[pure-silver] Re: "Hand Printed"
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:15:18 -0800
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Thorns" <puresilver@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 1:05 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: "Hand Printed"
I think the implication of "hand-made" or "hand-printed" vs
"machine-made" has less to do with the machine and more to
do with "mass production".
Regardless of the product, if the process involves
'intimate human intervention', without which the product
would not be the same, then you have mass production. And
I think the distinction that most people make when they
say hand-made is that is was not mass produced - it wasn't
exactly like 5000 other samples of the same item.
In the case of photographic prints, you can mass produce a
silver-gelatin print (has anyone here ever used an
auto-printer?) or an inkjet print. The difference is in
the individual samples. If you print by hand in the
darkroom, then every print is likely to be subtley (or
grossly) different from the last. (this assumes you are
not using a machine printer) If you work on a digital
image, then press the button for 5000 prints, then those
prints were not hand-made. The 'image' may have been
hand-made, but not the prints. They were mass produced.
In the case of traditional darkroom print-making, the
'image' (in the final product sense) and the 'print' are
the same thing. In digital printing they are not.
FWIW, mass production of photographic prnts was quite
common for promotion purposes at one time. For instance fan
photos of movie stars were printed from 8x10 duplicate
negatives with masking to provide whatever retouching was
needed. There was probably variation across a run but not
much from print to print. Also, photofinishers often used
automatic printers. These usually provide some degree of
enlargment (jumbo prints) but were usually run by an
operator who had some control of exposure and contrast
although I think there were eventually machines that
controlled exposure by photo-electric means due to the
variation in amateur negatives.
The photographic process can be made as automatic as a
Xerox machine or computer printer.
BTW, I keep reading this subject heading as "Hand painted"
as in ties.
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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