Exposed For The Shadows

Today’s X-ray went well. The sun is out and the roads are getting to be a little more passable. But I’m still swamped with stuff I have to get done. The magazine loved the photos I did for them on Monday…so much that they came right back with a new assignment…so now I have to find 2-5 beautiful teen models with long hair in great shape for a shoot about hair styles. And I’ll be heading back up to Detroit on Friday for the opening of the Dirty Show. I guess I really shouldn’t complain about this kind of busy…but it’s my excuse for not writing more.

I had planned to post this photo today…and then I saw that Iris beat me to it and already has it on her blog. Go check it out there too. Iris writes a great blog that you should be reading…and she posts lots of wonderful nudes of herself. There’s a link over to the right. Thanks, Iris, for all those kind words about me.

Sorry that I still can’t find time to write much here. Just too much going on. Today I have to edit the shoot I did for a magazine yesterday and get the selected shots e-mailed off to the magazine for them to do their editing. This morning I did a shoot with Gaea, who, along with her boyfriend, will be going up to the Dirty Show with me on Friday. And, of course, it’s freaking cold and it’s supposed to snow a ton tonight. Another storm of the century of the week. I’d stay home tomorrow, but I have to go out and get another medical test done…the last, I hope. All is well, in case anyone was concerned…all tests have come back normal…which is pretty weird for a guy like me.

Anyway…when I went up to Detroit on Sunday to drop off prints for the Dirty Show I also did a shoot with Iris in a formerly magestic, now very seedy hotel in downtown Detroit. Here’s one from that shoot. Lots more to come. Thanks Iris. Gaea and company and I will be staying in this same hotel this weekend when we go up for the Dirty Show, so we’ll probably make some more photos there then. And I’ll soon post more of Iris and some of what I shot this morning. But for now, it’s back to the work that pays the rent.

With apologies to Mel Brooks.

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.

Put together a black fishnet body stocking and a true red head, add a little classic figure lighting in the studio…

After spending the first half of today going through a fairly unpleasant medical test, I’m not really feeling like writing a long essay today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be up to more verbal diarea. Or not. For now, just enjoy Nola.

I have a very busy week coming up, including more medical tests, but also a couple possible shoots, so I hope to have some new things to share here soon.

Now that I’ve talked about some general issues of photography and access vs. privacy I thought I’d tell you a bit about my personal views on the subject and how I came to arrive at them over 40-years as a photographer.

Many years ago I used to do street photography. I was fairly successful at it, with a lot of those photos finding their way to publication in one place or another. I don’t do street photography now. I have respect for those who do and wouldn’t think of arguing that there is anything wrong with what they do. But long ago I became uncomfortable with taking photos of people in public places without their knowledge or consent. I called that photography spirit stealing at the time I was doing it, and I still refer to it that way. I think that idea which some laugh at as primitive is actually a very apt description of what happens in that kind of photography. I’m not comfortable with stealing like that. So I don’t do it.

Eventually that discomfort with “candid” photography is one of the variety of forces that moved me toward the work I do now where everyone involved in the creation of my photos is a volunteer who knows what we are doing and why. Whatever I “take” from my subjects when I “take” their photo is given by them freely, not stolen by me on the sly.

Again, this is just a personal viewpoint and reflects what I’m comfortable with and not comfortable with in the selection of subjects. I am in no way interested in trying to apply this viewpoint to other photographers. We each are entitled to make our own decisions about our subject matter and style of work. It’s really nobody’s business but our own. I just thought it might be moderately interesting to share my personal viewpoint…I guess that’s what a blog is supposed to be about anyway.

I came to this point of view gradually without a real conscious attempt to think it through. Like much of who I am, it’s a product of the 60s. Sorry about that, but I’m an old hippy in many ways, and not ashamed of it in the least.

When I was in college studying photography I received much of my education outside the classroom, darkroom and studio. I had already been working as a newspaper photographer before going to college, so I ended up working for student publications as a photographer. In the 60s that often meant I was photographing demonstrations and sometimes riots. I loved that work. The excitement of the situation, the wonderful mix of skills required to make successful photos in that situation…I loved it. You had to be able to make correct exposures (with a manual camera with no internal meter in those days) focus, compose, find the right spot to see what was happening, and know when to duck. I once had a brick remove a strobe from the top of my camera while I was shooting.

I learned about theater. During the “riot” phase of some demonstrations I learned that some protesters who were planning to get arrested would carry packets of ketchup to smear on their faces when they were being taken away so it would make a more dramatic photo.

I learned the value of access. I had press credentials, so I was left alone by the police. Those same credentials from the “pig press” as it was sometimes referred to then, could, however, get you in trouble with the demonstrators and restrict your access to them. I had a classmate who had no press background. He was a Vietnam veteran recently discharged from the army. At one demonstration he decided to take a photo of the scene with is pinhole camera. He was arrested and hauled away. Worse, the police opened up his pinhole camera and exposed the sheet of film inside, so he didn’t even get a photo for his efforts.

It was around this time that the shootings at Kent State happened. After that I found I could no longer go to the demonstrations as an observer/photographer. I put my camera away and became one of the demonstrators. I was a strong supporter of non-violent protest and worked hard to prevent violence and destruction. My views were in the minority, however and before long what had been peaceful demonstrations turned into violent riots. One day I walked up town from my dorm to find a National Guardsman with fixed bayonet standing by every parking meter. The school soon closed for the year. Less than a year later I was drafted and was off to a new phase of my life. I’ve never regretted my decision to stop being a photographer for those last weeks of that school year.

One more story from that time that I think speaks to the power and the moral issues of photography. One of the things I covered in those days was the Weather Underground. I went to their meetings. I did not photograph at their meetings, but they provided context for the photos I was doing at the demonstrations. The members of that group were very paranoid, or so I thought. They always covered their faces when they went in and out of the meeting place because they were sure they were being photographed. I laughed at them. Afterall, isn’t this America where we are free to assemble and share our views…we are a free country, right? Well, a few years later I met and became friends with the photographer who was across the street on top of a building taking those photos with a telephoto lens as the members of that group came and went. He assured me that there were photos of me in that file.

I don’t think he stole much of my spirit.

The photo is Nola in her attic again, in a different light this time.