Digital BW, The Print

I read Ansel and Minor and
Phil, and all of them left me with my head spinning and feeling
deflated.

I remember being frustrated, thinking:  I know what all these words  
mean, but what the hell do they MEAN?  :  )

Then I discovered Fred's stuff and suddenly it all made
good practical sense and I was able to make it work and I got all
excited and went out and did real work with it.

Always a plus.  I also remember being frustrated with Phil's testing,  
thinking:  I'm spending all my time testing.

why
did Minor feel it necessary to reinterpret what Ansel said?).

good question.  His methods were the most baroque of all.

   Once you understand the system and
how to work it you are beyond anyone's theories - it's all
irrelevent.

Even if you don't understand it, but get work out of it.  Arnold  
Gassan lived here in Tucson, and I used to correspond with him before  
I had any clue that he had a significant reputation.  He was just  
another guy on the old Leben list, somebody I thought maybe I could  
swap info with.  Unfortunately, I never got to meet him.  But he once  
told me about someone who approached him for lessons.  When he asked  
to see examples of her work, she showed him what he described as  
"lovely prints", which had some unusual quality to them, the exact  
nature of which I've forgotten.  But he was intrigued, and asked her  
to show him what techniques she used.  She took him in the darkroom  
and proceeded to not only do everything wrong under the sun, but do  
some really bizarre things- I don't know what- rub the prints in sand  
or something.  Nothing about how she worked was standard or  
recommended.  She had absolutely no idea what she was doing, in other  
words, in any conventional sense.  And yet she had produced a series  
of images good enough to intrigue a knowledgeable photog and teacher,  
one of Jon Cone's teachers.

   I don't understand why people
can't make room for other ideas.

Yep.  Lotta guys using the Taliban Zone System.

James




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