Journal

These last few weeks I’ve been busy, working late and generally staying out of trouble with a wonderful project – I’ve been printing an edition of photogravures for Alec Soth of his image Enchanted Forest (36), Texas. It’s published by the Walker Art Center to coincide with Alec’s exhibition From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America, which opens September 12th. The show is curated by Siri Engberg. Follow this link to find related events at the Walker.

Hahnemühle Copperplate paper

Test plate

Test prints

Charbonnel Soft Black ink


The final plate, ready for printing

Tarlatan

Printing the edition

Platemark

Detail

Platemark

A final print

The edition ready for signing

Matt Peiken of 3-Minute Egg has produced a nice video interview of Beth Dow, Osama Esid and myself talking about our work in the show The Imperfect Print: The Art of the Handcrafted Print.

Ag

The latest issue of Ag magazine (57) contains an article I wrote on the polymer photogravure process, a process that I’ve been using for nine or ten years now. This variation uses polymer plates that wash out in water instead of the toxic acids that the traditional copperplate method uses.

Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no distributor in the US for the magazine which is a shame, because it’s one of the better magazines currently out there, combining both technical articles with portfolios and book and show reviews. Chris Dickie, the editor and publisher, used to be the editor at the British Journal of Photography and does a fine job with Ag. Some past articles are also available as downloads here.

Italy

At the end of September Beth and I, along with a large proportion of Minneapolis it seems, flew out to Florence for the opening of Cy’s show. This is the show I spent a year or two printing as large 3-colour gum dichromates and which consist of three parts; food (The Four Seasons), flowers (Flowers of Legend and Myth) and portraits of Florentine artists. This last section is the reason I was fortunate enough to visit Florence twice last year – to help Cy photograph these wonderful artists.

The show is at the Accademia, which is home (next door) to Michelangelo’s David. The cast of the statue in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum apparently had a plaster fig leaf that could be easily attached so as not to offend Queen Victoria when she visited…

The gallery had been redecorated since I last saw it and the colour was a perfect match for the prints, as well as the salon-style hanging. Thanks to Roberto for that. It was wonderful to see many of the people we’d photographed a year or so before and see their reactions to the prints. After the show everyone made their way via a well organised (thanks Lorenzo!) fleet of taxis to the post-opening dinner at the Stibbert Museum, a collection founded by an Englishman with eclectic tastes.

Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, Florence

Hors d’oeuvres at the Stibbert Museum, Florence

During all of this, many of us stayed at Le Piazzole, a beautiful villa within a short walking distance south of the city. Paula DeCosse did a wonderful job at organising everything for us, and everyone owes her a big thank you. At the villa there were wine tastings, wonderful catering and a performance in the villa’s amphitheatre on Saturday night by Jamie Marie Lazzara and her friends. Jamie is one of the subjects in the show and is a Liutaio – that is, she makes and restores stringed instruments, many based on those from the renaissance period. It was her violin that Itzhak Perlman played at President Obama’s inauguration. Not only is her work stunning, but she knows the best place to get an amazing pork sandwich and glass of wine in Florence.

View from Le Piazzole, Florence

From Florence, Beth and I travelled by Eurostar train down to Rome for a few days. I can’t imagine why, but I had never been there before and I loved it. We were primarily there for Beth who’s just starting work on another project, and for someone who says she doesn’t shoot much film, that’s a big bag of unprocessed film sitting in the corner of my darkroom right now. “If this were digital I’d be home by now”. A quick train journey back to Florence for one night and then back to Minneapolis – from 80+ degrees to snow in less than 24 hours. At least with Delta I got my meals this time.

More sets of images can be found on Flickr.

Recently the Autotype gravure tissue that was popular with printers using the copperplate method was discontinued – this is a company that’s been in business since the 1800s. So now we have a situation, according to Dick Sullivan at Bostick and Sullivan, where the 500 ateliers around the world who are making gravures, and who rely on this tissue, have to immediately find a replacement.

Dick has been making tissue for the carbon transfer process mechanically for the past few years and naturally he would be the guy these printers would turn to in a situation like this. And they have. So now Dick’s under a lot of pressure to formulate and manufacture a gravure tissue quickly. Very quickly. Many of these ateliers are professional, commercial businesses and rely on a high quality product like this for their survival.

Now, I’m sure that Dick will come up with a replacement product and we hope that until he does, there will be as few casualties from all this as possible. And, of course, polymer plates will one day go the same way as the Autochrome tissue, perhaps sooner than we’d like and they certainly won’t be around for over 100 years like Autochrome. But here’s a situation where isn’t it advantageous to be ahead of the game and be using new technology, instead of being the purist, the traditionalist, relying on products that have essentially been around in the same guise for over a hundred years? I’m certainly not implying that there’s no place for those who wish to strictly follow traditional working methods – I used to be one of those people and you have to admire their dedication – but as a commercial printer in the 1980s I learnt to never entirely rely on one or two particular products because they can, and will, disappear just as quickly as they arrive. This normally occurs after you’re one third of the way through printing an exhibition for a client who just loves the new paper…

But in the last decade I’ve come to love the freedom that new technologies have empowered me with, especially when adapting and merging these technologies. I’m determined not to be in the same situation Frederick Evans found himself in when he gave up photography because the platinum paper he loved so much became unavailable.

