this is my life…
funny. as i decide to write about my days in the darkroom, i worry that not much will happen. ha! this week is interesting, just as any other week really. monday: chien-chi chang. tuesday: al wertheimer and ruven afanador. but before i go on with my week, you have to understand: a printer's experience is but a list of photographers and artists coming in to get their work done. without this list i am nothing. without the images and negatives made by someone else, i have nothing. in this sense, printing is very much like performing. my performance happens in the dark behing closed doors. no one really knows what i do once my door is closed and i go to work. what matters is the end product, the print. as a matter of fact, very few people care to know the details, most use the word “magic” to describe a black and white print appearing slowly in the developer. let me assure you, there is nothing magic about the process. a silver gelatin print is the product of ingeneous chemists over many years, and the technology used to make the emulsion is brilliant. but i am getting off the subject, let's get back to the negative, that fragile piece of acetate that holds all the information. there are so many way to interpret a negative, i usually need to make a work print, a first approach if you will, so the conversation can start on how to proceed. it is a long process, and the more i know the photographer the more i'll get out of the negative. i need to see the image through their eyes. i do feel a bit schizophrenic some days, going from one type of print to the next, but a good print is only good if the photographer likes it. i have to adapt to their style and vision. most of the time it is a joint effort, but now and then, i just match prints that have been done many times by several printers before me. this week i am doing a little bit of both. an image of elvis presley by al wertheimer shot in 1956 -that's 10 years before i was born-, a print of the cover of torero by ruven afanador, which i've made many times in different sizes, new images by mauro restife of the philip johnson glass house, and the dalai lama by chien-chi chang. sizes ranging from 16x20 to 54x81 inches, some warmtone, or glossy, or matte, etc. every image has a story behind it, and i need to hear about it before i print.
this is not a blog about printing techniques, it's about how a print ends up looking the way it does. my best prints happen when i'm able to break the rules of printing. another important part of my work is the vocabulary used to describe a printed image: too flat, too dark... is just the begining, and it ends up being: i don't get the feeling that the sunlight is coming through the leaves strong enough... there's no special setting for that. but if i'm outside on a sunny day with that particular photographer, and they seem to squint more than i do, i know their understanding of brightness is not as bright as mine -or vice-versa-.
the week is getting to an end, and already bob gruen has brought in a couple of iconic negatives, which i could almost print with my eyes closed by now. next week is his birthday, and i have a soccer game to play tonight. the numbers associated with bob's tina turner picture pop into my head, something like 52-11-2. but chien-chi will be here soon, and i have to show him the two 40x60 in. prints i made for him, so we can make sure they compliment eachother, they will be displayed at art-paris together. almost time to dump the 7 gallons of developer i used today and rinse the sinks. next week promises to be filled with new images, and i haven't even talked about processing film yet...