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CONTACT PRINTLAB

If there was ever any doubt that experimentation in printing materials can not only produce significant changes but can also mean the difference between exhibiting and not exhibiting, you will be convinced following this first time workshop at Black Mountain, on the weekend of 7-9 March 2008, or 14-16 March 2008.

Designed for large format photographers working in black and white,
Contact Printlab is run by Gordon Undy and Bob Kersey.

You, the photographer, will see and get to keep your selected large format negative printed onto

            A range of silver bromide papers.
            Silver Chloride contact paper.
            Gold toned printing out paper.
            Platinum/Palladium on Arches Platine.
            Platinum/Palladium on Cranes Crest.
            Ziatype on Cranes Kid Finish.

How many of us have actually completed a study of this magnitude?  There can be no better way of comparing the subtle range of tones and textures plus the suitability of a given negative than with the negative as a constant.  The variation of dynamic range in printing materials will mean that your negative will not produce an acceptable print every time but a reasonably accurate prediction would have you taking home two or three “good ones”.  The knowledge gained, you will keep forever.

Send a small number of negatives by registered mail or personally drop them in to point light and Gordon and I will make the final selection based on the programme we devise.

This is not a full on, hands on workshop.  The workload does not permit that.  But neither is it a lecture.  You will be assigned helping duties with plenty of one on one dialogue and space for note taking.

It will cost $750.00 (including GST) for the weekend (commencing Friday evening for Bob’s spaghetti) and that includes all paper and chemistry plus meals and twin share accommodation at Black Mountain View.  Contact Printlab is strictly limited to two weekends with a maximum six participants per weekend.  Gordon and I are putting on this weekend because it hasn’t been done and because we want to promote contact printing.  No further workshops of this type are planned.

Bob Kersey

MESA

Bob Kerseys continuing project in Outback Queensland can be seen at Photospace, 34 Dight Street, Collingwood, in Melbourne, from 2nd April to 19th April 2008.

The photographs exhibited are contact prints from 12x20 inch negatives in platinum/palladium and silver. Most are the newer Ziatype process hand coated onto 100% rag art paper.

The flat-topped mesas in the Diamantina district of Western Queensland are the remains of the inland sea that flowed down from the Gulf of Carpentaria a hundred million years ago. They appear to rise eerily from the desert floor and are often referred to as jump ups. However the reverse is true. The hard mesa cap is in fact the original seabed and provides a unique environment where twisted arcasias cling to the deep rifts gradually crumbling to form the desert below.

Bob Kerseys photographs evoke an ancient land with myths of strange lights and dinosaur fossils. The undisturbed desert paving underfoot where many of these photographs are taken, suggests minimal human visitation.

SILVER TOMORROW

In Pasadena , California in March 2006, Ilford and Calumet hosted the inaugural Silver conference. A group of 350 photographers from around the world gathered to learn, lecture, listen and consolidate the position of traditional silver photography. The support of photographers and educators was immense and the resultant commitment to the medium by Calumet and Ilford was reassuring. Ilford pledged continued support to schools and colleges and even promised a return of some discontinued products. Many of the educators present reported keen interest in the black and white medium by younger photographers who, after years of sitting in front of a compute screen, needed something more satisfying and expressive. Many other young photographers knew little of the medium and much discussion took place on ways and means of reaching these people.

Thanks to digital, analogue black and white is now the focus for serious photographers who espouse traditional values. And those who study it are prepared to examine it in depth. Photographer and workshop leader George De Wolfe provided a stimulating demonstration of tonal values, which are the building blocks of black and white photography. He set out to demonstrate that the association of tones is just as important as composition or subject matter.

Projecting images via a computer, he treated the audience to a series of full colour reproductions of famous paintings. During the show he asked those gathered to imagine how these images would appear if they were painted using only the grey scale. De Wolfe then showed us the same images converted to grey scale in Photoshop. Every great masterpiece was also great in black and white.

At Black Mountain we have introduced Black & White 1 – The Building Blocks, and Black & White 2 – The Silver Print, to accommodate photographers who'd like to become accomplished black and white printers of their own work. These courses are in-depth and intuitive and are designed to provide a greater understanding of the medium. The building blocks are actual photographic building blocks made in the darkroom and for the student photographer, they become a foundation for life.

Bob Kersey 2006

PLATINUM TODAY

Following overseas trends, alternative processes are very much on the increase in Australia, arguably as a counterpoint to the current digital saturation; in fact I've heard it said even silver is now an alternative process. Perhaps. However, I refer to the more traditional alternative processes of which Platinum is literally the crown jewel.

At Black Mountain we are receiving more and more enquiries for our two workshops “Going Platinum” and “Ziatype Weekend”. We have, to date, completed five workshops, two Platinum and three Ziatype and maybe now is a good time to reflect a little and see where things are heading.