Black Hill, The Badlands, SD

So here’s another of those “I can’t believe it’s been this long since I last posted” posts. The reality is that I was slightly taken in by the siren that is Facebook and this weblog became even more neglected than usual.

Facebook is great for keeping in touch with certain people, in my case some of those back in the UK, but it’s not enough to keep me happy. I don’t really care if anyone reads this weblog or not, the fact is that I enjoy writing it – when I get the time. I like that I can write posts bit by bit, save them as drafts and publish when ready. So I’m going to try and write and post regularly – or at the very least more often than I have recently.

So, what’s been happening? This summer I’ve been trying to get more of my work finished and printed, with emphasis on the word printed. I still have a lot of images that have got to the edited stage and then just accumulate in a virtual shoebox under the bed. Garry Winogrand reportedly died with over 2000 rolls of film still unprocessed and although I’m not that prolific, I still don’t want anything similar to that as my epitaph. “He died with over 2000 platinum internegatives unprinted…”

Having said all that, we went to the Badlands and the Black Hills at the end of June and although I’ve processed all the film and made scans, I still have a lot of editing to do.

I had a photogravure accepted in the Washington Printmakers Gallery National Small Works exhibition that opened recently. I submitted several pieces and (a little disappointingly) they chose one that had been shown before, Bird’s Nest. It would have been nice if another image had been chosen of course, but I’m really extremely happy because 192 artists entered 740 prints and the juror Jane Haslem eventually chose just 42.

On August the 18th I’m talking at the Minnesota Photo Center as part of the Tuesday Artists’ Talk series, following on from Beth who was just there. I’ll be talking about my photography and how I ended up working with the processes I use and perhaps talking a little about polymer photogravure as well. It won’t be at all technical but will cover how and why combining digital technology with the historical processes from the 1800s, as I am, can be so liberating for photographers today. There are also about 15 prints of ours up on the 3rd floor of the Minneapolis Photo Center – 4, I think, of Beth’s and 11 of mine.

Speaking of photogravure, I’m also writing an article for Ag on the process that will be published in the autumn. Photogravure, or more specifically polymer photogravure, is a process that I’ve been working with for ten years now and absolutely adore, but it was never this easy. When I started I knew of no photographers/printers that I could call or email and ask for help with any one of the myriad of problems I encountered. And at that time I was still using film, an enlarger and chemicals to make the film positives. Nowadays with digital it’s all a lot simpler but over the years I’ve formulated a workflow that is very consistent for my work. And the non-toxic aspect makes it very suitable for the classroom environment.

Leaning Tower of Pisa, Illinois

It’s been a busy year.

Early in the year Beth went to Portland, Oregon for the opening of her show at the wonderful Blue Sky Gallery, while I travelled to Pittsburgh to speak at the f295 Symposium and then twice to Florence with Cy DeCosse, organising things for his 2009 show there.

In the summer, Beth and I spent some time driving around the small towns in west-central Wisconsin, gathering material for a collaborative project we’re working on, finally ending up in Chicago for yet another of her projects.

One of the highlights of the year for me had to be in June, when my image Bird’s Nest was published by Jen Bekman‘s 20×200, while for Beth it was probably being flown out to San Francisco for a few days by the nice people at Blurb to receive her $25,000 check for winning the first Photography.Book.Now competition.

As for exhibitions, I had work included in several group shows in Phoenix, New York and Pittsburgh, while November saw Beth’s show open at the Photo Center Northwest. That same month saw Beth and I having a joint show at the Iris Gallery in Boston, which then travelled to their other gallery in Great Barrington, where it will remain until early January 2009.

Beth is already organising several shows for 2009 for which I’ll have to start printing soon, as well as finishing the 100+ 3-colour gum dichromate prints for Cy’s show in Florence. That show will open in October 2009 and will be accompanied by a 3-colour catalogue. And yes, we’ll be there…

Today, there’s an interview on Moodboard with Andy Adams of Flak Photo.

Andy published my photo, Bird’s Nest, a photogravure, back in October 2007 and when Moodboard asked him to select ten favourites he included mine.

Check out Flak Photo – an amazing website devoted to great photography. Thanks Andy!

The sad news about Bill Rowlinson on Friday was preceded by wonderful – but stunning – news from 20×200 on Thursday.

20×200 is a project from Jen Bekman whereby two editions a week are released as inexpensive inkjet prints in three sizes for $20, $200 and $2000. My image that’s currently in the Ornithology show, Bird’s Nest was chosen for a special edition released on Thursday. It went live at 2pm ET, but within minutes both the small and medium sizes had sold out!

The original print on which the image is based is available as a hand-pulled photogravure in an edition of 10.

Contact the Jen Bekman Gallery at info (at) jenbekman (dot) com for more details.