Salgado - faking it.

[Rolo]

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Wet printing so he can say "Silver Gelatin" print.

 

Not quite, Wet printing so he can say "Silver Gelatin print......... $4,000 please"

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[AlanG]

Not quite, Wet printing so he can say "Silver Gelatin print......... $4,000 please"

 

I got that but the digital imager outputs to the same silver gelatin paper and makes a wet print too. It is pretty similar to a film recorder that is used for making negatives from digital files only larger.

 

I think Durst Lamda, Lightjet, and Chromira are the main or only manufacturers today. I don't know if Kodak still makes one of these, but they used to. (Maybe they even invented it.) Duggal Labs certainly uses them but may also still make hand made prints on fiber paper.

 

About Chromira

 

A lot of higher end labs use this instead of an enlarger today even when working from film. I don't know if the lab that makes Salgado's prints has one of these or still uses enlargers. Some Labs promote custom Chromira prints to be their top quality over inkjet prints but this usually is for color or b/w RC paper.

 

Dodge-Chrome is one of the last "labs" in my area and it has gone on to making all kinds of display prints, etc. Their facilities take up a good size building. They still process film and print but I don't even know if they have an enlarger any more.

 

So maybe Salgado likes his prints to be "hand made" using an enlarger from an inter-negative that was generated digitally. Each to his own I guess but I don't see much distinction if he isn't using his own hands to make them.

[250swb]

To clarify it for yourself Alan ask yourself how big is the largest inkjet printer that can print to state of the art archival quality? Well its tiny compared to the largest size of photographic paper you can buy on a roll. Hence the inter-negative required for a giant print.

 

Steve

[bill]

It's a huge stamp of approval and will make it OK for others who were doubtful or resistant.

 

Are people truly that weak-willed and feeble-minded that they need such "validation"?? Surely we make up our own minds what to do and use.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[AlanG]

To clarify it for yourself Alan ask yourself how big is the largest inkjet printer that can print to state of the art archival quality? Well its tiny compared to the largest size of photographic paper you can buy on a roll. Hence the inter-negative required for a giant print.

 

Steve

 

Sorry, but I don't think you are following this very well. I am not talking about inkjet printing. Do you not understand how Chromira or Lamdas work? They print onto regular photo paper from digital files. Some of these printers can make very large prints. It uses similar technology to a film recorder that would be used to make an internegative from a digital file - e.g. they both aim light onto photo sensitive material.

 

Besides, there are very large inkjet printers. Epson makes 64" wide ones and there are larger still. This will surely test his files, but that is irrelevant to the point.

 

I frankly don't care if they use a digital film recorder to first make an internegative and then someone prints from that internegative using an enlarger. Or if someone works directly from the digital file onto the exact same photo paper using a Chromira printer. Or even if they scan that internegative and make still another generation before printing it via a Chromira. It is still just a lab making a print to try to match his file and not a print he made himself. (Not that this bothers me either.) I am simply pointing out that once you go digital, making the film negative can only serve to reduce print quality by adding an additional generation and optical system into the process. For whatever reason, it is not explained why he chose this method. It's ok with me if he likes it but as a longtime traditional printer, I'm curious what the advantage is to him. Is it simply to have a physical negative and be able to say it was used in the process?

 

Anyhow, this may be a new trend.

[AlanG]

Are people truly that weak-willed and feeble-minded that they need such "validation"?? Surely we make up our own minds what to do and use.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

Validation is the name of the game in the art world.

Why do you think inkjet prints are called "Giclee" when money is on the line? And when did a photograph become a "silver gelatin" print? When Adams stopped selling prints for a few hundred and began getting thousands perhaps?

 

What is a good name for a digital+grain to gelatin print? Let's go the other way and use technology to remove all of that ugly grain from famous photos. Many photographers were trying to avoid that grainy look at the time and now we can make their images look the way they really wanted them to look.

[tomasis7]

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I don't see why you'd expect to see grain on these small images on-line.

 

It is a bad day for Tri-X because if this is acceptable for Salgado, others will feel it is acceptable too. Just as some famous photographers popularized 35mm photography in the first place.

 

OMG!! I said Salgado is not everything. It is bad day for wannabe film-hardcore sheep mentality photographers. :eek:

 

you make everything that sounds as a commercial tune

[bill]

Validation is the name of the game in the art world.

