Digital BW, The Print

Further, the prints that he did mid-career are considered better
> (by the market forces and art historians) than his later work that was *much* more luminously rendered, how
> can that be?.

I have no idea. I much prefer the look of the later prints!


> In nature, not every scene has a full range of tones...Is conveying those scenes off limits to photography?

All I know is I just don't accept a gray landscape with weak blacks,
except for the high key images. 

I can't rule out all prints of course! I haven't seen them. But if there
is a large area of deep black in a print, that has no shadow detail, as
many of my prints have, they would look terrible if the deepest black
was only a charcoal gray. I have thrown out many a print because of that.


> While I agree, it is very important to be *able* to produce a full tonal range on a photo print, it just isn't
> *always* necessary.  

Didn't say it was. I'm referring to Landscape type prints, remember! 

At Brooks Institute, even in the later units, we had to have solid
blacks in our prints. And I must say, that I've never seen better prints
than are always on exhibition in the Brooks Galleries. 

Back then, we had Varigam and Velour Black Photographic papers. They had
incredible blacks, and the paper was brilliant white. 

  But after they 'got it', it was time to let them
> be free....The full tonal range assignments were an *excercise*, not an end unto itself.

Again, would you like to see the classic Ansel prints that had only a
charcoal gray for a black? Really?

Remember I'm talking about a specific type of print here. 


> If you carried your theories through to other art mediums, you would exclude most modern art....Does that make
> sense?

Excluding most modern art makes GREAT sense. There's relatively little
that impresses me. Again, Some of it is great. But the vast majority is
really awful.

And I'm the first to admit I haven't seen many platinum prints! I always
understood you could not get an intense black with the platinum process.

Jerry