The first observation is that things are definitely heading somewhere. Melody Bostick of Bostick & Sullivan in Santa Fe confirms that shipping of chemicals to Australian addresses has virtually doubled in the last two years. Three photographers, Gordon Undy, Bob Kersey and the late Ian Williams (as well as Bruce Crowther) assembled the biggest ever platinum/palladium exhibition in Australia in 2005. Bob Kersey is one of the few exhibiting photographers in the world, maybe the only exhibiting photographer in the world producing Ziatypes from 12x20 negatives. (That should spark a few emails and I certainly hope it does!)

But enough about those who are doing it. The future of the medium rests with those who are about to do it. The experience derived from our recent workshops indicates a wide range of technical, artistic and especially cultural differences amongst participants, the outcome of which is quite diverse expectations. We need to talk about these expectations. Those of us who love platinum, who work with platinum, admire it, collect it, don't need to be convinced of its profound beauty.

However, I think it would be very helpful to a lot of potential exponents of the medium if I were to attempt to put the platinum house in order: introduce some predictability into people's expectations.

And to begin with: how and why some of these expectations remain in force even though they are, well, not exactly wrong but not exactly the best way to produce the best results (for which platinum/palladium is famous). People expect to be able to use small cameras. Why is it so? Is it a realistic expectation? Well, it depends on a lot of things.

It is so because once upon a time small cameras did not exist and suddenly they did. The Leica and the Graflex appeared on the scene at a time when silver based papers were struggling for viability amongst the two dozen or so processes available at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Silver never had a great following early on because it had such a short range of tones and it meant you couldn't develop your negatives properly. You could only develop a negative about half way. Negatives for the (then) new silver based materials of necessity shrivelled on the vine. A palladium print on the other hand could express every nuance of a fully developed negative. But the introduction of the miniature camera gave silver a new lease of life because silver halides were extremely sensitive to white light. This allowed the image from the miniature camera negative to be projected in mid air, enlarging as it did so, onto a flat surface upon which was placed a silver bromide or chloro bromide coated paper. Nobody needed to be convinced of the advantage of carrying around a smaller camera. People just wanted their photographs to be the same size as the photographs from large cameras producing big contact prints. So, the miniature camera and the silver print validated each other. The rest is history. (Well, used to be.)

The platinum crown didn't topple until the First World War. Great artists like Emerson and Evans continued with their large format contact prints onto art papers hand coated with iron and platinum and palladium metal salts and exposed in ultra violet light. But when platinum was eventually restricted to military use and became unobtainable, that was the end of the greatest photographic medium of all time and Frederick Evans quit photography.

Not quite the end, however. In the seventies and eighties, led by George Tice, modern photographic luminaries like Penn and Mapplethorpe developed (with technical assistance) new ways of printing with platinum making big prints from small negatives. Earlier in the century the likes of Steiglitz and Strand also made enlarged prints. What concerns us here is not who did what but rather the cultural influences acting on current expectations of what the medium is capable of. A photographer today is entitled to ask, “Mapplethorpe used a Hasselblad. I use a Hassleblad. Can't I make big platinum prints?” And the answer is: Yes and No. Some can. Some can't.

Before we look into the possibilities and probabilities of Yes and No, let us continue with the way in which cultural influences actually inhibit us and help to raise false expectations. There are two such influences I want to talk about. Each applies to a different generation of photographers. Each has the same catastrophic result: underexposure. Underexposure is the mitigating factor in the No argument. Underexposure is a problem with an in camera negative printing onto platinum. For an enlarged negative it becomes an impossibility.

To continue: the first group of photographers are the Ansel Adams devotees who love his work but don't read his books. Some of them date back to the middle period of the 20 th Century and might have been observed taking an exposure reading of the landscape, dutifully tilting down, with a Weston Master IV probably with a Rollieflex and a yellow filter “for the clouds” (doing the shadows no favours) calculating the reading (plus at least 20% flare) according to the speed requirements of the fashionably super fine grain film of the day, Adox 14, believing the rating on the box and developing in a high acutance developer like diluted Neofin Blue. This photographer, I am afraid to say is not technically unable but very definitely culturally unlikely to produce a negative that is anything other that two stops underexposed.

Then there are the Cartier Bresson devotees who love his work but don't believe he knew any more technical stuff than they do and what's more they don't believe he needed to. Their culture encourages them to re-rate the exposure index of every film, which is good advice, but they go in the wrong direction. They are technically and culturally unlikely to produce a negative that is anything other than two stops underexposed.

As well, we are starting to see the emergence of another group, a third group, driven by another culture, an extremely powerful culture that believes that digital capture, albeit high end digital capture can master the known photographic world. Again, it isn't the use of technology that is the problem. It is the culture. Swallow it whole and you will be incapable of producing a file that contains all the information required for platinum/palladium printing.

A century of silver printing from negatives with a high white cell count has produced generations of photographic vampires, unable to open their hearts and minds and more importantly, their apertures to the light. Carpe Diem!

Following is one man's realistic expectations of what platinum/palladium offers the photographer.

