Happy Valentine’s Day
February 14th, 2007
A busy day for me today. Spent a good part of the morning digging out the car and truck so we could get going. Then I drove around in an unsuccessful attempt to find copies of French PHOTO. The December issue is still on the newsstands here. I’ll try again Friday.
For those who have expressed concern, thank you. All my tests came back fine and the doctor has told me no surgery is needed at this time. So I don’t have to try to figure out how to fit that into my schedule in the coming month or so.
Here’s a shot of Gaea in the room at the Leland Hotel in Detroit last weekend. I have a few more of her from that weekend that I’ll post. I’ll have a bit more to say about the Dirty Show and related topics, but that will have to wait for another, less busy, day. I’ll be spending this evening with my wonderful wife, Emily…no time for more blogging.
French PHOTO
February 13th, 2007
Last night my good friend from NYC, Dave Rudin, e-mailed me that French PHOTO magazine’s Jan/Feb issue had finally shown up in the city and he had some copies. This is the photo of mine that they selected for publication. This is the 6th time in 5 years that I’ve been published in that magazine. But this time is special because they ran this photo as a half page. Nearly all the photos in this issue are 1/8 page, so I’m very flattered that mine was selected to run larger.
Of course, I’m very happy about this publication. I still haven’t seen the magazine, but hope to find copies soon. It usually takes a week or so longer for them to arrive in Ohio. I can’t go looking today because we are snowed in by the storm of the century of the week today.
The model is Mindy. The location is a farm just outside the small town where I grew up here in Ohio. This photo was actually taken within sight of the spot were I took the photo of Charlye Raine among some backlit ferns that was selected for the magazine last year. Guess I’ll have to go do some more shooting this year on that farm…it’s obviously good luck for me.
February 13th, 2007
This is Dave Rudin’s photo that is in the same issue of French PHOTO, used with his permission. The model is Alison. This was shot in the Scottish Highlands. Dave is a great photographer who works with medium format film in black and white. You can see many more of his wonderful photos on his web site: http://www.art2view.com/DaveRudin/ His site is also linked to the right.
Post-Dirty Post
February 11th, 2007
I’m back from my first experience of the Dirty Show in Detroit and I don’t quite know what to say about it. I really didn’t know what to expect, and what I saw was and wasn’t what I expected.
I hesitated to enter my work in this show because I don’t think my work is really in tune with the focus of this show. Having seen the show, I was right about that. Thanks to the prudish values that seem to dominate the surface of our culture, I’m used to being the artist with the most controversial work at any group show I participate in. At the Dirty Show I found myself to be probably the most conservative artist in the show. Not a problem, but certainly a different situation.
As far as the content of the show, I was surprised and in some ways disappointed at what I saw. I’d say that about half of the work on display was excellent. Some was figure work, like mine, not really oriented toward the erotic. Other pieces were serious efforts to make art that dealt with human sexuality. Many were very successful. Some were disturbing. Many were interesting. That half of the show was certainly art.
But the other half of the work there was, well, just dirty. It seemed to me to just be shocking, crude and pointless displays of sexual activity. The work in this half, in my opinion, was largely artless, of poor quality as far as craftsmanship, and had nothing to say…it was simply showing various forms of sex. So, I guess I’d call it pornography.
Not that I have a problem with that. Porn is not something I’m particularly interested in, and certainly not something I want to do…but I also don’t want to see it banned or restricted beyond being kept away from children. I am totally opposed to censorship. The very idea of someone else thinking they are better qualified than I to decide what I should see or hear or read just makes me instantly angry. So I certainly want to go on record as being totally in support of the right of the Dirty Show to present whatever dirty “art” work they want to display.
And, being used to the usual turnout at gallery openings of a few dozen people, the huge crowd at the Dirty Show was fantastic. And who can complain about an art show with lots of beautiful women dressed in little more than pasties and a g-string walking around in the crowd. It was obvious the work was being sold and lots of people were having a great time.
So, will I enter the Dirty Show again? I think so. I don’t think I want to change anything about what I’m doing with my work to align more with what is shown at the Dirty Show. But I think I’ll send in some work again next time and see if they want to include it. It’s a show worth seeing. It’s good that nude work has this outlet where it can be seen. I don’t think I even want to suggest they work at raising the quality and eliminating the work that I didn’t like. It is what it is. It’s well named. It’s fun. If you can go see it, do.
Here’s another shot of Gaea from last week. We shot some new things in the hotel in Detroit. I may post some of those soon.
More Gaea
February 9th, 2007
Here’s another of Gaea from our shoot earlier this week. In a couple hours I’ll head out for Detroit and the Dirty Show opening tonight. Should be a hoot.
Gaining Ground
February 8th, 2007
I’m making some headway in getting all the things done that need to be done. I leave tomorrow for Detroit to experience the opening of the Dirty Show tomorrow night. Should be interesting. Don’t know how well I or my work will fit in to that venue, but I’m looking forward to meeting some new people and watching what goes on.
This is Gaea from our shoot earlier this week. She is the model in my photo that will be displayed at the Dirty Show. Gaea and her boyfriend will also be attending the opening with me. I’ll post more from this shoot when I get back from Detroit.
