Digital BW, The Print

Tyler,

>...I'm pretty tired of all this huge stuff, the photographic
>integrity of the image is often lost, they lose presence and
>substance. 

Yes!  Glad to hear you say that.  My epiphany came about 15 years ago
at an AA exhibit where everything was 16x20 or larger.  I became aware
of a sense of unease while viewing them and it finally hit me that I
enjoyed his pics more in a good book on my lap.  That was the
beginning of my scaling down and experimenting with smaller sizes.  My
favorite now is a 6x8 image on letter size paper.  Held in the hands,
it's the same FOV as viewing a 16x20 from about 4 feet.  


>Many are printing big simply because they can...

Or are pressured into it by gallery owners and/or buyers.  



>But many of my favorite things by others are quite small. 
>Caponigro's latest stuff is amazing...little still lives.
>I was told Nick's are around 8" square. 

I'm glad to hear that.  It definitely goes against the mainstream.  Do
you have to be famous before people will accept small prints? 

Actually, I think that people who really understand and love
photography don't care about print size.  Loving photography as an art
form doesn't have anything to do with filling space over the sofa. 
For example, I don't recall Szarkowski ever complain about print size
in any of his books.  I've seen people gush over giant prints as
"magnificent" that were IMO terrible photos.


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm