[pure-silver] Re: A Walk Through the Exhibition
- From: Jeffrey Krenzel <jkrenzel@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 09:21:42 -0700 (PDT)
I felt the same way about many of the prints in the
Ansel Adams "100 year retrospective exhibition" of
several years ago. They appeared muddy and not as
well printed as I remember seeing them at the last big
retrospective of his work that I saw (sometime in the
80's). Did anyone else have this reaction to this
show?
However dim my visual memory might be regarding an
exhibition in the 80's, I thought that the prints
currently being printed from his negatives at that
gallery in Yosemite are much better printed than many
of the ones that I saw at this exhibit.
--- Richard Knoppow <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stein" <rstein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 4:04 PM
> Subject: [pure-silver] A Walk Through the Exhibition
>
>
> > Dear Friends,
> > Just back from my week's holiday in Melbourne.
> If that
> > seems a strange place to go to escape from care,
> consider
> > the fact that they have hotels, hot running water,
> and
> > bookshops. My days of camping in a hoochie with a
> rifle
> > and a billy of tea are over....
> >
> > They also have the National Gallery of Victoria
> - this
> > last week exhibiting a Man Ray room with many of
> his
> > famous photographs. I am assuming that what I saw
> were
> > many originals, but I am unsure whether I saw
> final prints
> > or just darkroom work prints. In any case I was
> somewhat
> > taken aback by them.
> >
> > Not from an artistic standpoint, I hasten to
> add - I
> > have several books on Man Ray and his assistants
> and
> > recognised many of the images. What puzzled me was
> their
> > presentation.
> >
> > Small. Dark. Raggedy-edged. Crumpled and
> > flattened-out. Spotty. Bronzing over. All matted
> > beautifully, but sometimes lost in the center of a
> vast
> > frame. I'm talking about a 6 cm x 9 cm image in a
> 12 in x
> > 16 in frame. And smaller in larger. Some images up
> to 11 x
> > 14 but none what I would have come to believe was
> an
> > exhibition size.
> >
> > Is this what happens at other international
> > exhibitions? None of the images looked like the
> posters
> > used for the advertising - these were closer to
> what I had
> > seen in books. I am wondering a little cynically
> if the
> > look of some photographers is made by their
> printer and
> > indeed the publisher's printer rather than
> themselves.
> >
> > Still fascinating images nevertheless - enjoyed
> it once
> > I overcame my surprise.
> >
> > Uncle Dick
> >
> I've encountered this with local exhibits. The
> Huntington
> Library had an exhibit of Edward Weston prints some
> months
> ago. Very dissapointing. Nearly all the prints,
> especially
> the older ones, were low contrast, dingy looking
> things. The
> catalogue was beautiful. I don't know if the images
> in the
> catalogue were made from the prints shown in the
> exhibition.
> If so, they were considerably manipulated.
> OTOH, the Weston exhibit I saw a couple of years
> ago at
> the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA to its
> friends)
> had beautiful prints. However, I think the
> Huntington had
> all original prints made by the master himself where
> many of
> the the LACMA prints were made by Cole Weston.
> I was unable to reach the curator of the
> Huntington
> exhibit so couldn't ask about the provenance of the
> prints
> they have. I now don't remember what the catalogue
> said. The
> print quality is pretty consistent so I don't think
> these
> are discards, I think they were made that way. In
> the dim
> light at the exhibit its hard to be sure but I don't
> think
> the poor quality was due to degredation of the
> images with
> time, I think these prints always looked like this.
> It was
> also not an artificact of the lighting. My
> conclusion is
> that E.W. sometimes made poor prints although he was
> capable
> of making excellent ones.
> I've seen the same thing with original prints by
> other
> famous photographers: really poor quality. The
> reprodutions
> of these prints are usually much better than the
> originals.
> The old halftone process was capable of very
> considrable
> manipulation and its obvious that it was often done.
> I must
> say that the very best reproductions of Ansel Adams
> images
> are often better than the originals and I have seen
> a great
> many original Adams prints.
>
> ---
> Richard Knoppow
> Los Angeles, CA, USA
> dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
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