark-making in light and shadow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>W.H. Fox Talbot</b>, photogenic drawing, ca. 1839</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>W.H. Fox Talbot</b>, paper delivered at The Royal Society, 1841</td></tr>
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We've been ruminating about things - it's a slow month - and have begun to feel that our friends who work in cameraless photography come in two distinct species (exclusive of outliers from the heavily conceptual or apocalyptic strains). First let's identify them, label them, and then let's try to make the labels go gently away.<br />
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We begin by plunging into the deep end. So OK, there are folks who write on their working surface - let's call it a matrix - with a tool, be it stylus, pen, stick, or brush, and encourage these marks, through friction or abrasion, to define an expressive content. This activity is similar to painting and is modeled after painting, no surprise here. Most of the work shown in this blog is of this type, but not all by any means, and it is certainly not the only way to go as we'll see in a moment.<br />
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In this camp we find the chemigramists with their incisions, their clingy resists, and the glassprinters (cliché-verre artists) with their daubs and scratches, and not forgetting the brutalists (Marco Breuer comes to mind, or Brittany Nelson, along with many others emerging from the schools nowadays, where deconstruction is trendy) with their hammers, tongs, their strong mordants. The matrix we're talking about may be the photographic paper itself, as in chemigrams, or it may be a glass plate, plexiglass, or acetate for the glassprinters, who will contact-print to achieve their end result. Have I left anyone out? I don't think so - they're all included here one way or another, and clearly there is a lot of cross fertilization among them.<br />
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Then there are the others, in many ways the more interesting group because their approach is so unexpected, and it is these we want to talk about today. Instead of a brush or knife, they use that gratuitous, everpresent commodity we know as light. Using just light and light's dark brother, shadow, they make a trace on photographic paper that is captured by the process of photographic development that we've discussed elsewhere (for instance <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2015/01/during-blizzard-chemigrams-by.html">here)</a>. They have marked the paper, or matrix, but have touched nothing: the paper needn't be handled at all, since the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum does all the work. This is a very old tradition, which reaches back to the origins of photography and is in some respects its very definition. Fox Talbot called it photogenic drawing, drawing arising from light. Moholy-Nagy called it the photogram. Other names have been used, schadograph, rayograph, vortograph, luminogram, skiagraph, light-painting, the list is endless. When an artist sees how pain-free this procedure basically is, how miraculous, how magical, he is often so overcome that, ignorant of tradition, he names it after himself, or connects it to terms from a golden age of classicism. He is unwilling to use the common expression because that word, degraded, cheapened, in the service of the most profane employments, has no common measure with the wonder he is seeing. That word of course is 'photograph', drawing with light.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLT9UFs2n2FnFhM8PC5JAlMbcjlU7CMyBi5fWCYwcSMpMuyuttqHIQiGjm0vssjXZhvw-fDgJUjqqXaXnnylKsSU-3ABgXod3m8HhhrvvzGQHWUAT19Vj4zSKekuoOL94dBNfrmNk2YSeU/s1600/Alvin+Langdon+Coburn+-+Vortograph+1917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLT9UFs2n2FnFhM8PC5JAlMbcjlU7CMyBi5fWCYwcSMpMuyuttqHIQiGjm0vssjXZhvw-fDgJUjqqXaXnnylKsSU-3ABgXod3m8HhhrvvzGQHWUAT19Vj4zSKekuoOL94dBNfrmNk2YSeU/s1600/Alvin+Langdon+Coburn+-+Vortograph+1917.