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William Whitaker
21-Jan-2012, 19:47
I was this evening once again enjoying Edward Steichen's The Flatiron, but this time flipped to the list of plates and noticed that the print size is 18x15 inches. Never having seen the actual print, I didn't realize its size. I'm not familiar with what Mr. Steichen used during that time (1904) for a camera, but I have a feeling it wasn't as large as the print. The print is gum over platinum, so it would require an actual-size negative. Was it commonplace then to enlarge negatives for contact printing? What methods were used? Were not dry plates predominant then? I would guess that reversal duplicating film was not readily available.

Bill Burk
21-Jan-2012, 21:01
Steichen wrote that he made an enlarged negative of JP Morgan 1903 that he retouched. He also worked in Lithography. I think it would be a safe conclusion to draw that he routinely enlarged negatives. His pictorialism would not have suffered much from a loss of two generations going from neg to pos to neg.

csant
22-Jan-2012, 02:27
Steichen wrote that he made an enlarged negative of JP Morgan 1903 that he retouched

Where is that information published? I am very curious about his printing techniques - is there any publication you could recommend?

MIke Sherck
22-Jan-2012, 09:53
Edward Weston only printed by contact and he writes of enlarging negatives from 3 1/2 x 4 1/4 (or whatever it was,) to 8x10 (portraits from his Graflex,) at least from the 1920s to the late 1930s. It was a fairly common practice, I believe.

Mike

Bill Burk
22-Jan-2012, 21:05
Where is that information published? I am very curious about his printing techniques - is there any publication you could recommend?

In his book, A Life in Photography. ISBN 0-385-05571-4

William Whitaker
23-Jan-2012, 09:00
Thanks. The mention of the JP Morgan image rang a bell. I have Steichen's A Life In Photography and had seen that passage. Unfortunately Steichen doesn't address technique and only mentions that he made a second image, the negative of which he took with him on a return trip to Paris and enlarged. I'm not sure if Paris is significant; the story line seems to have more to do with Morgan's personality than it does photography.

William Crawford in The Keepers Of Light mentions one technique of enlarging negatives by copying a finished print to a negative of the desired size. So I guess anybody with a stat camera could do that. And that would include lithographers. Probably the pictorialist image would not have suffered from that, either, especially given multiple layers of gum.

As far as Weston goes, I find it curious that a man who didn't own an enlarger could enlarge negatives. But I guess that's what friends are for.

My interest in this is not entirely academic. I enjoy the work of the Pictorialist photographers and Steichen in particular. Practically speaking, though, I realize that there are better ways to enlarge negatives these days. If the goal is to print big (larger than my biggest camera) using alt processes, it ironically may be necessary to shoot small. My biggest enlarger is 8x10. So unless I specifically want to print "camera size", e.g. 11x14 or 12x20, my best bet is to use the smaller camera (8x10 being "small" in this case). For that matter, medium format would probably work. But the lenses I love are mostly for 8x10. So life seems to center on that format.

MIke Sherck
23-Jan-2012, 09:12
As far as Weston goes, I find it curious that a man who didn't own an enlarger could enlarge negatives. But I guess that's what friends are for.


Weston enlarged using his 8x10 camera; you re-photograph the original negative to a larger positive, then either enlarge it again while re-photographing it back to a negative or if the original dup to a positive is the size you need, you can just contact print it back to a negative. I'm unsure which method he used. His writings reference enlarging the negative so he could subsequently contact print them as 8x10 but I don't recall him going into much detail. I recall a letter, possibly to Willard van Dyke, mentioning Duplicating film but it's been a while since I read it and I'm not certain of that reference until I dig it up again and re-read it. I'm afraid that won't be any time soon: I'm all hot and heavy in the darkroom printing my own work at the moment.

Mike

Merg Ross
23-Jan-2012, 22:05
As far as Weston goes, I find it curious that a man who didn't own an enlarger could enlarge negatives. But I guess that's what friends are for.




Weston enlarged using his 8x10 camera; you re-photograph the original negative to a larger positive, then either enlarge it again while re-photographing it back to a negative or if the original dup to a positive is the size you need, you can just contact print it back to a negative. I'm unsure which method he used. His writings reference enlarging the negative so he could subsequently contact print them as 8x10 but I don't recall him going into much detail.