Busy, busy, busy
February 7th, 2007
Still Busy
February 6th, 2007
It’s a busy life
February 3rd, 2007
The next few days are very busy, so you’ll be spared any new rambling rants from me for a few days. Tomorrow I drive to Detroit to drop off my and Gary Mitchell’s prints for the Dirty Show which opens next weekend. While I’m up there I’ll also be doing a shoot with Iris. Then on Monday I have a commercial shoot for a magazine at my studio. Tuesday I’ll be doing a shoot with Gaea, who is the model in the photo that I’ll be showing at the Dirty Show.
I’ll probably do some new posts here while all that is going on, but they will be short ones. Maybe I’ll have some new photos to share with you after all that shooting.
For now, here’s another fishnet figure study. Just something to change things a bit while working in the studio in all this bitter cold weather.
The History of Photography, Part I
February 1st, 2007
I’m afraid I’m somewhat puzzled and amused by the heated reaction on the part of some photographers to the rise of digital photography and the decline in popularity of the silver process. To me it’s just another step in the constant development of the medium. But there are a few remarkable differences in this newest change in technology which make it a much better change than most of the ones we’ve had in the past. I want to review the progress of the medium over the centuries to make my point.
Of course, cameras (the camera obscura, first discovered when pinholes in tent fabric would project an upside down image of the outside on the wall of a tent in the desert) were around for at least 1,000 years before anyone came up with a way to preserve the image they formed. That was the secret of photography. It’s the only secret of photography, and it was revealed more than 160 years ago.
The first successful photographic process to produce permanent images was, of course, invented by Daguerre who was building on the discoveries of his partner, Niepce. It was essentially a silver process using iodine to sensitize a polished silver plate. Mercury vapor was the developer and common salt was the “fixer” which desensitized the silver.
This was a difficult and dangerous process. Many photographers died from exposure to mercury vapor. The resulting image, as we all know, was difficult to view. But it was remarkable for the high quality of the images. We know Daguerreotypes are quite permanent because many made in the first half of the 19th century are still with us.
Why aren’t we still using that process? It worked quite well, despite a few disadvantages. The silver plates were certainly more durable than the paper we produce photos on now.
Well, there have been many other photographic processes invented over the years. Talbot invented a paper-based process at about the same time as Daguerre came up with his. It was Herschel who first used what was then called hyposulphite of soda to remove the unexposed silver from his photographs. That chemical, now called sodium thiosulfate, but which we all call “hypo,” remains a basic ingredient of the chemical process to this day.
There have been many other processes invented and used over the history of photography. Talbot’s calotype was an improvement on his original process. Then the collodion process (sometimes called “wet plate”) replaced Talbot’s, using glass plate negatives. This became the process of choice. It is still used today by some photographers. This was Matthew Brady’s process. It was slow and difficult, but produced photographs of excellent quality.
OK…to keep this from getting too long (oops, too late) I’ll stop describing each process and just list a few of those that followed. For quite a few years these were just printing processes using collodion negatives: Carbon prints, Carbro prints, tin types, ambrotypes, carte-de-visite. By the 1880s dry plates replaced the wet plate process. Soon the inventions of electric light and fast printing papers allowed the beginning of mass produced photo prints. The hand-coated wet plate negative was finished.
Then George Eastman came along. Glass plates were replaced by flexible plastic film. Mass produced simple cameras and mass photo finishing made photography a common activity. The basic negative/positive silver process that is still in use today was now in place…more than a century ago.
There are, of course, a lot of other processes that can produce photographs. Gum bichromate, platinum, gold…any precious metal will work. Why did we settle on silver? Speed, ease and cost were the basic reasons. Not quality. In fact, most advances in the process of photography have sacrificed quality for a process that was easier, safer and faster.
So now I come to my point at last. The current move to digital photography is different. It is different because it is not sacrificing quality. The digital process is easier, faster, safer (it introduces less toxic chemicals into the environment…and into the bodies of darkroom workers). And the quality is now higher than what is attainable with the silver process. The sensors in the latest professional digital cameras have greater resolving power than the lenses used on the cameras can deliver. The d-max attainable with the latest pigment ink jet printers is blacker than can be achieved using a silver process. The ability to control tones in a print through computer software is vastly greater than what can be done while making a silver enlargement, even by the most skilled darkroom technician. Pigment ink jet prints have greater permanence than chemical color prints and approach the permanence of black and white silver prints.
Photography is not a religion. From listening to some bemoan the change to digital you’d think there was something holy involved. Photographs can certainly capture the holy. But how it is captured doesn’t matter. It’s just a process. The process has changed many times over the years, often for the worse in terms of quality. This change is at least one that offers higher quality. And all I really care about is the photographs. I want to share my vision of the world and I want to see what you have to share of your vision. I don’t really care about the process used to record the photos. Whatever works is fine with me. Digital works. So does silver. Use what you like. But show me the photos.
References for this post were The History of Photography by Beaumont Newhall and A Popular Treatise on the Art of Photography written by Robert Hunt and first published in 1841, edited by James Y. Tong and reprinted in 1973.
Today’s photo continues my red and black theme. Photographed with a digital camera using a lighting setup that has been used by photographers almost since the beginning of the medium.