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Alvin Langdon Coburn</b>, <i>Vortograph</i>, 1917</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHOJR-Bs5Re-3ww4CUxXBsU3FUJEDMvAe29K34lI_GsQMvkr5DNExsxge27VtN_z-fB3oMInRui7PrfjhI5_oFAgVlKECSdbr0ChaCo1jzN3hGUX6olsMU-9IJ4mmtSnvF3Hpj4Ob7zoQc/s1600/Laszlo+Moholy-Nagy+-+photogram+1925.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHOJR-Bs5Re-3ww4CUxXBsU3FUJEDMvAe29K34lI_GsQMvkr5DNExsxge27VtN_z-fB3oMInRui7PrfjhI5_oFAgVlKECSdbr0ChaCo1jzN3hGUX6olsMU-9IJ4mmtSnvF3Hpj4Ob7zoQc/s1600/Laszlo+Moholy-Nagy+-+photogram+1925.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>László Moholy-Nagy</b>, photogram, 1925</td></tr>
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A few words and examples to get the feel of it. In the darkroom, something is interposed between light source and the photosensitive paper. An object, a hand. Curled paper constructions, as with Francis Bruguière, or cut-outs as with Walead Beshty. Gauze, as with Wolfgang Tillmans in his <i>Freischwimmer</i> series, which he calls 'abstract photos'. Gobos, scrims, translucent things, lit by Fresnel lights, pen lights, candles, strobes. Multiple exposures. Or nothing at all, just the play of refraction and scattering of light-beams at an edge, or in movement, as in some of the work of René Mächler. An exposure is made, the paper is developed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxHrLgQXzLAKqjPy9dop09ZZPpjh8s9luS_Lng2nSd2jHafUxxvXRof4MrqcyrgYWtSThyphenhyphenq-03SqbbQxvLorxWV5J9z707k5AfwYx_ShGP23JjG1lPXsLYfqRiErcXyXXV07CY1AZX04w/s1600/Rossler+photogrm+1926.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxHrLgQXzLAKqjPy9dop09ZZPpjh8s9luS_Lng2nSd2jHafUxxvXRof4MrqcyrgYWtSThyphenhyphenq-03SqbbQxvLorxWV5J9z707k5AfwYx_ShGP23JjG1lPXsLYfqRiErcXyXXV07CY1AZX04w/s320/Rossler+photogrm+1926.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Jaroslav Rössler,</b> <i>Akt</i>, photogram, 1926</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIBkfE_c7oV6DbJnOuOVI9G6ZATy54pF7cksERdRba1k6B1WzChAvlrBhyphenhyphenp1z5DAsy9bn5lR3wx16LVl-0ldRJpB9ONeDqe18-cBWGJ3k8_9OanLOR3tM2wG38iTF8fYLZeCAkXzNaMPGc/s1600/Francis+Bruguiere+-+abstract+study+c.+1926.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIBkfE_c7oV6DbJnOuOVI9G6ZATy54pF7cksERdRba1k6B1WzChAvlrBhyphenhyphenp1z5DAsy9bn5lR3wx16LVl-0ldRJpB9ONeDqe18-cBWGJ3k8_9OanLOR3tM2wG38iTF8fYLZeCAkXzNaMPGc/s1600/Francis+Bruguiere+-+abstract+study+c.+1926.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Francis Bruguière</b>, <i>Abstract Study</i>, ca. 1926</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAWAh_3AfKXCMgAsTxqcCIvCXyd9AGvg-Ku3BKUvcffiSgB-p3VBkkCepolIHT_ni7rCZ5Ab1S-Qy1qMv3WHLu25CGFTYmScjRMu24bF0947cfnmAVvs2olZ3-4Ai41XHB4O4w_vFD0LaW/s1600/Lotte+Jacobi+photogenic+drawing+ca+1940.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAWAh_3AfKXCMgAsTxqcCIvCXyd9AGvg-Ku3BKUvcffiSgB-p3VBkkCepolIHT_ni7rCZ5Ab1S-Qy1qMv3WHLu25CGFTYmScjRMu24bF0947cfnmAVvs2olZ3-4Ai41XHB4O4w_vFD0LaW/s1600/Lotte+Jacobi+photogenic+drawing+ca+1940.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Lotte Jacobi</b>, photogenic drawing, ca. 1940</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYnLpgvni6hPi5SmVlbGcuexZxw8Sw45cvg3yzO7_MSD89ShI8K8HuZVOcfivmQqLWj8jK3t9GXI1699S6q6GBFKZIbb5bh4HRP7R8a3akchjTpSLRxAqOlync-3gWUnGI90KAB0Z3t4Ta/s1600/Arthur+Siegel+photogram+%25239+1946.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYnLpgvni6hPi5SmVlbGcuexZxw8Sw45cvg3yzO7_MSD89ShI8K8HuZVOcfivmQqLWj8jK3t9GXI1699S6q6GBFKZIbb5bh4HRP7R8a3akchjTpSLRxAqOlync-3gWUnGI90KAB0Z3t4Ta/s1600/Arthur+Siegel+photogram+%25239+1946.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Arthur Siegel</b>, <i>Photogram #9</i>, 1946</td></tr>
