Digital BW, The Print

www.billbrandt.com/News/Current%20Exhibitions/Press%
20release/pressreleasefkg.html

I'm driving down to Los Angeles from Monterey to see this important 
Bill Brandt exhibit...the press release I've cited here is overblown, 
but Brandt's work certainly is well known to anybody who's taken a 
serious interest in B&W photography outside the confines of scenics. 

 Brandt's images should be especially exciting, rather than 
merely "precious," when seen in grand scale and with the extra 
control that's so readily available with inkjet printing..."carbon" 
printing as the gallery labels it in the Los Angeles Times.  

"He excelled in all fields - social, Surrealism, night photography, 
documentary, landscape, portraiture and the nude."

"Brandt's nudes are also considered as his most innovative work. "In 
photography only Edward Weston has made nudes of equal power," said 
John Szarkowski, Director Emeritus of MoMA's Department of 
Photography. Dramatic use of the contrasting values of black and 
white, and exploration of optical deformations, cause the nudes to 
read as daring studies in abstractions, somewhat reminiscent of Henry 
Moore's sculptures.

"Carbon was one of the earliest substances used to produce 
photographic prints. The first known image-forming use of carbon 
pigment was in the Paleolithic Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave in France some 
30,000 years ago. More recently, the first photographic Carbon Print 
process was developed by Adolphe Poitevin in France in 1856."

"An important aspect of the process is that it is an ink on paper 
medium, not a light-sensitive emulsion, and therefore is more akin to 
gravure than to silver or platinum prints. Carbon printing is still 
practised today in various forms by those who revere a more permanent 
image."