The purity of a platinum photograph is perceived in a sweetness of tone that when interacting with the human soul can take on an almost ethereal quality. Purity of image is achieved quite simply by purity of chemistry. Purity of chemistry is achieved, in the main, by an absence of chemical additives that sometimes become necessary to assist a less than suitable negative. Once again, it's down to the negative.

In your contemplated work in the platinum field you can expect the following:

If you produce an original camera negative of the size you wish to print, if you have ample detail in the shadows and a smooth progression of tonal values to nicely separated highlights and if the contrast (or range) of that negative is well in excess of a normal silver negative then with good hand coating techniques and intelligent choice of platinum and palladium chemistry, with time you can expect to be able to make the best photographic prints in this medium that are possible to make. The very fact of placing an original negative in direct contact with the emulsion assures a depth and resonance simply not achievable in any other way.

And if I prefer to use a smaller camera but wish to make my prints larger?

OK, you obviously need to make an enlarged duplicate negative, as platinum is basically a contact process. (Platinum enlargers are being developed and sold in the USA , nevertheless I will continue…)

You have two choices: Analogue. Digital.

First, analogue.

Your highest expectation is a magnificent platinum photograph containing a high degree of the aforesaid qualities and one which would probably do well in a close comparison with a photograph made from an original negative. So there we are! We can work with our Nikon or our Hasselblad.

But know this first: the sheer technical expertise required to produce work of this calibre is far in excess of anything you may be required to know or do working with a camera negative only. Also, when you have made all the right decisions with a camera negative, that's it. You've done it! With an enlarged negative you've got even more work and even more decisions ahead of you.

Other factors are more darkroom materials, more equipment, potential problems with fogging, problems with dust and the slightest error is magnified down the line. More time. More filing. Additional specialised materials to track down. Greater costs.

And that's the best picture! If your work is less than excellent, if you're carrying serious underexposure or edgy focus (because you haven't got a tilting back) from the negative to the interpos to the dupe neg to the print you will be quickly disillusioned. Yet many people are happy working this way because it's like everything else: once you develop a routine and start producing good work, the rewards are there.

Digital. If you are scanning transparency originals or using digital capture you simply have to know ways around the five stop range problem. I'm sure you are sufficiently knowledgeable in workflow procedures to be able to produce a digital file capable of printing out a platinum friendly negative. You simply have to accept that the problem exists and it won't go away unless you make it go away.

So, for those who are inclined in this direction I'm sure you already know the best way to produce a suitable negative and you have probably read Dan Burkholder's book and I know that, depending on your ability to make an excellent camera negative, your digital negative can be expected to be state of the art from which you will be able to produce a perfect platinum print.

Yes, your expectations for printing platinum from a digital negative should be high. I was at a Large Format conference in Albuquerque , also attended by Dick Arentz, author of Platinum and Palladium Printing. Dick uses a 5x7 camera and a 12x20 camera for his platinum work, which is amongst the finest you will ever see. He showed me two photographs, both were 12x20 platinum/palladium prints. He then explained that one of them was actually from a 5x7 negative. He had made an enlarged 12x20 negative using Dan Burkholder's methods. “What do you think?” he asked me. I studied them both carefully, then pointed to the “digital” version. “Do you want to know?” “Sure.” “Well, I actually think it's too perfect.” Arentz looked at it very closely then looked at me, “I think you're right.”

Many people, here in Australia , are interested in the possibility of working in this field, adding, if you like, a platinum string to their bow. If you are one of those photographers and wish to study platinum printing with Gordon Undy or Ziatype, which is a printing out version, with Bob Kersey, then the key to a successful workshop is in the preparation. At Black Mountain it has always been our policy to ensure that our students and fellow photographers who have travelled this far to join us go home with a photograph of lasting value.

What are the ways to prepare?

Photographers working in the formats of 6x9, 6x12, 4x5 and 5x7 may already have original negs of their favourite subjects that, perhaps unintentionally have received excessive exposure and overdevelopment (for silver). Alternatively, negatives can be produced prior to and specifically for the workshop. A rule of thumb is an extra 1/2 stop exposure and 50% more development. Densitometry guidelines are available on request, and are the best way to “design” a negative.

Another way is to produce specific negs on 4x5 on the first morning of the workshop. A little less considered perhaps but out weighed by the advantage of supervision. This solution is also open to users of 35mm and medium format and can work in conjunction with our large format workshop.

By special arrangement we can tutor the 35mm and medium format photographer in the preparation of enlarged negatives, this would normally take place on the Friday prior to the weekend workshop.

Digital negatives have their own special characteristics and would need to be sent to us prior to the workshop for testing. Specifications for digital negatives can be provided on request.

I certainly hope I haven't complicated it for most people. In trying to put it into perspective I suppose it's only natural that I have mentioned aspects that were previously unknown. But that's essentially the way it is and the simplest approach will ultimately prove to be the way that best suits the individual photographer.

Slowly, a unique body of work from Black Mountain students in platinum/palladium and Ziatype builds up. One day it will show its face. That's the day when we will know the hard work has been worth it.

Bob Kersey 2006