I was lucky to see Tod's prints, and to watch him make some. Beyond impressive and highly inspiring.
I was lucky to see Tod's prints, and to watch him make some. Beyond impressive and highly inspiring.
For those interested in Tod Gangler's color carbon work, he has agreed to take part in the Alt-Photo Pacifica Symposium that will take place this coming October in Bellevue, Washington. Tod will be showing and talking about some of his work. I will post more information about the symposium as the date gets closer.
I have been to his studio, Art and Soul, in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood and got to see several pieces of his work and talk with him some about his process. I also saw the Frida series at the Tacoma Art Museum a few years ago. Tod's work is incredible. The closest thing I can think of that is similar in impact might be a large format Kodachrome 25. These are 3 and 4 color prints in custom mixed pigments printed up to 24"x30". Each matrix is transferred to a master support and then the completed master is transferred to a sheet of watercolor paper. The opportunities to screw up are, shall we say, ample. Tod does the whole process himself except he sends his separation files for his negatives out to be printed on an imagesetter.
If you are interested, you can learn more about his work on youtube (do a search for his name - there are several short films that follow him through making a print). Also check out his site http://www.colorcarbonprint.com/
Dan
Dan Williams
Enumclaw WA
John Bentley here in toronto does Colour carbon work as well and it is very good. John and Todd are very good friends and both have pushed the envelope with their work.
There is a Sarah Moon show now in New York that I believe Todd printed.
Yes, those are the prints I watched Tod make. Beautiful.Originally Posted by bob carnie
Bob,
Do you have a link to some of John Bentley's work. I would love to see it. I tried Google and came up with a lot of people by that name but wasn't able to locate the right one.
Dan
Dan Williams
Enumclaw WA
John Bladen Bentley you may try Beckett Gallery, there is not much out there on John's work, not a recluse by any standards but not really up on the marketing of his work.
www.beckettfineart.com
I first met John on a side of a mountain, I was a chockerman and he was my rigging slinger on a high lead logging site.
Twenty years later we met up in Toronto , he was a commercial photographer and I was just starting my lab.
I took a course at Maine Photo workshop on this process, at that time to control the whole process one needed a scanner and output device which
was way beyond my budget- we are talking 1994 and scanners were not available other than in big pre press shops.
Both Todd and John became good friends with Charles Bergger the originator (who by the way still posts on APUG as CMB ) These two single handily kept the process alive in NA and both should be recognized for their efforts.
I too hope to work with this process, I am not totally sure I want to go the full colour route , but maybe the duotone and tritone route of using the channels to create
and effect with other processes. I am first and formost a silver printer and mixing in a bit of colour would be nice. Carbon likes silver gelatin emulsions.
One needs a hard dot negative to make this process work repeatably and accuratley for colour fidelity and Todd and John have that nailed.
I have a device that can give me a con tone negative and I am willing for a bit of unpredictability in my work.
This process may or may not survive , a lot depends if these two educate younger workers on how to pre sensitize the emulsions and putting it all together.
Dan - you should try to bring John out for that as well , his work is outstanding.
I published an article on color carbon printing in Silvershotz a few years ago. There is some history, and a brief account of the working procedures of several color carbon printers, including Gangler and Bentley. I am attaching the text of the article. Things don't change fast in this world so most of the information in the article is still valid.
Sandy
Last edited by sanking; 2-Jul-2012 at 11:27.
For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
[url]https://groups.io/g/carbon
I should also mention I have seen a couple of wonderful colour carbon prints Sandy made that are hanging in his livingroom. Correct me if I am wrong Sandy but I think you did them in the 80's which would be a full 10 years before Todd and John.
Bob,
That is correct. I made those color carbon prints in the early 1980s. That was in the day of purely analog working methods, which is to say I started with either color transparencies which were then separated on pan film in the darkroom, or in some cases I made three-color separations directly in the camera, which were sometimes printed directly, or on some cases I made enlarged separations. It was tedious work, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
My color carbon prints have not faded, even with a history of hanging in a room that received a lot of afternoon sun, some of it directly on the prints.
Sandy
For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
[url]https://groups.io/g/carbon
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