Digital BW, The Print

Well put, from someone who has been there.

I'll tell you, the more monochrome work I do the more I like variety,
both for my clients as well as for myself. It is so true that what
works for one photographer in one body of work is totally wrong for
another photographer or another body of work.

As to these older "neutral" silver and plat/pallad prints, I think a
lot of the ones we thought of a lacking a hue were actually a bit cold
 by absolute standards. Harry Callahan used to print on the old
original fiber Kodak Polycontrast paper soon after it first came out.
We were all taught that stuff was junk but his prints were very
silvery and beautuful and of course he crafted the developer and
toning to give him a nice color. I asked him during a show of his work
why he used that paper since it was what we thought of as commercial
paper and he said he liked the print color. It worked great for him
for that Chicago urban work. 

But we're in a different world now. We can have so much more variety
even with the same media, in the same machine, in the same hour. Too
bad Harry isn't around to play with it all. I want as many options as
possible and I don't want to be directed by the materials any more
than is absolutely necessary. I think that the very fact that we are
developing so much control in this area of black and white print color
is the very reason so many of us are reflecting on exactly what it all
means. In the past we played the hand that was delt us and did the
best we could. Now we're gonna have choices.

John


 
> It's so hard to make hard and fast opinions about this stuff. When I
> first had a chance to see a lot of Frank Gohlke's prints years ago at
> a workshop, I was so impressed. They did not yell at you, they had no
> screaming whites, no booming blacks, no rich selenium or Portriga
> color. Just these glowing grays. I think he used Polyfiber, a paper
> the rest of us never took seriously, with a slight selenium toning for
> longevity. Sexton and others were part of the same west coast
> workshop, so you know these were an exception.
> And one of the impressions that really stood out, because it wasn't
> the excepted norm- they seemed absolutely dead on neutral. They seemed
> so neutral gray, that you actually made note of it consciously, how
> beautiful gray is.
> But, were they really? Was it just an impression? Would someone else's
> work have had the same presence printed on the same materials? Another
> time neutrality hit me was an old platinum print at a museum, it could
> be neutral or even cold back then because it platinum  wasn't pure. It
> was so neutral it looked like pencil lead, but photographic, and very
> beautifu. But the same questions apply, was it really lab neutral or
> just an impression?
> I've always thought neutrality was a viable goal. Under what
> circumstances it makes the most beautiful print is another issue
> entirely, made even more complicated by how sensitive the eye/brain is
> to it, and it's slight variation.
> I'd like to play with the inks and see what works with them, and the
> different papers, just not enough Epsons laying around.
> Tyler