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| Return to Archive Menu | Return to Hoboken Almanac | |
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| 81st Issue, May 2002 | |
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| a nice distinction If I didn't want to, I could easily lose an elephant. Losing a book is child's play. But lost things turn up. For years I searched in vain for my copy of Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Now it has somehow surfaced, and I found in it again a story I always liked for its truth and grace. The chapter is "Gertrude Stein in Paris--1903-1907." She and her brother Leo had begun to buy paintings. They heard of a mad old painter named Cézanne and went to the dealer, Vollard, who was trying to sell his work. It was cheap then. Here's the quotation. "There were not a great many people in and out of Vollard's but once Gertrude heard a conversation there that pleased her immensely. Duret was a well known figure in Paris. He was now a very old and a very handsome man. He had been a friend of Whistler, Whistler had painted him in evening clothes with a white opera cloak over his arm. He was at Vollard's talking to a group of younger men and one of them Roussel, one of the Vuillard, Bonnard, the post impressionist group, said something complainingly about the lack of recognition of himself and his friends, that they were not even allowed to show in the salon. Duret looked at him kindly, my dear young friend, he said, there are two kinds of art, never forget this, there is art and there is official art. How can you, my poor young friend, hope to be official art. Just look at yourself. Supposing an important personage came to France, and wanted to meet the representative painters and have his portrait painted. My dear young friend, just look at yourself, the very sight of you would terrify him. You are a nice young man, gentle and intelligent, but to the important personage you would not seem so, you would be terrible. No they need as representative painter a medium sized, slightly stout man, not too well dressed but dressed in the fashion of his class, neither bald or well brushed hair and a respectful bow with it. You can see that you would not do. So never say another word about official recognition, or if you do look in the mirror and think of important personages. No, my dear young friend, there is art and there is official art, there always has been and there always will be." about seeing The March, 2002 issue of Harper's Magazine has an intelligent short essay on seeing, in the context of art, by John Berger. It starts on page 29. Harper's says it is taken from "Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible" in his book, The Shape of a Pocket. It may be worth looking up. (My pockets bulge. Giorgio Armani would hate them, but they need to bulge.) Berger says that today's profusion of pictures has changed the way things look. He says that technology has made it easy to distinguish the real from the illusory. I think he is mistaken about that - the confusion seems greater now than before photography and TV deceived our eyes - but still, he says much that is well worth considering. For him, Necessity with a capital N "is the condition of the existent," and he thinks it has all but disappeared from ordinary life, which he seems to see as floating with no tether to reality. I guess that's true while you watch TV, but the rest of the time? I doubt it. How so if we can tell fact from illusion better than before? But that's for laymen to judge if they can. I'm a photographer - that is, I'm in the illusion business and I hardly ever watch TV. How could I tell what his possibly theoretical laymen might experience? When not looking at pictures, I believe that what I see is real. And when I see convincing photos, I believe them unless I have good reason to think they are faked - as many are and always have been, ever since the medium got started in 1839. A more serious thing Berger says is that when a picture of any significance is made, it is largely because what is depicted acts on the picture-maker and pulls him in. It has its own life, no less than his. Then the subject is not just a passive thing that an artist uses. It uses him as much or more. This somewhat pantheistic view has merit. I don't think the apples on the cloth on the table conspired consciously to pull Cézanne in, but he arranged them and was willing. His great respect for and recognition of their reality helped give life to his painting. It is especially so with photography, the medium most directly dependent on what it shows. The subject exists whether we see and use it or not. And when we see it, we owe it full respect. The idea that a good picture comes out of a collaboration between the subject and the picture-maker seems just and right. Nueva