 

You miss my point, by a country mile. Never mind.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[tomasis7]

What is interesting to me that his work-flow is digital -> film -> print.

 

if it is really so, so giclee sucks!

[AlanG]

You miss my point, by a country mile. Never mind.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

You might make up your mind, but others may now follow this lead if it is perceived as OK. I see it as a slippery slope that an artist and his customers can approve of a fake effect as the same as the real thing.

It is all part of photography getting easier and easier and I'd be happier if he didn't feel that the fake grain was required for acceptance. Just like other artists go through periods, he could have a film period and a digital period.

[AlanG]

Alan - just what are you saying here, you lost me sorry. TRI-X in a 35mm camera is superb and for many years I used it exclusively but I am confused as to why digital is a fake !!!

 

I am saying that somehow Salgado feels that his images will only be acceptable or be consistent with his previous work if he makes his digital images look like they were shot on Tri-X. He obviously identifies with that look. This is OK with me but if it isn't being fake, I don't know what is because I am not sure if those photos would look the same if they were actually shot on Tri-X. The digital file can be adjusted in countless ways that you can't do to a negative when printing it. How is this any different than printing photos on canvas and then overlaying fake brush strokes? (Which is fine with me if the photographer likes it and it gets more money for the work.) But it isn't a painting. And I bet you technically could print digital files onto a Daguerreotype plate. Would that make it a Daguerreotype? The flip side is that maybe somebody will scan Ansel Adams' negatives, manipulate them and make better prints than he made. I think there is a basic purity to a medium that is getting blurred now and I haven't made up my mind if this is good or bad for photography in general.

 

Fortunately for Salgado is that I think he is more identified by what he says than the technology he uses to say it.

[menos I M6]

I am saying that somehow Salgado feels that his images will only be acceptable or be consistent with his previous work if he makes his digital images look like they were shot on Tri-X. He obviously identifies with that look. This is OK with me but if it isn't being fake, I don't know what is because I am not sure if those photos would look the same if they were actually shot on Tri-X. The digital file can be adjusted in countless ways that you can't do to a negative when printing it. How is this any different than printing photos on canvas and then overlaying fake brush strokes? (Which is fine with me if the photographer likes it and it gets more money for the work.) But it isn't a painting. And I bet you technically could print digital files onto a Daguerreotype plate. Would that make it a Daguerreotype? The flip side is that maybe somebody will scan Ansel Adams' negatives, manipulate them and make better prints than he made. I think there is a basic purity to a medium that is getting blurred now and I haven't made up my mind if this is good or bad for photography in general.

 

Fortunately for Salgado is that I think he is more identified by what he says than the technology he uses to say it.

 

Alan, try, to see this from the other way around ;-)

 

As an artist, you might be less inclined by a factor of acceptance of your work, showing a certain feature, than by your personal stomach feel of the look, you personally reach for.

 

I know it works for me that way - an image can be for trash or for the wall, depending on just a touch in how I process it.

 

I don't think at all, the photographer adds a "missing grain feature" to otherwise clean digital files, to satisfy his customers or sales, but as driven by his photographic eye and personal taste.

 

You can call it trademark as well, but I doubt, it is primarily driven out of feature thinking of buyers acceptance.

 

Besides, this is an interesting discussion, regarding workflow and printing techniques.

I think, only Mr. Salgado himself can answer the reasoning for his choice, but let me throw in a personal point:

 

Sometimes, you make workflow choices simply out of convenience and availability, rather than overall "fit" to a technical minded observer.

 

I do not make silver prints, but instead scan all my film with a rather awkward technique, to process it parallel with my digital photographs and make pigment inkjet prints with my own printer, as long size restrictions allow.

 

Why?

 

Because, I have the technical means, to do this all in house and don't be bothered with color proofing and external suppliers, to finish a print in my quality acceptance.

 

Maybe Salgado chose this way simply out of convenience reasons - the lab, he likes to work with offers this workflow, the output is to his full satisfaction, he gets negatives, to archive and be fully compatible with HIS processing burned in for the afterlife.

 

Why should he question the technicalities, when he finds the print output sufficient?