Mike

Hi Will and Mike. From what I have gleaned over the years, Mike has pretty well described Weston's "enlarged negatives". The in-camera dupe (interpositive) was made with his 8x10 camera from the Graflex negative using a Verito lens, and a glass plate for the interpositive. This in turn was contact printed onto sheet film for the enlarged negative. The Verito was stopped down sufficiently to soften the retouching of the original small negative. Edward was apparently an excellent retoucher, a handy skill for his portrait business, until he totally abandoned the practice and specialized in "unretouched portraits".

MIke Sherck
24-Jan-2012, 07:19
Hi Will and Mike. From what I have gleaned over the years, Mike has pretty well described Weston's "enlarged negatives". The in-camera dupe (interpositive) was made with his 8x10 camera from the Graflex negative using a Verito lens, and a glass plate for the interpositive. This in turn was contact printed onto sheet film for the enlarged negative. The Verito was stopped down sufficiently to soften the retouching of the original small negative. Edward was apparently an excellent retoucher, a handy skill for his portrait business, until he totally abandoned the practice and specialized in "unretouched portraits".

I was hoping you'd show up and shed some more light on this! I always just sort of figured he used an anastigmat for the enlarging, in order to retain as much of the original sharpness as possible, but using the Verito to help blend in his retouching makes tremendous sense and I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of it. It's also interesting to note that he got a sharp negative for himself (the original Graflex negative) plus a softer "portrait" negative for the customer (in the style of the day,) out of the process. Thanks for the info!

Mike

William Whitaker
24-Jan-2012, 14:26
Many thanks Merg! That offers much insight into their process. And it does make a lot of sense to use a diffuse-focus lens to help blend the retouching.

Louis Pacilla
25-Jan-2012, 10:48
Thanks. The mention of the JP Morgan image rang a bell. I have Steichen's A Life In Photography and had seen that passage. Unfortunately Steichen doesn't address technique and only mentions that he made a second image, the negative of which he took with him on a return trip to Paris and enlarged. I'm not sure if Paris is significant; the story line seems to have more to do with Morgan's personality than it does photography.
.

I do know that the only lens he owned at the time was a long focus Rapid Rectilinear .I also know that when Steichen asked J.P. to move his head to a particular position. J.P. got angry and said it was uncomfortable. Steichen told him to move his head until he was comfy. JP moved his head around a bit only to land on the same exact position as before only this time it was J.P.'s idea. That's how Steichen got that angry stair in J.P.'s eyes . Steichen also mentioned that when he showed the second image (the one w/ the knife) to J.P. Morgan , J.P. ripped the prof up and said it was terrible.Stiechen was PISSED. .

Then stieglitz showed the image at 291 and someone connected to Pierpoint said it was the best image of the great J.P. she had ever seen and must show it to him. . Stieglitz refused to sell the image to her but somehow she finally gets a copy from Steichen.

She shows it to J.P. and he LOVES it. Wants a bunch of copies and can not believe the young Steichen had not shown this image to him. You know this PISSED Steichen off even more so he dragged his feet for several years (with MANY reminders from JP's people) before delivering J.P's order.

TheDeardorffGuy
25-Jan-2012, 18:09
Deardorff made ERCs. Enlarge Reduce Copy. I was lucky enough to see a portrait photograper start with a 4x5 Neg. He made a 8x10 print that his wife retouched. He then copied this print with a 1937 20x24 Deardorff ERC on 20x24 film. Then made the contact prints. The prints were beautiful. He used to order Kodak Professional Copy film in 20x20. And as anyone who knows Kodak He had to order huge volumes of this film.

Bill_1856
26-Jan-2012, 08:32
W. Eugene Smith was one of the greatest darkroom workers of all time. He would spend days (or even weeks) getting exactly what he wanted from his original 35mm negative, then would copy that print and all of his subesquent prints were made from that negative.
I wonder what he used to make the copy -- I'll bet it was bigger than 35mm.

Merg Ross
26-Jan-2012, 09:17
In the late 1960's I worked in a lab with a fellow who had been one of W. Eugene Smith's darkroom assistants. At that time, Smith's copy negatives were made on Polaroid material, most likely 4x5.