This past Thursday I attended the in person opening of the Monalog Collective show at the Gallery 270 in Westwood, New Jersey.  It was wonderful to see and I had a great time!  There was a nice turnout and I met some wonderful people. An interesting point of discussion was raised during one of my conversations … that being the primacy of the image over analog vs. digital considerations.

So what matters most … the image itself or how it’s made? Interesting!  Here is my view, especially as it relates to black and white pictures. Obviously the image is what we see and it must be compelling in the first place. But then there is the question of how it appears on paper, and then what goes into making it a reality. When I look at a compelling and well-executed film-based silver gelatin, platinum, collodion or carbon transfer black and white photograph I am struck by three things.  First the image itself, then the beauty of it … in this case an image that has depth to it that I can see into the paper itself, and finally my thoughts of all hours and craft that have gone into creating it.

When I look at almost any digital black and white print where the subject matter is interesting, I quickly sense a hyper reality or harsh hyperrealism that detracts from whatever chance the image had. I can spot it mile a way.  It’s so overly dramatic, often because it’s so easy to do. Then there is the look itself; there’s no depth. What you see is on the paper surface only and it’s looks … different. There’s a reason why some digital software tries to emulate the look of Tri-X! In this regard, I recently attended a show of a famous photographer. The pictures were all black and white, very large and mostly digital. There was no contest between the small number of equally large prints made in the darkroom from medium format negatives and the digital pictures. The difference in emotional impact for me was simply staggering! Finally there is the matter of the digital “workflow”.  “Shoot” 500 pictures in an afternoon and hopefully find a keeper. Then Photoshop it on your computer screen and finally print it out while your doing something else.

Look, I understand that in the commercial world digital reigns and it’s not going away. I get it; it’s about speed and convenience. But for personal work, for your art, I’m sorry.  Yes the image matters, but there is so much more.

What matters most … the image itself or how it’s made? Well for me it’s simple … both!

Stay safe,

Michael

“Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.” – Robert Frank

This could be enough to put the great Robert Frank in my Favorite Top 10, but there is something more, and alone it puts Frank on my list. His book The Americans is one of the most cherished in my photographic library. I have written about Frank a number of times and here yet again is what I wrote about that seminal masterpiece:

“Robert Frank, The Americans

Like Helen of Troy, the “face that launched a thousand ships”, Robert Frank, through his seminal work, The Americans, influenced countless street and documentary photographers and the trajectory of photography itself!

There have been at least four editions this incredible book that have been published since 1958.  Each one is slightly different.  My copy is published by Scalo and leaves the captions that go with each photograph to the very end of the book.

What matters is that Frank may have taken the ultimate photographic road trip across America just before everything changed forever with the Sixties. And perhaps Frank’s unvarnished view of America and American life may have been as significant as rock and roll, the counter culture and the rest of the fall out from the Viet Nam War in changing the way we looked at ourselves.

During his year and half year project Frank exposed 767 rolls of film, making 27,000 pictures. Ultimately he edited them down to 83 images. And what images they are!

83 perfectly sequenced black and white photographs tell the story, and an incredible and shocking story it must have been for a society used to seeing nothing but a sugar coated view of reality. It certainly was not welcomed by the mainstream photography and art world.  Nothing would be the same again, but we are surely better off for his brilliant vision.

I have been lucky enough to see several Frank exhibits including one showing all 83 photographs, along with his proof sheets!  I was also fortunate to be able to attend a lecture he gave in support of one of the exhibits.

In short, your photographic library must include a copy of this book.  Buy any one the editions, new or used; it doesn’t matter. Just get one!”

In 2009 I saw the landmark exhibit of his monumental work entitled Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. I also attended a terrific lecture he gave in Washington. While both of these events are and will remain fond memories for me, I will always have Frank’s wonderful book to study and ponder whenever the need for inspiration occurs. And now The Americans resonates with me more than ever before. Why? Because I believe America is truly at a crossroads. And just as was the case with the America that Frank laid bare for all to see in 1958, we now live in an America that we now know is not the America we thought we lived in. Not our country, not our state, not our neighborhood. It was all there, but we didn’t know it, or worse yet, we didn’t want to see it, and when we did we didn’t want to believe it.

Why for me is Frank so great and why is he so important now?  Because he dared to find the unvarnished truth and show it, and when he couldn’t get his work published, he kept on fighting until it was. Frank is an inspiration for me and he should be for you, not necessarily to discover and document a cross-country experience  … that is impractical for most of us … but to document the reality of your own America as you see it … wherever you find or experience it.

