I spent last weekend assisting master printer Tyler Boley teach a scanning and printing workshop at Newspace Center for Photography here in Portland. Tyler is the owner of Custom-Digital, a fine art scanning and printing studio in Seattle. He is, quite frankly, producing the most beautiful and innovative fine art prints I’m seeing right now. I met Tyler two years ago. He was teaching a Piezography workshop in Vermont at Jon Cone’s studio. Piezography, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, is “a brand of monochromatic inks and software that produce what is unarguably the absolute highest-standard in black and white printing” as described on the piezography home page at www.piezography.com. Simply put, Jon Cone has developed different sets of black inks to replace the Epson’s inks inside their printers. Using 8 black ink cartridges instead of 3 produces a range of tones unavailable using Epson’s ultrachrome ink sets. It is also a much more archival solution since the images are printed with black ink only. You therefore don’t have to worry about different colors fading at inconsistent rates. I took this workshop primarily because I wanted Tyler’s workflow expertise, but also to see if I could eek out an extra level of quality to my own black and white printmaking. The workshop there was phenomenal. I really learned how to print digitally at that workshop which was a week in length.
Since that time, Tyler and I have had many conversations about the craft of printmaking, about the pace at which these processes are developing and frankly, why so many people find releasing bad prints out into the public an acceptable practice. We talked this past weekend about whether “beauty” has become a dirty word. I feel lately that the importance of beauty in photography has been replaced by cynicism. There seems to be little work shown that inspires me to remember that how we live, where we live, who we are, is beautiful. And I am constantly wondering, and speaking to other photographers about why that is. What is it about a photograph of an empty kitchen cabinet that is so inspiring? For me, the great art, the kind you get goose bumps looking at, does two things: reflects a visual perfection that almost seems unattainable, and prompts the viewer to ask questions either about how the work was made or what the artist was trying to teach us about the world we live in. I would have to say that it is so rare to see both. But more than that, it seems like my definition of great art is not valid anymore. There seems to be a constant sarcasm or pessimism that is pervasive. I don’t find it unappealing all of the time. But there has to be a commitment to the craft of image making and printmaking in order to draw us in to the images, to lure us into seeing the beauty in something that may not be at once perceived… and I just don’t see it in all the empty kitchen cabinet pictures I’ve seen of late.
It bothers me when I hear people saying, “That’s a beautiful print.” There is nothing there that refers to the image itself. And maybe the commentator has nothing to say about the image. But usually, when this happens, it is said almost as a cautionary compliment, like the viewer is afraid to say instead, “That’s a beautiful photograph” because they are suspicious of being seduced by the talent of the printer.
I never thought I would say this, but I think we need to be careful not to make being a great printer a hindrance to being a great photographer.
Hmm – I think that one of the reasons people talk about the quality of the print rather than the quality of the image is that people don’t know how to talk about the content of an image.
I”ve been practicing for over 10 years and I still find it harder to talk about content than about image quality. Talking about technique is ultimately an EASY and SAFE thing to do. Talking about what your work means or what other people’s work means to you isn’t so easy. There aren’t any standards for meaning, so you are really more on your own when you venture out of the “it’s a beautiful print” realm and into the content of the images. And making that step can actually be SCAREY – you are in some sense putting yourself much more on the line when you stop talking about technique and start talking about content.
I think that talking about the qualities of the image gives people something to talk about when the images don’t have much content. To me the classic case is travel photography where shooters just document that they were there. If a person takes a picture just to “get the shot” then the images tend not to really have content – so what else is there to talk about other then image quality?
Should you say anything if the picture you are seeing doesn’t speak to you beyond the quality of it’s surface?
The danger I see is that often, people aren’t able to comment on the content of an image that has been printed superbly. I’ve seen this happen over and over again. It’s like people are suspicious of the beautiful print, they lose focus on the image itself and just focus on the printing. I’m in no way saying that you can’t do great work if the prints aren’t perfect. I’m saying that greatly printed images should also be appreciated for content, and when I hear comments like “that’s a beautiful print” instead of “that’s a beautiful image” I wonder why it is that they won’t get past the print. Thanks Carl for the great comment!
Being a great printer is only a problem if the print quality becomes the content of the artwork. But if your art has content, then the great print opens the content up to the view.
What do you see the danger? That people will see a beautiful print and just not see the photograph BECAUSE the print is beautiful?
I think you can do great work in photographic modes that don’t require the beautiful print (Tempelton’s Deformer book or Joseph Mills work immediately comes to mind), but you have to have some vision driving you away from creating a beautiful object.
The key word here is vision. Purely conceptually driven photography can just be sterile as purely technique driven photography. A lot of conceptually driven photography (especially that based on a snapshot aesthetic) has all the aesthetic impact of an illustration in a packaging and shipping products catalog. (Nikki Lee’s work immediately comes to mind here). The work may be an exploration of an idea but a concept isn’t art per se.
Artists with ideas and no vision can be just as vapid as artists with technique and no vision. And I think there is alway some idea that is realized in the work of artist’s with vision. When you have ideas and vision both then one idea can unfold in a thousand manifestations. Ansel Adams work is, I think, a long unfolding and refinement of one basic idea.