more than just black and white
grey. light grey, dark grey. how many other kinds of grey are there? well, as a photographer i would say there are about eight different kinds, with black and white on either side. add some selenium and it goes up to eleven! but we (well, at least anselm adams and fred archer did) call them zones. what i have noticed is that language gets in the way to talk about the subtleties of a silver gelatin print. besides, the zone system starts with the exposure of the film, then is dependent of the development before a print is even made. the different greys that share the open space on a print come from their earlier opposite selves on the negative.
on a silver gelatin print, the space between the transition of values has depth through the layers, the light falls in, and while some bounces back, other photons get caught inside. only then, as if looking into a cave to see the depth of a true black, can the multitude of greys be understood. or seen. seen after looking, and the brain needs a few seconds to dig in, but it's there, inside the emulsion, layered on top of the fibers of the paper, and all these silver halides at different states of reflectance. all of that becomes one at some point in time, it hangs there for a moment, just long enough to make sense. the chaos of the analog emulsion - despite the rather predictable clumping habits of certain crystals - brings the life out of an inanimate two dimensional object.
i have stared at many silver gelatin fiber prints of all sizes, for a large amount of time in my life to observe that visual phenomenon. it's as if i am inside the image, following photons going deep into the baryta layer, hitting the paper base, giving the image a breath of fresh light from the inside. a simple operation really compared to what a film emulsion does, but for now my interest lies with looking at a print.
the in-between spaces are the most in need of attention in darkroom black and white printing, we talk about blending quite a lot when we talk about printing, more than the saucier at a classic french restaurant. on a personal level i like to sprinkle a little light where it's needed, a little more and it's a splash that i add. perhaps on occasions i have used a cut-out cardboard to handle a dodge or a burn, but they were exceptions specific to particular problems -like in mural printing- in general i use my hands to direct the flow of light on its way to an emulsion. in horizontal printing the blending comes from a vertical move, usually horizontal moves need to be a bit more precise. zone I gives a little of itself to zone X, and vice versa, in an exchange of values where nothing is black and white. we should really call it grey photography, where the whitest white is relative only to the blackest black, the scale moving along the changing conditions, such as the incident light, matte or glossy surface, uv glass or non-reflective, or none at all. the brightness of the room plays a big part, so an image changes according to the amount of light reaching it. well, of course, we know that.
it's never as simple as black and white, we know that too. black and white thinking can be quite limiting to a healthy brain, in fact it might even be on its way to borderline personality disorder. this is where language falls short. in psychology, black and white thinking leads to cognitive distortion, giving us a picture of reality - or the reality of a picture. analog photography is not either/or, but about all the options in between. in my personal life i am more of a minimalist, i always find less to be more. in my darkroom on the other hand, i usually want more, more nuances and metaphors, blends of so many shades they come and go like waves. anything, but everything. everything but achieved in the simplest way. my darkroom minimalism is in the process -see earlier posts-, the final print contains all the information needed to be appreciated in any lighting situation.
the scale, the analog scale, the black and white zone system, is sort of an antidote to black and white thinking. it expands the possibilities, it opens the mind to new shades of grey that were previously hidden. it's a learned skill if you want to analyze it, but anyone can see simply by looking at the depth of a piece of paper. it may just be a very personal attraction, as we all have a print type preference deep down inside. me, it's the darkroom silver gelatin fiber print, the photographic process of my generation. it has supported most images that inspired me over the years, i even have printed some of them. perhaps it is the culture it carries, perhaps my eyes, certainly my brain has a penchant for its virtues. when i print i touch the paper to feel the layers, the depth of the information it does, or could contain.
the process works by osmosis between separate layers, the light seeps in through the gelatin. the last time the photons get diffused before hitting the gelatin. of course chaos comes to mind again, all that energy from the light transformed into a chemical canvas made of shades of grey. my job is to find ways to put the right shades at the right place and time. i see a print as a moment in time. a well executed print can make you forget that life is a three dimensional world in color.
the entire greyscale moves in sync on the x axis, the contrast fluctuations along the y axis, simply add or subtract a zone here and a zone there. this is what goes through my mind as i take one last look at the negative before i slide it inside the enlarger. now it's the textural range of the negative that interests me, the values i saw through my loupe that will morph into their opposites soon. and just like in any linguistic translation, the first draft gives the overall meaning, then the details fall into place. the zone system can be a useful sort of dictionary, but mostly in the structure, the grammar of the print. a conceptual tool in a sense. the metaphors and colorful expletives become the art form, the values influence each other. the print starts to be talked about with the vocabulary of the impression one gets from being present when the exposure happened, not from seeing the image-object later for the first time. that's what i meant when i said i feel the image on the paper, it has depth. the image has a history, the print carries that history, the grey values tell the mood of the moment. emotions turning into photons into silver halides for our brain to reconstruct. that process that involves light from beginning to end, through the negative-positive translation, it allows the whims of the human touch, that's how prints evolve being re-printed over the years. the shades of grey support the weight of the impression given by the image. maybe i give the print too much importance, maybe i like it even better when it disappears under the image.