Luz lights up The photo journal Nueva Luz, new light, does not always shine for me. Run by and for photographers in what are minority groups in the USA ("of Latino/a, African, Asian, Pacific Islander and Native American Heritage"), it seems to me that it sometimes forgets that, as they say in Hollywood, it's not enough to be Hungarian, you also have to have talent. And use it. Ethnicity - minority, majority, or mixed - neither confers talent automatically on anybody nor rules it out. Anyone can play. Not many win. The bad news is, some issues of NL seem short of talent and don't show particularly good photography by gifted members of the minorities. Since it has relatively few photographers to choose from, this is understandable and forgivable, but doesn't do much to advance its perfectly just and correct cause. Let's recognize that there is a lot more no-talent than talent in every ethnic group, WASPs included. But this gives us overnumerous WASPs a big advantage, which would be unfair if life were a game with rules. Unfortunately it is no game. It is us - a freak show. As Old Lodge Skins says in Little Big Man, there are so many Wasichus that the Human Beings can't rub them all out. Tough but true. The good news is that the current issue of Nueva Luz has struck pay dirt, plenty of good talent. What a relief. Suddenly it seems worthwhile to pay dues, as I do, to this group that excludes my photography because I'm ethnically unacceptable. I draw no such lines. I think that even white folks are occasionally all right, not necessarily worse than everyone else. It is true that black photographers, especially, don't get a fair shake in our society. This is plainly wrong. But does excluding others stop stupid others from excluding even the most brilliant black artists? So how much good does reactive prejudice do against pre-existing, evil, unjust prejudice? You decide. The issue doesn't have a date on it. It is "Volume 7 No 3," and well worth the $7.00 you'd pay for it if you're not a dues-paying member of En Foco, Inc. The photographers in this issue are Adrienne Odom, Orville Robertson and Edwine Seymour, and their work is aptly discussed in a short commentary by Jo Leggett. Her text and Charles Biasiny-Rivera's editorial are published in both English and español - a good thing. The photo on the cover is by Orville Robertson. Like his other pictures here, it's a good portrayal of an elusive, fleeting moment in New York City. On pages 3 through 11 are pictures by Adrienne Odom of aspects of reconstruction in Harlem. They are identified as Giclée Prints - a refined sort of inkjet printing. This leads me to think - they are color photos reproduced in low-contrast monochrome, so we don't see them very accurately in the magazine. They are largely details of buildings shot with a long lens and/or tightly cropped. Seven of the nine photos are square in format. Except for the first, the elaborately curved stoop of a house at Mount Morris Park, and the next to the last, sunlit row houses on Convent Avenue, they are bleak and spare. In her own brief comment, she writes, "...the question remains: Who will benefit from the remaking of Harlem?" My guess is, "absentee corporate landlords," but I may be misreading her. There is no picture of her: "Portrait not available." Mary Cassatt would approve. I remain curious. Next comes Orville Robertson, "a self-taught photographer born in Jamaica." He holds a degree in Aerospace technology and has exhibited widely. The picture of him shows a young black man looking thoughtful, face leaning on hand, dressed in white. His nine photos are in 35mm format and are what's called grab shots. They show beautiful timing and great sensitivity to the sweet craziness of street life in the city, day and night. This is superb work, beautifully shot. The somewhat flat, dull reproduction doesn't help the pictures, but it certainly doesn't defeat them. He is like André Kertész in that his seeing is so decisively right that although it deserves the best possible printing, it survives less-than-great reproduction. (That, I think, is a money problem. The excellent paper and printing that these pictures richly deserve would cost the earth. The budget being what it is, it's better to see them printed only fairly well than not to see them at all.) Edwine Seymour comes from Haiti, lives in Brooklyn, and works as a photojournalist. His portrait shows a young black man in a leather jacket in front of photographs on a white gallery wall. He looks straight at the camera without much expression, perhaps happier behind one than in front of it, like many of us. His nine photographs show worshippers of the religion called Voudun (I may be misspelling it) or Vodou, a serious mixture of African religion and Catholicism in which certain Christian saints are also African gods. It persists in many