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The work stands firmly in a relationship to the history of silver gelatin photography, to a compendium of darkroom practice, and could not exist without it. It is reflexive, examining itself as both subject and object. It acknowledges dependence on the physics of light as a wave phenomenon and on the physiology of the eye, much more so than other cameraless methods do, and it exploits these. Thomas Young, in his famous 'double-slit' experiment of 1801, had demonstrated the refractive nature of light and both the constructive and destructive interference of waves. His work is as much fundamental to the photogram journey as Talbot's.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiycP8eaiQcch92XgVXfUoBCMQc8r5Go4CytOqKbAx2Loi2El72Krpqk7WHabxzHMRYQmc0B-o-FG_-mLNIB3R1uxkIf5Y51Rdvi_e7MqjULIjhiqceMHT76Htmkk169Kojgv23hoE7IW1m/s1600/double+slit+%252310.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiycP8eaiQcch92XgVXfUoBCMQc8r5Go4CytOqKbAx2Loi2El72Krpqk7WHabxzHMRYQmc0B-o-FG_-mLNIB3R1uxkIf5Y51Rdvi_e7MqjULIjhiqceMHT76Htmkk169Kojgv23hoE7IW1m/s320/double+slit+%252310.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">double slip experiment</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZANPGifHeb9w5XrzomRFRiVITQY_du0ZMj-QZ16bnZCQpvhORnhE2qXvndR4IorSuUI_XosZyLVMzbEkJCJHiT9aKHWISC-zFhyphenhyphen0h-S8uHyBe2b83s-1qOHbC5rxVYjTinjFA4C76CCOS/s1600/double+slit+%25238.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZANPGifHeb9w5XrzomRFRiVITQY_du0ZMj-QZ16bnZCQpvhORnhE2qXvndR4IorSuUI_XosZyLVMzbEkJCJHiT9aKHWISC-zFhyphenhyphen0h-S8uHyBe2b83s-1qOHbC5rxVYjTinjFA4C76CCOS/s1600/double+slit+%25238.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">wave nature of light</td></tr>
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When we peer today into the far recesses of pictures where light ends softly and shadow begins, at the roundness of objects, we thank him for helping us understand that. We see it in Siegel or Jacobi, we see it wherever a reflective surface falls away into a vague smokiness, just as it starts to leave us. Try these to get the idea.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3f42CB7ZPVG8eh6aNl3KjHN9r-StGzL7fP73dgXtNod0d475OdDHw00QebavNdjZq8ONa4wEm5PsYrfTbHt6JR_-0s2hYEjtNyzsqntAjVXLBxTDXmFdwlf_cJUKJX4SeAsPZv3Kx0ZC4/s1600/Kilian+Breier+-+Knicke+1960-65.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3f42CB7ZPVG8eh6aNl3KjHN9r-StGzL7fP73dgXtNod0d475OdDHw00QebavNdjZq8ONa4wEm5PsYrfTbHt6JR_-0s2hYEjtNyzsqntAjVXLBxTDXmFdwlf_cJUKJX4SeAsPZv3Kx0ZC4/s1600/Kilian+Breier+-+Knicke+1960-65.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Kilian Breier</b>, <i>Knicke</i>, 1960-65</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFLTogtpjVLN8lxZEovqlaxJo4IBwznejMH6sogigA_wBH3rMBe6k18h9lCmK4-qe-IV6aX80tTJOO0kgKQ0703gvv35pmfO4geM5ZpRvs_pwmtFgF7Js0qksn3NDUlb5gfi35TDwRG6vc/s1600/Gyorgy+Kepes+-+%2527Feathery+Light%2522+c+1939-40.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFLTogtpjVLN8lxZEovqlaxJo4IBwznejMH6sogigA_wBH3rMBe6k18h9lCmK4-qe-IV6aX80tTJOO0kgKQ0703gvv35pmfO4geM5ZpRvs_pwmtFgF7Js0qksn3NDUlb5gfi35TDwRG6vc/s1600/Gyorgy+Kepes+-+%2527Feathery+Light%2522+c+1939-40.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>György Kepes</b>, <i>Feathery Light</i>, photogram, ca. 1939-1940</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvOjx3WKCDKevlyiUX-iA1aispJibeJsWhr5LvRJH3jD3N0XyjCVlQQm5QDfo5U4oUHBSss9qmcC-LWmolAdYM3fbIgA32ahbXAulyjrc77bS8Ojhve7Ob2pw0v105suo5zJVZHjDdNoxe/s1600/Rene+Machler+-+Kollision+1990.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvOjx3WKCDKevlyiUX-iA1aispJibeJsWhr5LvRJH3jD3N0XyjCVlQQm5QDfo5U4oUHBSss9qmcC-LWmolAdYM3fbIgA32ahbXAulyjrc77bS8Ojhve7Ob2pw0v105suo5zJVZHjDdNoxe/s1600/Rene+Machler+-+Kollision+1990.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>René Mächler</b>, <i>Kollision</i>, photogram, 1990</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUedPbgO-FqstBDe-b-Y8d1HeqgJdtHfybcn6TTYAxYIzj6nUTbl2vFSOdEV1HbcngRLgUWgUcdwvmCqCFLIHriMxo1Fq6OB6m3rWV1g04vTKnBiHiKKxSdJKzpmSAYDMMod0mR3CbDkg_/s1600/Thomas+Ruff+phg.01+2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUedPbgO-FqstBDe-b-Y8d1HeqgJdtHfybcn6TTYAxYIzj6nUTbl2vFSOdEV1HbcngRLgUWgUcdwvmCqCFLIHriMxo1Fq6OB6m3rWV1g04vTKnBiHiKKxSdJKzpmSAYDMMod0mR3CbDkg_/s1600/Thomas+Ruff+phg.01+2012.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Thomas Ruff</b>, <i>phg.01</i>, photogram, 2012</td></tr>
