Digital BW, The Print

John, you're absolutely right that this is a continuing trend, not something new. I did not 
word that well. I guess what I am a little discouraged by is not so much the large prints, 
per se - because I do appreciate many - but more that I am seeing a lot of emerging 
photographers fresh out of art school going straight for scale, and it gets me thinking. As 
someone who is trying to "emerge" herself, I keep track of as many juried exhibitions/
contests as I can, looking to see what the winners are offering. A high percentage of it is 
large prints. I just wonder what's behind that decision. I'd love to ask each person.

Sarah


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "john dean" <deanwork2003@...> 
wrote:
>
> I hate to break the news to you but this fad of large photographs is
> not recent. It started in California in the early 80's. One of my
> teachers in grad school, Will Larson, had this joke, "why are the
> color prints in California so big.. so you can see them from NY.
> 
> Well, when postmodernism hit Metro Pictures in NY and all those places
> started the larger  than life size type c print situation, Sherman and
> Prince, Skougland, and all that, around 1983 and it has been going
> strong every since. Jeff Wall, Gregory Kundsten, Andreas Gursky-
> http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2001/gursky/index.html, James Casabere
>   and Thomas Demand are only more recent examples of this. I believe
> it started as a way to compete with painting for both money and
> physical attention. It also offered something to put in big corporate
> spaces that people would buy. It would never have the intimacy of of
> Caponigro or Ansel's 8x10 contact print of Moonrise, it is something
> different alltogether. I like both realms for different reasons. There
> is nothing wrong with big prints in big spaces and small prints in
> intimate spaces.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "sagaface"
> <sagaface@> wrote:
> >
> > The current fad of ginormous prints at many NYC galleries has been a
> major peeve of 
> > mine.
>