varieties, including Brazil's Candomblé. These are serious, beautiful, moving photographs, several of them taken in a wild stone place with a high, thin waterfall, named Saut d'Eau. Others are in more conventional outdoor settings. It is clear from the pictures that he knows what's going on and treats the people he photographs with love and respect. Especially in the Saut d'Eau photos, shot in diffuse daylight with a lot of spray against wet rock, the flat tones of the reproduction seem appropriate and right. As with Robertson's pictures, none are defeated by the flattish reproduction. This excellent issue of Nueva Luz shows that it can do what I always hope it will do. This one goes all the way. After the pictures it also includes the newsletter (in English) called Critical Mass. It gives much information about photographic doings and opportunities. In a box at the end of page 29 it says, YOUR BOOKSTORE DOESN'T CARRY NUEVA LUZ? Buy a subscription and have it delivered to your door! To subscribe to Nueva Luz costs $30 for US and Puerto Rico, US$35 for Mexico and Canada, and US$45 for other countries. Although it doesn't say so, I think that's for one year. Membership in En Foco is $45 and includes portfolio reviews, a subscription to Nueva Luz, and invitations to special events. "Photographers of African, Asian, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander heritage are eligible for the New Works Photography Award program and the Slide Registry." Why does this remind me of an old song slightly rearranged? "If you're black, all riot. If you're brown, stick around. If you're white, get back." I'm not really offended. But think about it. En Foco, 32 E. Kingsbridge Road, Bronx, NY 10468, (718) 584-7718, www.enfoco.org saving water I've been asked, "How can we save water when washing fiber-base prints?" There is no always-right-for-everyone answer, but here are some alternatives that don't all exclude each other. No matter what, a water wash will never remove all hypo and silver complexes from FB prints. It goes more or less like this, except that your print wash will probably be slower or faster than mine. Prints wash rapidly at first but the wash gets slower and slower as it continues. That is, smaller and smaller proportions of less and less hypo wash out in equal lengths of time, other things being equal. Other things are never equal, and there are more variables to print fixing, toning, washing, etc. than we are likely ever to know about. Never mind. We work with what is and with what happens. Here's what I got when I averaged residual-hypo test results from 18 test washes of variously fixed and washed test prints in search of roughly average print wash behavior. Over seven 5-minute periods, the percentages of the remaining hypo washed out diminished, and from then on stayed close to 6% of almost nothing. 0-5 minutes...............29% removed 5-10 minutes..............19% removed 10-15 minutes.............13% removed 15-20 minutes..............9% removed 20-25 minutes..............8% removed 25-30 minutes..............8% removed 30-35 minutes..............7% removedBetween 35 minutes of washing and 3 hours, the rate stayed steady at 6%. The eighteen tests averaged here included poor washes as well as good ones. This tests only the way the wash slows down as it continues. My deficient math doesn't tell me what percent of the original 100% of residual hypo each successive 5 minutes of washing leaves in the print after it gets down to around 70% after the first five minutes. Let's think of it another way, starting with the rash assumption that 15 minutes of washing removes half the hypo that was in the print at the start of the wash. Let's also rashly assume that the next 15 minutes removes half the remaining hypo, and so on and on. The resulting numbers are bound to be wrong, but the principle they illustrate is roughly true and the proportions are not too insanely unbelievable. This progression goes: 15 minutes......50% left in paper 30 minutes......25% left 45 minutes......12.5% left 60 minutes......6.25% left 75 minutes......3.12% left 90 minutes......1.6% left 105 minutes.....0.8% left 120 minutes.....0.4% left 135 minutes.....0.2% left 150 minutes.....0.1% left,After you've split a tenth of a percent in half a few times, you realize that from here on you won't gain much. You'll never get it all out, and you might as well quit. While running an elaborate wash test with the help of a chemist who used a much more accurate test with something called "methylene blue," I hit by mistake on a fact that's uscful where I am. I was doing HT-2 tests, not quantitative, on half of each wash-test sample. I sent him the other half, which he tested with the MB method, which gives precise quantities. My useful mistake was to miss one sample. I unintentionally left it in still water in