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<br />
Fox Talbot, in a journal entry of 1833, wondered if a way might be found to make pictures of things without having to go to the trouble of drawing them, for he was, by his own admission, a terrible drawer. He was vacationing in Italy near Lake Como and wanted to record impressions of mountains, ruins, old villages. He set his mind to it and after a few years his attempts at sensitizing paper with silver salts succeeded: you put the paper in the sun with something above, a leaf, a bit of lace, and you get the example at the top of this post. He called it photogenic drawing. You couldn't exactly take pictures of mountains with it, the paper wasn't yet sensitive enough, but it was a start. Sir John Herschel, always more clever than anyone else around (who would shortly announce his discovery that certain salts of sodium could fix, or stabilize, photographs, opening the way for an entire industry to flourish later in the century) immediately devised the word 'photograph' from <i>photos</i> = light and <i>graphein</i> = write, draw, to describe what was happening. If photography had stopped right there, everyone might be making photograms today.<br />
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But it was not to be. The camera obscura, a box that had earned its keep for a thousand years from China to Baghdad to medieval Europe as an intellectual curiosity for the focusing of light rays, was given a new assignment. Hooked up to the photogram, it came to usurp and far exceed the photogram's function. The genie was out of the bottle. Photography was now pointed away from itself - more 'usefully' one might say - out into a world of people, plants, and objects. Photography had left the shop, taken its notes, and the only ones behind were the men and women whose works you see above.<br />
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Accept it or not, this is understood to be how it has been. Photography is now the province of everyone. Yet we notice a curious thing: people - artists and amateurs alike - are beginning to turn back to the old methodologies, pausing to examine the beauties left along the path of our adventure - there are so many! - and to reinvent them, remake them in new ways for a new age. Not in droves just yet, but that will come. It is a good time then for all of us to rejoin the family of photography, to embrace and reclaim its name and put aside the squabbles of process and ownership, of territory and priority, that have plagued us from the beginning. We draw with light.<br />
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This past summer, a gallery in Germany invited a chemigramist to submit a picture to a group show of experimental work. He sent them a chemigram. On the wall it was labeled 'photograph, silver gelatin print.' No mention of chemigram, skiagraph, bamboozlegraph, nothing. There is much more that joins us than divides us and I say bravo to that artist and that gallery. Our words do matter, and our allegiance.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-12960100012927303112016-07-19T15:33:00.000-04:002016-09-19T03:42:53.280-04:00Unbalancing the grid at Amherst<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDywvo3mjals4q0k1Ytit5Fd6IQ7nhU0qTjdzYpPxcVvw1y7i7zmVZAhvFiKKAsysvgmI1f79mVJdvNcglrSM02aGFh3LKLDOdAZeQ7eq3iEEIdfKSSyxaep0lEq7qv-Jr1QFxZSGbXK1/s1600/rich+turnbull_gates+series_chemigram_2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDywvo3mjals4q0k1Ytit5Fd6IQ7nhU0qTjdzYpPxcVvw1y7i7zmVZAhvFiKKAsysvgmI1f79mVJdvNcglrSM02aGFh3LKLDOdAZeQ7eq3iEEIdfKSSyxaep0lEq7qv-Jr1QFxZSGbXK1/s400/rich+turnbull_gates+series_chemigram_2016.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Turnbull</b>,<i> from the Gates series</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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Rich Turnbull, in his annual excursion into chemigrams, has given us new images to digest, explicate, and fawn over, as though we were just so many eager students in one of his lecture courses at the Met or F.I.T. and this were a class assignment. He does this every year. He's a tough teacher. The one shown here, part of his <i>Gates</i> series, is on display in a group show at <a href="http://www.gallerya3.com/">Gallery A3</a> in Amherst, Massachusetts until July 31. Let's see what he's up to with it and see whether, after reaching an understanding, we might move to the head of the class.<br />
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To tackle obvious matters first, his paper is Bergger and the resist is Liquetex Soluvar. Many of you will say, aha! Bergger means a high silver content and therefore really dense blacks. Well, not so fast my friends. Here at the blog we view that attitude as urban legend - not the silver content per se but the blackness of the blacks, which is not at all correlated with silver content according to Richard Henry in his <i>Controls in Black and White Photography</i>, 2nd edition, 1987, who has done the experiments. Once you get to Dmax, the maximum black, additional silver does nothing, and you can get to Dmax quite easily with a broad range of papers. We feel Rich used it because he simply had it available and wanted to finish off the box.<br />
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Soluvar varnish is another matter altogether. In the old days, our experience with Soluvar as a chemigram resist was that it was indistinguishable from Golden MSA varnish and was very good indeed. Then, unannounced, the Liquetex folks must have added a polymer for brittleness to the formulation, who knows what they were thinking, for Soluvar suddenly assumed a very different character and became a niche product with quirks only a specialist could love. Cracks, fissures, crazed rifts went everywhere, branching from one another down to the smallest of scales. For the basic chemigram it was not something you'd want to use. But Rich is not just anyone.<br />
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Let's go to the man's own words to see where he went with it. 'I made the outer and center vertical incisions with an X-acto knife to define the working space,' he says, 'then drew the grids freehand with a pin tool, commonly used in bookbinding [Rich also makes artist's books]. I didn't tape the paper down when coating it with Soluvar, and since paper curls toward the emulsion, the rather soupy varnish pooled a bit in the center so that my incisions didn't quite penetrate through the thicker areas of varnish, resulting in the large open area at bottom center.'<br />
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But this must have been a sought-after effect, indeed the entire pivot of the image. He goes on, while addressing one of the classic difficulties of the chemigram, the tyranny of the grid: 'I've done my share of carefully ruled grids on chemigrams of course, but of late I've worked with hand-drawn grids to unbalance the balanced nature of the grid, which is all about superimposed order anyway.'<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2EkhBpmxKpOuXQVQhyphenhyphenljO_YaNw-Zyj8XnRM4kKSstSZlvS9RP0rm6YpKBsR4X6tQiKM7uwlIy6tkLGlLwPVotsOMrAnP-C9KDz0HXZuylpNHVgZYjuH1qGStBEUyHL122fxRQy4Hg8YN/s1600/rich+turnbull_+closeup%25231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2EkhBpmxKpOuXQVQhyphenhyphenljO_YaNw-Zyj8XnRM4kKSstSZlvS9RP0rm6YpKBsR4X6tQiKM7uwlIy6tkLGlLwPVotsOMrAnP-C9KDz0HXZuylpNHVgZYjuH1qGStBEUyHL122fxRQy4Hg8YN/s320/rich+turnbull_+closeup%25231.jpg" width="304" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail</td></tr>
