Presence in 8x10 photography

[ColonelKurtz]

Ideas mean nothing without a matching level of craft. That doesn't necessarily mean some penultimate level of detail or scale, etc; but the glove has to somehow fit. As I already explained a couple days ago on a different forum, Shore had a very specific color strategy based upon inherent flaws in the Vericolor L film the era. He very cleverly
played off a clash between the tendency of all warmish yellows and tans to dump into fleshtone pumpkinish, versus the "poison green" cyan-inflected green hues of most color neg films until relatively recently. But to produce an actual clash, the two opposing hues need to exist in similar degree of saturation or area. Shore knew how to keep these disproportionate, and create a deliberate subtle tension between them instead. But that strategy also implies the ability to make that same effect come across in the print as well; so craft skill per se is integral to brining the underlying concept to fruition. Just because a number of people in that generation seemed to make bland colored prints of seemingly ordinary subject matter, the fact some of those images succeeded so well is that the concept carried itself through clear into the presented print or in-print book representation itself.
In a way, having a more flexible medium like digital capture and post-editing really kills off the goose that laid the golden egg, in the case of people like Shore or Misrach. It was the color idiosyncrasies of their original limited color palette that put them on the map to begin with.

I agree with alot of this, but I don't think ideas mean exactly "'nothing' without a matching level of craft." Two different discussions, I think, are happening... I'm focused on the idea of pictures, and not the technical execution of printing, in this discussion. I would guess that most photographers at his level have a very specific color strategy, especially when it comes to making an object that's going to live in the world "forever". I know one of William Eggleston's printers, Evans Wittenberg, and he told me the level of retouching on some of those negatives was hours and hours... Doesn't really matter. I saw the digital prints of his at his Los Angeles County Museum Of Art show, and they were so close to the dye transfers in the show, that a couple people got it wrong when asked to guess which was which.

[Drew Wiley]

Actually, most of those 70's color neg guys were wild experimenters and made some horrendous bellyflops along the way. I'll give them credit for bravery. But much of it has ended up forgotten, as well as most of them. Only certain species survive any particular geological age, and nobody was at much of a recognizable "level" at first. It took guts for even a private gallery to keep losing money showing some of them before they got more widely known. But separating technical execution from imagery is not a valid argument in my book. Why do professional symphony conductors get paid big bucks but the junior high marching band coach doesn't? So not two different discussions; they're married!

As far as Eggleston's work goes, I found digital knockoffs to be the death knell compared to the early dye transfers, especially if they were printed large completely out of character for that kind of imagery. I'm not alone in that observation. Portfolio prices one versus the other reflect that same distinction. But maybe you saw some lousy dye transfer work, of which a great amount existed. Even those labs were on the clock and cut corners in high volume circumstances, no matter whose work it was. They were essentially assembly lines with a lot of steps in the overall process, each one of them risking more bits of dust or guck getting on the various separation negs and masks, and cumulatively amounting to a lot of retouching. There have been a few hired gun types willing to do consistent high-end DT work start to finish by themselves, but that got awfully expensive and wasn't geared to large quantities or each image. Neither DT nor inkjet prints are going to live "forever". Both contain similar susceptible dyes, and both inevitably fade. Calling inkjet prints "pigment prints" is misleading; they're a blend.

An even more bellyfloppish gear shift came when William Christenberry tried going from fuzzy little poetic impressions of similar Southern fare using an amateur camera and then tried to it make work in high-detail 8X10. The shoe just didn't fit. Large format isn't for everyone. I can understand the logistical decisions behind the switch away from 8X10 by Shore and Misrach and others who are distinctly elderly now. But sometimes one's creative juices peak only during a certain alignment of the stars, and then is simply past. Specific materials and techniques have a lot to do with it. Just like how the limitation imposed by 8x10 format itself sometimes brings out the best in certain photographers by slowing them down, so too restriction within the confines of a certain film or printing medium is actually a form of liberation by corralling a person from going just anywhere hog wild and making them search their way through a discrete set of variables instead.