the washer overnight, and only found it there the next morning. To see what would happen, I tested my half with HT-2 and sent him the other half along with the rest of the day's samples. It was marked with the wash time at which I'd intended, but failed, to take it out of the wash. His methylene-blue test surprised him. He repeated his test with what was left of the sample and got the same result again. He was disturbed, since it had far less hypo in it than he expected. The overnight soak had removed about 80% of all remaining hypo. Since then I have routinely left my prints in still water in the washer overnight. This works well where I am. My well water permits it. That's great for me, because what my well water does NOT permit is fixing prints in a non-hardening fixer. I am forced to harden mine because otherwise the image tends to come off the paper during the wash or during drying. The hardener makes the prints wash much more slowly than unhardened prints, but the picture stays on the paper. My well water giveth and my well water taketh away. It's OK, because I can still get an excellent wash using relatively little water. My routine print wash goes like this: in an archival washer that hold prints apart, I wash the prints at slow flow-about 50 fl oz per minute-for an hour at about 75°F, then turn off the water and leave the prints in still water overnight. In the morning they get another hour at slow flow, and then I dry them in several changes of clean photographic blotters. They dry flat. Half an hour of slow flow, evening and morning, had always given me no-stain HT-2 tests. But I got nervous, so I switched to my present one-hour before-and-after washes. My print washes still use less water and deliver cleaner prints than most. If your water permits it, I think the most watersaving wash would be a succession of still-water baths in a washer that keeps the prints separate. Give the prints long enough in each bath so the water takes up as much hypo as it can. Try twenty minutes to half an hour between water changes. To avoid damage to the prints, take them out and put them in a clean tray while emptying and refilling the washer. Use the HT-2 test to find out how many changes you need. It should not take many. I once did a test wash of an 8x10 double-weight test print in a pint of water at a time in a tray (16 fluid ounces, about 500 ml), with no agitation beyond poking down comers that floated up. I tested at 20 minutes, changed water, tested again at 40 minutes and changed water. My third HT-2 test, at 60 minutes, gave no stain. The print was clean. A quart and a half of water had washed it completely. After six minutes in Kodak Fixer I'd treated it for three minutes in Kodak Hypo Clearing Agent, as Kodak recommends. I learned later that KHCA is far more effective when used for ten minutes. Perhaps a quart of water could do as well. G. I. P. Levenson of English Kodak did scientific tests to find out how little water could wash a print. I haven't seen his findings but I'm told they are impressive. Used right, a little does a lot. Using a nonhardening print fixer makes for a shorter wash. The difference is about as great as the difference between using and not using a good washing aid such as KHCA or Perma Wash. Use the washing aid for at least ten minutes. The difference between using a rapid, ammonium thiosulfate fixer at "print strength" or at "film strength" is dramatic. Film strength, twice as concentrated, will fix most papers completely within 30 seconds to one minute. This short fixing time allows one print at a time to wash completely in five minutes, after a five-minute rinse and a 10-minute washing-aid treatment. Batch washes take longer, but the wash time is still considerably shorter than when prints are fixed six to ten minutes in "print strength" rapid fixer or in conventional sodium thiosulfate fixer. Clearly you must test, or the wild variables will get you. Then test with care, and good luck. the Kodak HT-2 test for residual hypo The formula is for 1/2 liter - all you will need for a long time. Mix in the order given: water.................. 375 ml acetic acid 28%......... 63 ml silver nitrate........ 