Stay safe,

Michael

The Leitz Focomat V35 was and remains a spectacular photographic tool for the serious 35mm photographer. Several years ago I wrote a lengthy entry about my long experience with it called Working with the Leitz Focomat V35 Enlarger. It recieved a lot of views and I ended up with a number of emails about it. If you have an interest in one of these fine enlargers check it out!

About two years ago I realized I wasn’t using it very much anymore. Not sure why, but I was working mostly with my Devere 504 for both medium format and 35mm negatives. The more I thought about it, most of my prints had been made with the Devere. Shortly after this realization I had the opportunity to sell my V35 to a friend and Monalog colleague so we agreed on a price and off it went. I am happy to say it found a good home and is being utilized, as it deserves to be!

Cruising along in my monogamous relationship with the Devere, several months ago I had the opportunity to see several Leitz Focomat 1Cs as well as a 2C. @#!$%^@##!$%! :). I had never seen these beauties before let alone had the opportunity to touch them with my very own hands. Two I saw were in the possession of another friend and Monalog colleague – the very last light grey versions of each with the latest Focotar lenses, etc.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you sense where this is going?

Here is some of what I said about the V35 in my entry:

“Let me cut to the chase. It’s a wonderful tool for making beautiful images. Is it perfect? No, but few things in life are. But now that I have reacquainted myself with the pleasures of using this finely crafted instrument I don’t plan on letting it sit idle for long!  Mine has the standard black and white head to use with graded paper, a VC head and color head.  In a previous entry I discussed why I use a color head for greatest control with variable contrast papers so I won’t repeat that here. Take a look, as I am convinced this approach is really the way to go.

The V35 was wildly expensive when manufactured.  Lore has it that it became so expensive to produce and sell that this finally caused Leica to shut down production in 1995.  If you were to take one apart and look at its construction, including the autofocus assembly, then weigh the associated necessary tolerances in the enlarger as a whole and its structural rigidity, and finally consider the stupendous Focotar-2 enlarging lens that is supplied with it you would see that the V35 was made with the same dedication to precision as an M series camera.

The great news for 35mm printers is that you can snag one of these beauties for as little as a few hundred dollars if shop carefully!

Some people complain that the V35 doesn’t compare with the previous autofocus models – the Focomat 1, not to mention the more rare and very expensive Focomat 2 (for negatives up to 6×9) that is considered by many to be the holy grail of enlargers.  I cannot really tell you as I haven’t tried them, or even considered them for a couple of simple reasons: I like diffusion light sources which is what the V35 is designed for, the quality of the Focotar-2 lens; the huge expense of the Focomat 2 without a diffusion lights source (3^rd party products are available); and the fact that I have the Devere 504 with Schneider Apo Componon HM enlarging lenses, equipped with easy to use below the baseboard focusing controls.”

So much for my past logic and on to indulging my apparently not to hidden lust for what many consider the ultimate!

Back to my friend and Monalog colleague … he was thinking of selling both enlargers but wasn’t in a hurry to pull the trigger, and if he did it wasn’t going to be cheap!  We kept in contact and frankly it was more of me bugging him to tear the band-aid off.  Finally the blessed decision was made and after much negotiation the deed was done.

I now have sitting in my darkroom what many consider the King (2C) and at a minimum, the Crown Prince (1C) of enlargers … the Leicas of enlargers!  And of course, no diffusion color heads and none of the convenience I love so much!  And yeah, my mighty Devere is still here (with diffusion color head) and it’s not going anywhere thank you.

So what the $%^$&^@ ? Is this opportunity or complete and foolish excess?  I have to go out and buy some damn VC filters for starters! I’ve never spoken about darkroom GAS before and had never experienced it. Was I now? To be completely honest, I don’t know. Even worse was this just another Covid-19 purchase like so many people have made?  Or was I falling under a magic spell cast by elves from Wetzlar past?  It’s known that many have succumbed to the their hypnotic siren calls … myself included. Could I resist their charms now?

So now I feel I need to write about this, to express myself, even if none of the answers exist yet. Will the truth finally emerge?  I eagerly await and I stand ready to be judged.

In the meantime it’s going to take a little time to sort things out. I can see that I will probably need to extend my enlarging table to handle three heavy beasts, and I need to get a few missing parts and another Zone VI timer (none of which grow on trees).  I’ll let you know how it goes … but if anyone has any thoughts I’d love to hear from you!

Stay safe,

Michael

Recently I wrote about my ageism experience. During the same discussion I spoke of a comment that was made about the size of some of my prints … “if only they were larger”.  This made me thank back to an entry I wrote several years ago  entitled Does Size Matter? Here is part of what I said:

“Short answer — it does, but only to you, because it’s your picture.  That’s right, but make sure the size you make is done for the right reasons.  Very large prints are trendy now, but almost every time I see them in exhibits I am overwhelmed by the size and underwhelmed by the content.  That is because what seems to be on display are large images of boring subject matter, many of which I believe wouldn’t get a second look if they were smaller in size.