 

In my professional life, I often come over the fact, that sometimes the technical irrational nets what you need, to sell or satisfy your demands.

You should not sweat about potential technical irregularities in the process, but stick to what works and go from there.

 

He is not a printing technology advisor, but a photographer in the first place - right?

[zlatkob]

Are people truly that weak-willed and feeble-minded that they need such "validation"?? Surely we make up our own minds what to do and use.

 

Not at all. It's not about being weak-willed or feeble-minded. We do make up our minds, However, each field has high-level practitioners who set the standards or at least influence them. Salgado is without doubt a standard-setter for a kind of photography. By virtue of his incredible talent, he is a strong influence in the photography world (whether he wants to be or not). The fact that this technique meets his own high standards will have an influence on other photographers and on photography buyers.

 

It doesn't mean people follow like sheep and say "I must do what Salgado does". It means that when they hear he has adopted this relatively new technique, they will be more inclined to investigate it, and perhaps adopt it too. If enough standard-setters adopt a technique, it becomes a familiar and proven practice -- a standard tool/option of the craft -- and gets past that stage of a newcomer technology that has no established artistic provenance.

 

If Tri-X had never existed, and you wished to introduce it to the film photography world now, having a few great photographers rely on it for their gallery masterpieces would get much more attention than having absolute unknowns using it for photos of their cats.

[zlatkob]

You might make up your mind, but others may now follow this lead if it is perceived as OK. I see it as a slippery slope that an artist and his customers can approve of a fake effect as the same as the real thing.

It is all part of photography getting easier and easier and I'd be happier if he didn't feel that the fake grain was required for acceptance. Just like other artists go through periods, he could have a film period and a digital period.

 

Alan, don't think of it as fake film grain. Think of it as just grain. Not an imitation of a thing, but a thing itself. It is a thing that can be achieved by different means, film and digital. Digital gives us the option to use it nor not use it. With film, we didn't have the option to not use it at all, but we did have the option to control it by means of different film types, film formats, developers, and development techniques. So grain was not a constant in the film world. Rather, it was a controlled variable. Now with digital, it's an even more controlled variable.

[pico]

Alan, don't think of it as fake film grain. Think of it as just grain. Not an imitation of a thing, but a thing itself. It is a thing that can be achieved by different means, film and digital. Digital gives us the option to use it nor not use it. With film, we didn't have the option to not use it at all, but we did have the option to control it by means of different film types, film formats, developers, and development techniques. So grain was not a constant in the film world. Rather, it was a controlled variable. Now with digital, it's an even more controlled variable.

 

Some time in the future it will matter very much if 'grain' came from the original source rather than imitated through digital ways. That is is how it goes. People will get tired of the same old stuff, which today is digital, and look for earlier tech that makes pictures. That's how collectors and conservatoires see the art, for better or worse.

[AlanG]

I can accept the grain from Salgado and anyone else. I understand the difficulty of shooting film today on the level and locations that Salgado photographs. And I can see that a person might need a certain look to his work. I am just trying to reconcile these "shortcuts" with my own sensibilities of what craftsmanship means to me and whether photography as a profession is on the way up or down. (As viewed by clients, photographers, art collectors, and the general public.)

 

When it come to the work by Salgado, I personally will make a distinction between what he shot on film and what he shot digitally because I understand how much more leeway the digital files have for adjustment after the fact than the Tri-X negs have. While this opens more possibilities for him, it also makes it easier.

 

I also keep in mind something I read about a recent photo auction. A self portrait by Cindy Sherman sold for around $240,000 and an original Steve McCurry print of the girl from Afghanistan sold for around $60,000. That's not bad for one of the most famous iconic photos in history, but he's no Cindy Sherman when it comes to being a darling of the art world..

 

As for a photographer having an influence over others... isn't this pretty obvious to those on a Leica forum when you think of Bresson?

[adan]

If "grain," as some say, is the brushstrokes of small-format photography - then adding "grain" to an photograph to make it look like it was made on 35mm film is as phony as adding "brushstrokes" to a photograph to make it look like a painting.