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The struggle with materials is apparent in all his work, where each aesthetic decision comes about from a meditation on the limits of his tools. This in turn gives it an integrity, a density, that is exemplary and an unforeseen payoff.<br />
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For Turnbull, who in the summer months lives on the edge of a forest in the far western part of Massachusetts and survives, according to some, on a diet of bear-meat and gin, the received impression from the <i>Gates</i> series can be - take your pick - melted nylon, ripped flesh, an old fence where something large and terrifying has bitten its way through and is now roaming ever nearer, and so on. This is not easy work, but a punishing reward for the mind. Best perhaps to stay indoors and enjoy it from there.<br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3058180378437995577.post-46455939935314601472016-07-05T11:03:00.000-04:002016-11-10T09:26:54.307-05:00Cameraless at Atelier pH7, Brussels<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu3RIdP_74ZH_9rC4ZPiqxwMIoSgwFLb8EtNocbBDIfl-jJkZQLnhPgVK4paOYSmNvxZaYj2yQzmMIp5MsC1tSO52M5Ma6FX1biy7d1aD3UEHKTYhcqHhHN7gR-2BZZoMFDwc_baDXSobh/s1600/Pierre%252BCordier%252B%2526%252BGundi%252BFalk%252BChimigramme%252B11_6_13%252BI%252B_Resurgence_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu3RIdP_74ZH_9rC4ZPiqxwMIoSgwFLb8EtNocbBDIfl-jJkZQLnhPgVK4paOYSmNvxZaYj2yQzmMIp5MsC1tSO52M5Ma6FX1biy7d1aD3UEHKTYhcqHhHN7gR-2BZZoMFDwc_baDXSobh/s1600/Pierre%252BCordier%252B%2526%252BGundi%252BFalk%252BChimigramme%252B11_6_13%252BI%252B_Resurgence_.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 11-6-13 I</i> "Resurgence", 2013</td></tr>
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In the quiet, leafy neighborhood of Uccle in Brussels, the quiet gentleman (and maestro) of alternative photography, Roger Kockaerts, has put up a show at <a href="http://www.rogerk.be/">Atelier pH7</a> of alternative work that runs until well into the summer. If it were only for the van dyck browns, the palladiums, the carbon prints, the bromoils and orotypes and of course the gums, it would be worth seeing, but there is a double reason: a significant part of the show is devoted to cameraless work, in this case the chemigram, and some fascinating and instructive work it is.<br />
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The above piece, by the Brussels-based team of Pierre Cordier and Gundi Falk, demonstrates the devotion to exacting conceptions for which they are famous. Here they compound that practice by using one of their frequent ploys, the hidden puzzle, an audience favorite since time immemorial. If you stand back and squint real hard you can just make out the letters of the title, R-e-s-u-r-g-e-n-c-e, written left to right and then, as in a boustrophedon, a device popular in ancient Greece, from right to left in the line below and zigzagging back and forth down the picture. As I say, you have to squint. Who said boustrophedons were easy! Yet is the supposed boustrephodon here actually a red herring, a trail leading to a misreading? It's for you to decide. Here's a blow-up of the lower left corner, which is elegant fun but unfortunately may not help at all:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3cmwRG_Bw_jGuv_86RzZKRVMNEQgwHQTUEh6sebVP7RQnxz6YW5Its6RmvnMghxjJ6WyiJWTNNZQvtjjxQwnbwX_DA-JwtQFQKkVa9I4mWI52Ymo5HE81oT2B75lWnjubKTWlWMEcjq2x/s1600/Chimigramm_Resurgence_detail%25231_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3cmwRG_Bw_jGuv_86RzZKRVMNEQgwHQTUEh6sebVP7RQnxz6YW5Its6RmvnMghxjJ6WyiJWTNNZQvtjjxQwnbwX_DA-JwtQFQKkVa9I4mWI52Ymo5HE81oT2B75lWnjubKTWlWMEcjq2x/s1600/Chimigramm_Resurgence_detail%25231_.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail,<i> Resurgence</i> </td></tr>