This realization was really brought home to me as a result of two shows I saw over the past several years.  The first was a very nice Edward Weston show hosted by the wonderful Michener Art Museum, located where I live, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  The second was the recent stupendous Paul Strand exhibit mounted at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  None of the Weston prints were larger than 8×10 because he only contact printed his large format negatives.  With Strand, most were no more than 8×10, with many being much smaller, and the remainder not much larger than 8×10.

These prints forced you to stop, get close and look at them.  You had to really study them to discover their secrets, rather than just walk by each mammoth print some ten feet way.

So I think a small print really has to stand on its content, but just as importantly it draws in the viewer and compels him or her to really concentrate and think about what is going on in the image.

Now be brutally honest with yourself; are you making really large prints because you have been conditioned to think that what’s in?  And while large size will get attention, does it mask content that wouldn’t get a second look in a more intimate size?”

Getting back to the comment made to me … combined with my recent visits to several photography exhibits of well known and/or currently trendy photographers that were comprised completely of quite large photographs … this made think about this question again … does size matter? The answer is YES, YES, and YES!  The problem is that it often matters for all the wrong reasons … mainly surrounding the desire of the photographer and the gallery to sell prints, and for the museums to display what is hot and will draw in paying visitors.  I get it, but does it make compelling art? I don’t think so. Does it fill large amounts of wall space where necessary in homes whose occupants possess significant amounts of disposable incomes? I think so, and if that makes homeowners happy, all and well.

So here is what I said to finish my original entry on this subject … years later, nothing has changed my thinking at all … except that I feel more strongly then ever about it:

“Now be brutally honest with yourself; are you making really large prints because you have been conditioned to think that what’s in?  And while large size will get attention, does it mask content that wouldn’t get a second look in a more intimate size?

And don’t feel compelled to make really large prints because you are using larger negatives.  Negative size should not determine print size because of the available higher resolution.

The vast majority of prints I’ve made have been on 8×10 sheets of paper, which means they are actually smaller than that. There have been a relatively few made using 11×14 paper, based on vision and/or use of a square negative.

So only print those photographs that you believe really have something to say … and when you create the print that captures your vision, make it the size you think works best for that image.”

Stay safe,

Michael

I really would like to have met Morley Baer. I had come to know a number of photographers that knew him from taking workshops with John Sexton and Henry Gilpin in the mid Eighties. I also made a number of trips to San Francisco and Silicon Valley during that time and into the Nineties for my government and consulting work. I would squeeze in a bit of time to drive down to Monterey and Carmel, but I never heard about Baer until sometime after he had passed away in 1985.  Can’t remember how, but then I made sure to see his incredibly clean and precisely seen large format images that were often exhibited in the Monterey area.

For over fifty years Baer used his beloved Ansco 8X10 view camera in a most effective way to capture California’s farmlands, coastline, forests, deserts and buildings. There was an astounding quality and drama about his work that to me remains unique to this day.

Baer made a living as a highly sought after architectural photographer; in 1966 the American Institute of Architects honored him with their Architectural Photography Award. One of his most famous books, Painted Ladies, focuses on San Francisco’s Victorian houses.  What really attracted me to his work though were his wonderful images of California’s beauty.

I’ll cut to the chase … I simply love Baer’s work and own a number of his books that I can highly recommend without reservation, including The Wilder Shore, Stones of the Sur, The Wilder Shore, Light Years, and California Plain: Remembering Barns.

 Throughout his life Baer made both color and black and white photographs. The Wilder Shore, which is one of my favorite monographs, includes both. His method of using tungsten balanced Ektachrome slide film intended for indoor work, that could then be corrected for outdoor application by using a #85B filter to enable a warmer outdoor image than standard Ektachrome was brilliant. Baer then created a softer contrast by overexposing the film one stop and having the color lab develop it for less than normal development time.  The result … beautifully delicate, yet powerful images that are the complete opposite of the usual over saturated and postcard looking color we are so used to seeing! I think his color work is spectacular – right up there with Eliot Porter’s.

Maybe you haven’t heard of Morley Baer, just like I hadn’t. He’s not as well known as Edward and Brett Weston, and Ansel Adams who he knew well and who’s careers his intersected with. I never tire of looking at his work, be it black and white or color and I think in particular that the Wilder Shore is a sublime and under appreciated gem that can often be found for under $50.

Listen … just do yourself a favor … find this book and buy it!  Then track down his other great books! I pretty sure you will be glad you did.

Stay safe,

Michael