3.75 grams add water to make...... 500 mlDon't touch the silver nitrate crystals, which can bum your skin and leave a black stain. Fill a small brown glass bottle with a dropper cap with 50 to 100 ml of the solution. Keep the rest in a sealed brown glass bottle. Kodak conservatively says it will last for a year. Typically it lasts much longer if kept cool and in the dark. It's good as long as the solution stays clear. The HT-2 solution is poisonous, so mark its containers clearly and keep them away from children. To use (I quote from my own book): First develop and fix an unexposed sheet of the printing paper you are printing on, and put it through the washing aid and into the wash along with your prints. (You don't test real prints with anything that stains them permanently. The unexposed test sheet is a stand-in for the prints.) Process this sheet just as you do your prints-the same development, stop bath, fixing, toning and washing aid-not because anything will develop, but so that your test sheet will be in the same chemical condition as your prints and will wash at the same rate. When you think the prints might be washed - say, after half an hour of washing - cut a small sample (an inch square will do) from the test sheet and put the sheet back in the wash. Blot all surface water drops off the emulsion side of the sample with a paper towel, then put one drop of HT-2 solution on it. Do this in dim white light. Leave it alone for exactly two minutes, then rince off the HT-2 drop with water, blot the sample with paper towel, and inspect the stain at once (it will soon darken). A definite brown or yellow stain means that the wash is far from finished. The paper still contains far too much hypo. Do another test in half an hour. A pale beige stain means that you're getting somewhere but have not arrived. When there is no stain at all, or only the faintest visible stain, the wash is fair and may be good. Then it's good to wash the prints another half hour for luck. (At this stage, slow flow or still water should work as well as Niagara.) A no-stain test doesn't guarantee archival or eternal prints. It means that you've made a good try and have a fair chance. Although this guess is not reliable, it's useful to think of the silver-nitrate test stain as the color the whites of the prints will eventually turn if the wash stops then. We need patience when we wash prints. We don't know as much as people think we know about print permanence. We do not have an archival standard for black-and-white photographic prints or a practical test that can tell us for certain that a print wash is complete. Fortunately, some old prints have lasted very well, so there is hope. But the only truly reliable test is to look at the print after several hundred years. If it's still like new, the wash was good. umsonst gar nichts I hope you have heard Marlene Dietrich sing this in English or in German in her good whisky voice. It's the last line of a tear-jerker ballad. In English the song is Falling In Love Again, and its pathetic last line is, "I cahn't help it." "Umsonst gar nichts" says much more: "Nothing is free." You always pay, even for love. The Consumers' Union does good work testing commodities offered for sale, and exposing the false claims sometimes made to promote them. CU's magazine, Consumer Reports, devotes a page, "Selling It," to misleading and often funny promotional claims found and sent in by readers. It features such items as the "microwave spoon" that is "not intended for use in the microwave," according to a warning on its package. All those "free gifts" that you get only if you pay in advance also belong in "Selling It". Selling It is now a book. In the newsletter, CU Insider, spring 2002, it is advertised on page four. "Finally, here's a book that reveals what's inside those 'official government' envelopes, illustrates the lunacies of labeling debunks mysterious medical potions, and tells how to avoid falling prey to misleading marketing..." In a box next to this ad, CU says, "free gift when you contribute $25..." The same page adds, "SMART-EATING-GUIDE free with contribution." Free gift is bad English as well as being often a lie. Real gifts are free by definition. Dietrich wasn't alone. Robert Heinlein's "t a n s t a a f l" stands for "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Attention / Achtung / Uwaga A few subscriptions are already paid up past issue #90, so it is time to tell you that GRUMP will end with issue #100, if, indeed, it lasts that long. I have said much of what I want to say, and endless repetition doesn't seem worth the labor. At 78, surprise, I'm entering middle age. My midlife crisis takes the form of wanting to print my best unprinted-or-never-well-printed photos, and the ones I've run out of prints of, before that guy with the scythe comes. I don't want a Porsche, and a Type 50 Bugatti, which might be more fun, would need round-the-clock French master mechanics and cost too much, so the hell with it. They're even worse than computers. I may have less than 100 more years to go, and - time having accelerated while we weren't looking (did you notice) - the years go fast now, so who needs a sports car? If you're tempted to renew beyond #94, remember that GRUMP doesn't come by the year but in six-issue, $30 clumps or $5 per issue. Please don't pay more than gets you to GRUMP 100. This will save me the trouble of writing you a check when I'd rather be printing. | |
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