 

And yes, I think it IS "phony" - but it's been going on as long as photography has been around. It goes in and out of style. The "Group f/64" photographers and other photographers of the 20s-40s were a rebellion against the "artsy" Pictorialist movement who specialized in dreamy, soft-focus-filtered "painterly" pictures. Edward Weston burned his journals from his pictorialist era when he scrapped that approach and turned to "rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself" in sharp and grainless silver. Reviewer Marius de Zayas said of Weston's new approach that "Photography is beginning to be photography, for until now it has only been art." I like the "only".

 

In general I'm not impressed by anyone who has so little confidence in their medium's natural look that they have to make it look like some other medium. If I wanted my pictures to "look like" 35mm Tri-X - I'd just shoot 35mm Tri-X....

 

But I reserve the right to be inconsistent. I convert some of my digital pictures to B&W and tone them to be dark and dramatic, which I guess gives them something of the feel of film pictures. I'm not trying to make them look like film - just, like dramatic B&W pictures, where the tones and light lead the eye to the right place in the frame, and color is not a distraction.

 

(Example: the essay on a JROTC Raider Platoon in my current issue of ColoradoSeen)

 

I'm enhancing something that is already there (just as Gene Smith did in the darkroom), not trying to add something that was NOT already there (which Smith, to his discredit, did do a couple of times in the darkroom).

___________

 

Moving on to the other topic of reproducing digital images in silver prints - which I don't consider phony per se, so long as the images are faithful to the natural look of the processes involved - I do think, Alan, that there is probably a visual difference between:

 

a) a laser-LED print such as the Chromira, LightJet or Lambda

an enlarged print from a smallish internegative

c) a contact print from a large internegative

 

Leaving "grain" aside, there will be different qualities of contrast, focus, and tone, given the different types of light source used (diffuse for a contact print; focused but with some flare and diffusion for an enlargement through a lens; extremely focused with no flare or diffusion for an LED print head).

[menos I M6]

If "grain," as some say, is the brushstrokes of small-format photography - then adding "grain" to an photograph to make it look like it was made on 35mm film is as phony as adding "brushstrokes" to a photograph to make it look like a painting.

 

Andy, maybe, I formulated my post above too long, that you didn't get my point of argument, so I make this short:

 

Some people, who do add grain do not add grain in digital photography, to make a photo look like something else, but to add something to the photo they feel, belongs there.

I don't add grain (not always btw, but with certain photographs), to make my digital shots look like something, they are not, but as of my feeling, that the way, I manipulate the photograph, it resembles more closely, what I see in the photograph.

 

I am surprised, you go so far and intolerantly call this ever been there technique in photography "phony".

 

It is absolutely nothing different from any other manipulation of photographs after the exposure has been taken in any other photography technique.

 

Are you judging the quality of photographic processing techniques by the standards and ethics of one of many schools of thought on photography (the one, that strives for highest quality and clarity), not understanding the fact, that for some the imperfections, others define are actually additions to a final perfected image in their work)?

 

I do such things to my photographs, I even add occasionally film enlarging/ scanning frames to digital photographs - not because I am after a phony fooling of others about the origin of the digital image, but because of my personal feel about a certain feature.

 

This has absolutely nothing to do with fooling, copying or alike, but is a personal expression.

I would name a persons comment like "Oh, this looks like Tri-X!" as wrong btw.

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[Nick_S]

It seems to me that a small/medium format inter-negative followed by an optically printed silver print provides an interesting way to add in some authentic grain and keep continuous tones, while allowing more consistent dodging and burning prior to making the actual print. It also generates a stable-silver halide film backup to the original digital file that gets round the issue of file-type obsolescence.

 

I have had my doubts about the alternative of using inkjet printers with transparency film to generate large format inter-negatives for contact printing (Burkholder's process referred to earlier in this thread) as the number of tones will be discrete. There also seem to be concerns about the stability and durability of such inkjet inter-negatives

 

Nick

[!Nomad64]

According to Ricardo Yamamoto, who interviewed Salgado in 2009, his prime objective was to replace the bulky 25kg packs of 120 Tri-X film with SD cards, whilst retaining the final characteristics of the silver print.

 

As I've spent my life under a stone I'm pretty amazed to learn about involved bulks. Assuming a roll weight be 50g, 25 Kgs of rolls account for roughly 500 rolls meaning 6,000 shots. How much does this man shoot in a single trip?

 

Bruno