[Alan Klein]

I was doing fine for thirty years with medium format. Then, this year, at 75, I bought a 4x5. What was I thinking?

[Alan9940]

I was doing fine for thirty years with medium format. Then, this year, at 75, I bought a 4x5. What was I thinking?

That you hadn't had GAS in awhile?

[Drew Wiley]

Why not? A bigger camera works better than a film stretcher ! I had an uncle who ran a diesel bulldozer on his ranch until he was 96, and he didn't even start doing that until he retired from foreign service at 92.

[Torontoamateur]

8x10 is addictive. Looking at that wonderful upside down reversed image on the 8x10 Ground Glass is what make the mind think in terms of Composition. It is nto at all like looking through a lens or viewfinder. Proportions and tones predominate.

[Michael R]

8x10 is addictive. Looking at that wonderful upside down reversed image on the 8x10 Ground Glass is what make the mind think in terms of Composition. It is nto at all like looking through a lens or viewfinder. Proportions and tones predominate.

Yikes. Talk about ridiculous.

[ColonelKurtz]

But separating technical execution from imagery is not a valid argument in my book. Why do professional symphony conductors get paid big bucks but the junior high marching band coach doesn't? So not two different discussions; they're married!

But maybe you saw some lousy dye transfer work, of which a great amount existed. Even those labs were on the clock and cut corners in high volume circumstances, no matter whose work it was.

You've missed it again. I'll say it this way, and for the last time: What I'm interested in about Stephen Shore are his ideas and experiments about photography. It is my opinion that Stephen Shore's physical photographs (in my Stephen Shore books, as well as the ones I have seen on gallery walls in person) hold right up against his ideas. The problem here, is that you are trying to make an argument out of opinion, for some reason. Evans Wittenberg's printing speaks for itself, (you obviously didn't bother to research, assuming he was a lab), and making assumptions about what you think I saw (laughable) is also telling. Some opinions ARE worth more than others. I'm going to go with John Szarkowski's over yours, when it comes to Stephen Shore.

[Vaughn]

8x10 is addictive. Looking at that wonderful upside down reversed image on the 8x10 Ground Glass is what make the mind think in terms of Composition. It is nto at all like looking through a lens or viewfinder. Proportions and tones predominate.

It certainly invites one in to spend a lot of time under the darkcloth! If one is contact printing, composing the image at the print's size is a joy to do. For the record, the image we see on the GG is just upside down, not reversed. The image is thrown reversed onto the GG, but we are looking at it from behind. Does not really matter...spend enough time under the darkcloth and for many of us, the image on the GG gets mentally translated into its final orientation as a print.

I was having a heck of a time getting a good sense of the image on the GG with the 11x14. What helped was a much larger darkcloth...I was then able to view the whole GG at a normal viewing distance, relaxed. Unless one is counting ounces, a substantial darkcloth is nice to have. The 3'x4' darkcloth I use for 8x10 did work for 11x14 in a pinch.

[Drew Wiley]

What on earth are you babbling about, Colonel? What does Evan Wittenberg have do with it? I've never even heard of him of on the dye transfer circuit. Was he even born yet when Eggleston was having those done? I have spoken in person to the owner of the DT lab who once did many of them, plus Shore's chromogenic enlargements. Meyerowitz is currently having his earlier 35mm work re-issued in dye transfer. It's not the ideal medium for his 8x10 color neg projects, however. Inkjet services are dime a dozen in this part of the world, including some of the very best practitioners. You should look up somebody proficient in all the above before accusing me of not doing my homework. Shore was apparently fiddling with C printing at that time, but deferred to a pro service. And how does Szarkowski factor into any of this? He might have "discovered" Shore; but that's a mini historical topic which certainly isn't going to work as a whipping cane with me. How does anything Szarkowski published contradict a thing I stated? And even if it hypothetically did, it doesn't make him God.