Serious photographers?
Where have we been, as photographers?
Needle in light bulb with reflector
This evening, Friday, November 6, 2009, as I sit at my small table, Max, my German Shepherd sleeps lightly on the couch a couple feet away. I’ve been going over the night photographs I’ve made during the past year-and-a-half. This past Sunday I conducted another night time workshop in a country setting with the full moon illuminating the different scenes. On November 15, another Sunday, the group will be downtown Houston to shoot various scenes without a moon.
And so I thought I would add a couple of images from the first gathering.
But then I wondered if I should continue down this path of the popular images most people today want to make. Digital cameras can do so much more than film cameras, as I’ve been finding out over the past couple of years. And more and more people are “into” photography then ever before, it seems. And making better pictures to boot! It has a lot to do with the software they use too. Unlike a darkroom and chemicals, papers and burning and dodging, multiple filters and toning, digital does it all and oh so much easier—once the software is learned,
And then it struck me—are the cameras and software making the images from the files created by the person pointing the camera and clicking the shutter? Or does the person, hard at times to call them photographers, really know deep inside themselves just what they’re doing? Is there concentration, recognition, intuition, love of the process all supported by experience building to a climax of releasing the shutter? Are there still Minor Whites, Ansel Adams, Harry Callahans, Aaron Siskinds and the likes out there? John Sexton in Carmel, California continues his excellent workshops. Kim Weston his and his foundation gives grants to students who must be working with film and chemistry—no digital. Kim is the Grandson of Edward Weston and son of Cole Weston, continuing with the wet processes. He conducts excellent workshop and you can join him. Just click on the link over in the right sidebar. He’s there.
Gina and Kim Weston in their home on Wildcat Hill
So I wonder. Photographers? How many people do you know that have artist paintbrushes who call themselves artists? Anyone with a camera can call themself a photographer! Hmmmmm. . .
From the past almost six years I sat here asking myself as I looked back if I’ve “made” any really significant photographs during my Houston stay? There were a few 35mm ones taken shortly after I arrived just after Christmas 2003 but nothing like the medium and large format ones I’d made from most of the previous 40 years since leaving RIT in 1963. I’d documented some poverty scenes in Freedmen’s Town and a homeless man living under a bridge, hundreds of overpasses as I drove too and fro along the massive concrete freeways but nothing that matches the intensity of shooting black and white with a view camera in the Zone System attitude processed and printed accordingly.
Beaumont Newhall in his office at George Eastman House
What I have done is scan a number of black and white negatives from the past to work the magic of the ambient–light–darkroom of Photoshop and Indesign from which I made large prints on my HP 24 inch printer. Prints coming out the back of the printer were no where near the excitement and pleasure of one developing up in the tray of liquid magic or the toning in selenium. The beauty of a wet print under white light with some slight disappointment when dried still exceeded the dried print from the ink jet printer. But on the wall, framed under glass, the final feeling of accomplishment was equally there.
The process had been diluted extensively.
Never-the-less, one of the first images from the last nude workshop held by Cole Weston at his home down in the Big Sur area of May 2002 made with the ink jet printer sold at $1,200 at a TALA auction here during my first year in Houston. TALA, Texas accountants and lawyers for the arts. I set the minimum bid at half of what I wanted retail. Another one sold a few weeks ago at the same auction. Not as highly priced due to the economy, but someone wanted it.
In my photo lighting class at Rice University’s Glasscock School of Continuing Studies I touch upon the Zone System explaining that Ansel Adams and Fred Archer came up with language of the system, not the techniques. Those were accomplished by Hurter and Driffield in the 19th century using a modified sewing machine, a circle of metal with specific cutouts, sensitive film and light. They were the first to use scientific methods of exposing and processing films that would print easily onto the papers of the time. Ansel and Fred created the words and explained the processes that made it quite easy to understand for most serious photographers. They did it mainly to teach Army photographers during WWII.
There remain many dedicated photographers using film and chemistry today, but the number dwindled rapidly once digital caught on. There’ll be a resurgence not long from now but where will those getting into it get their needed guidance? Most schools and colleges have forsaken their darkrooms for computers. It has become an alternative process today.
So I sit here still wondering what paths I will be taking in the coming weeks and months as I continue teaching to students who have never been in a wet darkroom, let alone processed a roll or sheet of film. One student of mine from a couple of past classes at Rice told me the other night as we headed for the night time workshop, “I took a basic photography class with twenty sophomores and juniors last semester and we all used view cameras and sheet films. I now know what it’s like to make a photograph. Just watching the image come up in the developer blew my mind!” This man is a retired professor from Rice easily in his sixties. He got into photography about four or five years ago, digital only, until this latest class. He’s hooked.
Dr. Riane Eisler in her home living room
Where do we go now?