No More Darkroom Prints from the Library of Congress

[Franz Jantzen]

As of October, the Library of Congress stopped offering exhibition quality fiber-based silver prints from its collections. I had the honor of being their sole darkroom vendor for the last several years, and when they told me about this I posted it on facebook and someone ended up doing an article on it. I'm attaching a link and hoping it will be workable in this format:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/b...-on-darkrooms/

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

Thank you for doing the work you have done. I have some wonderful Walker Evans FSA prints from the LoC which I treasure.

[Darin Boville]

Damn. What were (are) your favorite images? Which ones were most commonly requested?

--Darin

[Thom Bennett]

Sad. Franz, that must have been a very fulfilling job for you to print all those famous negatives.

[Brian C. Miller]

I had no idea that service was available. (Mope! Mope! Mope!) There were a number of those I'd have loved to get. Nuts.

[ROL]

From the linked article:

As silver gelatin prints become rarer, it forces artists who still work with film to make choices. “They might include the negative bracket so it can be identified as a photo. It has some cachet.”

What's a negative bracket?

[Kirk Gittings]

I believe they are referring to the film edge. Of course as we all know from Petronio that showing the film edge has little verasity

[Greg Blank]

A delibrate betrayal of the of the American Artist in my Opinion, No one knows about the program and then it it is gone? Are American Governmental Instituitions so blind they can't adqequately make use of existing media? I am not sure what the price point was for prints but as a Darkroom worker and contemporary American Artist, I would have loved to own a copy print from some of these- at 45 per print there would have been alot of dollars to be had for Uncle Sam. Even if they were signed or stamped with a current makers mark it would have been a prized posseion for many folks here on the forum. You don't mind if I borrow this post to make a point do you?

[Kimberly Anderson]

I have wanted to order prints for years. I almost cried when I looked at those prints in the trays. Dang it.

[Kirk Gittings]

A delibrate betrayal of the of the American Artist in my Opinion, No one knows about the program and then it it is gone?

I don't think this program was kept a secret-it has been around since the late 30's. I don't remember how I found out about it but it was in the early seventies when I did-around the time when I got seriously into photography. So I have known about it for 4 decades-it has been mentioned numerous times over the years on this forum-but like most people I never got around to ordering any prints. It was also mentioned prominently on the LoC website for many years.