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In a work like this, planning in advance is essential - everything must be scrupulously mapped out, the incisions, the larger boundaries, the form to be taken by the hidden letters of text, the areas to be masked from chemical assault. 'More Mondrian, less Pollock,' as Pierre has said - a lot more. The good part is that once set in motion the process more or less proceeds to term on its own, and all the artist has to do is shift the paper from one tray to another. Imperfections, blips, and other small visitations from the gods of photochemistry, when they happen, are accepted into the picture, indeed they are blessed as emblematic. But I exaggerate somewhat.<br />
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To monitor progress (the new reader should review earlier how-to posts on chemigrams, <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2013/10/chemigrams-in-prague-and-brooklyn.html">such as this</a>), the artist may use the thickness of dark and light lines as a measure or trace of ongoing activity, a chronometric record not unlike the growth rings of a tree - an idea which, the more we think of it, may connect chemigrams to the larger saga of natural history and to the seasons of the earth. If you think this connection far-fetched, we've discussed themes allied to it before in other contexts, for instance in the <a href="http://nonfigurativephoto.blogspot.com/2010/11/resistive-notes-2-to-shake-or-not-to.html">rate of movement of mackie lines</a> around the equator. Critics and pundits in the future, if there is a future and there are critics, will want to expound on this.<br />
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Another work on view by the same team is 'Musigram', a remarkable piece depicting a fantasy musical score that features a staccato of bips, or congealed clumps of musical notes, against an opulent black. Don't even think of playing it, it's only for viewing. One attendee at the opening tried to hum it but failed, complaining he needed a bass line to keep time - or perhaps just a refreshed glass.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxtC7kqDjBBj2fXGyGUGwCbDD8RQ1oAjsCpRhz_ZhebTR2ddNgRfYPJ07mPq8S9AGe9nK6W3t1T4dhy5Nbm8iJjb5pvpu9DsF-4cLEQn6bFqnU6OjsaiSyel0RlbGAS5diSfL_eWjgpMwD/s1600/musicgram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxtC7kqDjBBj2fXGyGUGwCbDD8RQ1oAjsCpRhz_ZhebTR2ddNgRfYPJ07mPq8S9AGe9nK6W3t1T4dhy5Nbm8iJjb5pvpu9DsF-4cLEQn6bFqnU6OjsaiSyel0RlbGAS5diSfL_eWjgpMwD/s400/musicgram.jpg" width="332" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk</b>, <i>Chimigramme 11-6-13 I "Musigram"</i>, 2013</td></tr>
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Here's a closer glimpse into this distinctive work. The unfathomable, indescribable wonder of the chemigram is on full display. You can scrapbook this one for study later.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUrYQeDiCOHDkqq_RpT8jGKO0lrpESGnrAAP6iymkjoh0oQmpp9pxgUz6KVh6hkxImXu7B_7yMBzbhEEb8XDBAyTZQPz9p3GJdnnNsVPzzP0dFerDyxBdRf95ybdUg2NP_Obt2o2z4uEXa/s1600/musicgram_detail%25231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUrYQeDiCOHDkqq_RpT8jGKO0lrpESGnrAAP6iymkjoh0oQmpp9pxgUz6KVh6hkxImXu7B_7yMBzbhEEb8XDBAyTZQPz9p3GJdnnNsVPzzP0dFerDyxBdRf95ybdUg2NP_Obt2o2z4uEXa/s400/musicgram_detail%25231.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, <i>Musigram</i> </td></tr>
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Douglas Collins has several chemigrams in the show as well, quite different in design and a far cry from the impeccable work of Cordier & Falk. All were done earlier this year, mainly in the western Mexican state of Guerrero working under, let's say, simple conditions. Using Foma FB paper outdoors under a tree, he produced this<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXeqIjSDo6JVlhxVtlXqtN_hfJp-GyZO_gz7bpJpHNH8bC6J52UFx79DxNXRPHvKcoP1irOkwDbESinUsifQpLro3_H40v_EOy8cBsLKpeYKAriOWdXQp_Qr9rzBRSuqMNDqWOMSqITefj/s1600/Jan%252716-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXeqIjSDo6JVlhxVtlXqtN_hfJp-GyZO_gz7bpJpHNH8bC6J52UFx79DxNXRPHvKcoP1irOkwDbESinUsifQpLro3_H40v_EOy8cBsLKpeYKAriOWdXQp_Qr9rzBRSuqMNDqWOMSqITefj/s1600/Jan%252716-5.