LensWork: repro superior to original print

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Aparently, the folks over at apug strongly disagree - there are 18 screens full of indignant rants about Lenswork betraying the holy cause and - gasp! - introducing digital at the same level as analog in the magazine! To them, the equipment is obviously sufficiently more important than the photographer or even the photograph itself that they are swearing to cancel their subsciptions to Lenswork because of it.

To be fair, there are a couple of rational souls who beg to differ and, to be even more fair, they have not been banned or even deleted yet. Which is a tremendous change in attitude. Tremendous enough, when I stop to think about it, that it may cause mass cancelation of subscriptions to apug itself...

Oh, please don't get me started on APUG. As someone who views hundreds if not thousands of photographs every day, I have my own bias and likes and dis-likes regarding a hand-crafted photograph and anyone who knows me knows that I prefer a gelatin silver or traditionally created photograph over a digital one. However; I have seen, as of late in the MoMA of all places, some pigment inkjet prints that were absolutely outstanding. Should I dis-credit the photograph and the merit it deserves by not only looking extraordinary, but to be hung in the frickin Museum of Modern Art?? To have an opinion is one thing and a healthy debate over which printing method is superior I also find great, but to take it to such an extreme as some of the people over at APUG have done is a bit demoralizing for me and I find it unfortunate.

To allow reasonable debate that analog photography is not the end all and be all of existence itself on APUG means hell must have frozen over. Is Sean still running the joint?

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

What ever floats your boat; This is just another approach to promote the magazine.

I promise you I am not on his payroll. Though with the money he must make to afford his printing bill, I wish I was!!

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Haven't read the article, probably never will. But if I understand correctly, is this guy saying his ink jet is better because of a higher Dmax?....This has got to be a joke. One more digital BS. I agree with Kirk, the person who made the original is the one to determine which one would be better, not the wannabe.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

As I read through the article I kept thinking "but what if the photographer didn't want his blacks that black?" Obviously to him the lithographic reproduction would not be as good as his original. I agree with Kirk: that would have been for Wynn Bullock to decide. Personally, in these days of sufficiently black blacks in both ink-jet and traditional prints, I tend to judge print quality more by whose got the most gradation in the whites rather than by whose got the blackest blacks. Re Brooks' other criterion for print quality, sharpness. Is he saying a reproduction is sharper than a contact print? And re his statement on p. 13: I for one wouldn't find it ridiculous at all to ask the lithographer "to hold back ink" so as not to make the black in the reproduction darker than in my platinum/palladium print. The print would not have left my darkroom if it did not have the black I wanted. And finally, I have to put my faith in the supremacy of the print that the photographer actually held in his hand. I wish Brooks had addressed this issue in more detail and how the collector might view all this.

Are you willing to consider the possibility that offset commercial printing can generate a darker black than the traditional photography process? The black he discusses, "skeleton black" is actually black with a little bit of blue in it to make it appear darker and more rich. I used to use a variation of this called "dark horse black." Now all of our blacks are reproduced in 4C so there is no longer a need to use that.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Haven't read the article, probably never will. But if I understand correctly, is this guy saying his ink jet is better because of a higher Dmax?....This has got to be a joke. One more digital BS. I agree with Kirk, the person who made the original is the one to determine which one would be better, not the wannabe.

Please do not compare, nor confuse inkjet with commercial offset printing. That's like comparing Outback Steakhouse to Peter Lugar's.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Please do not compare, nor confuse inkjet with commercial offset printing. That's like comparing Outback Steakhouse to Peter Lugar's.

Same difference. In the end, the one to judge if the print was better would be Wynn, not the offset guy. I agree that LW is very well printed, stochastic screens have been around for quite a long time. In fact, Dan Burkholder when he started he whole negative from digital files relied on service bereaus to make the screens for him. While advances in ink might allow for greater Dmax, this is not the only basis for a good print. Many of us have not made a print with Dmax higher than 1.5 in years..

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Not entirely true, at least for everyone. The artists touch as Doug put it make the print worth having for me - the end product was made by the artist themselves rather than by some machine. - R

In an upcoming interview with Bruce Daivdson and this part will probably never make the final editing cut so this will be the only place you can ever read it, Davidson says and I quote:

"The only printing I do are master prints. Well, my printer can make a better print than I can make. He makes prints every day. If I just gave him the contact sheet, then when he made the print the mood might not be right. When I print it myself I print the way I think it should be, but it may be at the end of the day one or two of the pictures could be printed a little better. Generally I don't let my master prints out of here, because I'm not in the business of printing, Two exceptions are in the hands of The Museum of the City of New York. They acquired my Type C color prints of the Subway, and they acquired, through a patron, all of Central Park."

So would you never think about buying a print of Bruce Davidson's?

[Bill_1856]

LensWork putting out those damn reproduction prints while Bullock's copywrite is still in effect sure as hell didn't do the price of my original, signed print any favor.

[Marko]

Not entirely true, at least for everyone. The artists touch as Doug put it make the print worth having for me - the end product was made by the artist themselves rather than by some machine. I think that a magazine is a very appropriate use of mechanically produced prints, but I would never pay more than ten or twelve bucks for a machine-made print regardless of how moving it was. Someone may have created the image after hours of hard work at the computer, and their touch is certainly there in that electronic work, but the printout of that effort is just a mechanical reproduction of that effort regardless of how technically perfect it is.

Ah, yes, the old, tired craft-of-art vs. art-of-craft argument.

To add to what Tim said, even contact prints are made with the help of a mechanical contrivance. It's called the camera. All you have to do to get the picture is: aim it and push the button.

Aside from that, what about slides? Are they less of an art than even ink jet prints because they use no paper at all? Or are they superior to even wet prints because they entail less manipulation? And if so, what about that famed artist's touch?

[Marko]

Oh, please don't get me started on APUG. As someone who views hundreds if not thousands of photographs every day, I have my own bias and likes and dis-likes regarding a hand-crafted photograph and anyone who knows me knows that I prefer a gelatin silver or traditionally created photograph over a digital one. However; I have seen, as of late in the MoMA of all places, some pigment inkjet prints that were absolutely outstanding. Should I dis-credit the photograph and the merit it deserves by not only looking extraordinary, but to be hung in the frickin Museum of Modern Art?? To have an opinion is one thing and a healthy debate over which printing method is superior I also find great, but to take it to such an extreme as some of the people over at APUG have done is a bit demoralizing for me and I find it unfortunate.

I beg to differ - such as it is, it serves a very important purpose. Without it, we would be having those "discussions" everywhere. A nice, comfortable place for those guys to breed themselves out without bothering the rest of us.