who's been? who's going?

[james ryder]

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand at the Met in New York. Vince Aletti introduces his review in this week's New Yorker, "......spectacular...equivalent of an Old Master exhibition." He concludes the piece, "The Met's prints are simply astonishing-rich and alive with real star quality. If you've only seen these works in reporduction, you haven't really seen them". The show will be up until April 10.

My questions are: who has seen this show? And who is attending? Are the galleries crowded? Are there any young people viewing these master works? Anyone using digital cameras to document the images? Any new pictorialists in the audience? Anyone swooning at the the heavy metals on the wall? Anyone looking closely at the creamy, modernists tonal range? Does any one linger? In a different review it was noted that each artist's work is in a separate gallery. I think the curator missed a chance to see how these friends and colleage's art may have played off each other. Strand and Stieglitz nudes of the same woman/lover compared next to each other is too juicy to miss. They worked in the same cities, in the same years, read the same journals, paid attention to the same European art. this could have been a chance to see the fugue of creativity between artists played out over just a couple of decades. These people invented modern photography together.

This is our chance, we can learn from this show, these prints.

Like someone said, "perhaps you'll just have to go."
Jim

[Oren Grad]

My questions are: who has seen this show?

Yours truly.

And who is attending?

Anyone and everyone.

Are the galleries crowded?

They were on a Sunday afternoon in November.

Are there any young people viewing these master works?

Lots.

Anyone using digital cameras to document the images?

Possibly not, because in general the Met doesn't allow photography in special exhibitions. In another gallery that was less crowded, I saw a guard vigorously shooing away someone with a camera.

Any new pictorialists in the audience?

Hard to know.

Anyone swooning at the the heavy metals on the wall?

Not that I saw, but I was paying more attention to the pictures than to the crowd.

Anyone looking closely at the creamy, modernists tonal range?

Not that I saw, etc.

Does any one linger?

It was hard to do with the galleries so crowded.

Like someone said, "perhaps you'll just have to go."

But do yourself a favor, go on a weekday if you can.

[johnmsanderson]

I've seen it. Really amazing! I had never seen the Steichen prints in person and they were truly extraordinary. It was also an excellent history lesson in viewing the different printing styles (gum bichromate, etc). Photography truly is a young art form if these are the old masters!

Saturday wasn't that crowded. But yeah, go on a weekday if you can. There's also another smaller exhibition next to the SSS show of photographs from the early 20th century, I want to say 1913-20. Check that out too.

[Scott Davis]

I am planning on going, after the New Year. Is it true, the criticism I've seen that the exhibit hall is extraordinarily dim making it hard to see the images?

[Oren Grad]

Is it true, the criticism I've seen that the exhibit hall is extraordinarily dim making it hard to see the images?

I would say it's moderately dim, well within the range of what I've seen before with vintage material in museums.

But the Steichen and Strand prints themselves, as a group, are dark and murky. The Stieglitz material holds up much better in that respect.

[Ben Syverson]

Why would they lower the lights for fiber prints? It's not like light exposure is going to cause metal to fall off the paper.

[JamesFromSydney]

The Stieglitz exhibit in Sydney was also very dimly lit. Not sure why, but many of the prints were very subtly toned, and I wonder if that was a factor. I later saw some Stieglitz at the Seaport Museum in NYC with normal lighting and they seemed to lose a lot of 'magic' in that light.

[John Jarosz]

It's been a while since anyone posted to this thread.

I had some free time during a business trip to NYC on Tuesday so I stopped in to see this show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 3 galleries were pretty crowded , I was surprised. LOTS of young people and many school groups (HS & College - I think)

They have the show set up with one room for each artist. It's an alt-process extravaganza.
Gum Dichromate, Platinum, Direct Carbon, Autotype and Silver as well as combinations of different processes on one print. All are vintage prints presented well. The lighting is a little dark, but I always think that is the case.

Rather than go on and on about the show I will simply say that if you can get to NYC you must see this show. The prints are amazing and to be able to see them all in one place at one time is remarkable.

Two comments:
1. They have an area off to the side where they discuss the processes and materials. There is quite a bit of information (for an art museum anyway) on Platinum and Gum printing. They even have materials on display. But not one word on the Direct Carbon process ( 9 of the prints by Steichen were specifically labeled Direct Carbon, transfer was never mentioned). So I wonder if they don't know anything about the exact process he used or if they chose to simply not discuss it. I found the omission of the explanation of Direct Carbon kind of odd. Those carbon prints did not appear to be anything like Fresson, they looked like really good silver prints with a large range. Very deep blacks, inky black. Highlights were very well defined. The photos in the catalog do not do the carbon prints justice.

2. Autochromes. The actual original Autochromes from 1907/09 were on display, back illuminated for four days in January. Since then they have duplicates on display as they are concerned about fading. It is difficult to believe they were made in 1907. I can understand the stir they created at the time. Again, the catalog does not convey the effect of the transparencies.

Get there if you can. These are all images from the Met's collection. There was no indication anywhere that this show would travel.

[Jim Graves]

Here's a link to a discussion of the Direct Carbon process on the Bostick and Sullivan carbon printing forum: Link

[sanking]

Anyone interested in direct carbon prints should get a copy of Luis Nadeau's book, Gum Dichromate and other Direct Carbon Proceses, from Artigue to Zimmerman, published in 1987. This book describes a number of historical direct carbon monochrome processes, such as Artigue's Charbon-Velour, Fresson, Hochheimer, Satino carbon paper, etc. as well as direct carbon processes in color.

The essential difference between direct carbon and carbon tranfer as some of us practice it today is that in direct carbon the sensitized image is exposed from the top and developed without transfer, sometimes by just soaking the paper, other times by using some type of abrasive. Unlike the exposure scale of carbon transfer, which can be very long, the exposure scale of direct carbon is quite limited, no more than about four or five stops.

As Nadeau points out in the title of his book, gum dichromate is just one of many types of direct carbon, and none of these processes have much in common with carbon transfer except the use of the word carbon in the title, and that both may use carbon pigments.

Sandy King