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Collins</b>,<i> Guerrero series #4</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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and this<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbNvivWQ-zRv7Z-Tw3OSgeTgruBYncFUXne-SrNNccbbJvRG_qr3basui55dzl4ZrX7y9CO1_VFCL-4aaH7s4cxEpSeKDjC1eCK5Ahb7klA-cQQFL9UBW1zAIGjDP0CTduPm9i3ASx8g7Y/s1600/atelier_show%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbNvivWQ-zRv7Z-Tw3OSgeTgruBYncFUXne-SrNNccbbJvRG_qr3basui55dzl4ZrX7y9CO1_VFCL-4aaH7s4cxEpSeKDjC1eCK5Ahb7klA-cQQFL9UBW1zAIGjDP0CTduPm9i3ASx8g7Y/s320/atelier_show%25232.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Collins</b>,<i> Guerrero series #5</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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and this<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0UxC7yXW2Wa2qIUoWz7PbfACtWRG-lO2LxVMkJHc3iR5qSFIs8gZzrE7zD-LmR09KcMpuWUX_kqBPW1VwAVCpDSxGGwZcWJn0UAnq_0AOGk-BuVc9jWgIPXAhCTkqlGT5BCMpSI8LmYHw/s1600/atelier_show%25233.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0UxC7yXW2Wa2qIUoWz7PbfACtWRG-lO2LxVMkJHc3iR5qSFIs8gZzrE7zD-LmR09KcMpuWUX_kqBPW1VwAVCpDSxGGwZcWJn0UAnq_0AOGk-BuVc9jWgIPXAhCTkqlGT5BCMpSI8LmYHw/s400/atelier_show%25233.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Collins</b>,<i> Guerrero series #11</i>, 2016</td></tr>
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The quality of the light and of the water in rural Mexico can be expected to have had an effect, from subtle to determinative: the water was from an ancient well, and bore minerals from deep in the mountainside. Here's some detail:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbMLupugy_Hdrs6DwQO6Srom3Xv7zFTdbBvXsbzdEZ3rANqpX2WQ_HQh-C09PENmsvkgbVGca7h0lQyCvH1ZjJXb_8DSOkXMMRh81tO-4u4M-xWpqM2HNqBfpxjUTW7BQVGZx1DW8PqH0m/s1600/atelier_show%25231_detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbMLupugy_Hdrs6DwQO6Srom3Xv7zFTdbBvXsbzdEZ3rANqpX2WQ_HQh-C09PENmsvkgbVGca7h0lQyCvH1ZjJXb_8DSOkXMMRh81tO-4u4M-xWpqM2HNqBfpxjUTW7BQVGZx1DW8PqH0m/s400/atelier_show%25231_detail.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, <i>Guerrero series #4</i></td></tr>
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and again<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisEEAmS8gfevq8oWnaojLHZtfwBUAzGmtuoMeg6meRGn9-TP7BR3WxF7Qn8vBLZN6b_BkBPGcTmNzk8gtvW9xvF9O5q4k6yp64UYKWr0S3-xNbjBNiqzucF9CFcvyl10ToQoUSoY9TTfl7/s1600/atelier_show%25233_detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisEEAmS8gfevq8oWnaojLHZtfwBUAzGmtuoMeg6meRGn9-TP7BR3WxF7Qn8vBLZN6b_BkBPGcTmNzk8gtvW9xvF9O5q4k6yp64UYKWr0S3-xNbjBNiqzucF9CFcvyl10ToQoUSoY9TTfl7/s400/atelier_show%25233_detail.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">detail, <i>Guerrero series #11</i>,</td></tr>
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A poet once said that knowledge is like water, 'dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.' These pictures, relaxed and open, suffused with sun, unplanned and unforeseen, seem to partake in the joy of discovering profound secrets when one is least expecting them - or when, rather, one suspects they have been present all along. <br />
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Or, according to Collins, they could express something else entirely, and that's okay with him too.<br />
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Pierre Cordier and Gundi Falk will be seen at Galerie Volker Diehl (Berlin) in August and at Paris Photo/Scheublein + Bak (Paris/Zurich) in November. Gundi Falk has a solo show underway at Barbado Gallery (Lisbon). Collins has work currently on view at IPCNY (New York) and at the Center for Photographic Art (Carmel, California). <br />
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dcollinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13211802069564554414noreply@blogger.com5