John Dugdale

Judy Seigel suggested the best way to get a hold of John Dugdale was by phone and she gave me his numbers, one for his place in West Village Manhattan, one for his place in the country. She observed that being nearly blind, John didn't spend a lot of time reading e-mail.  

My interest in cyanotypes started on seeing John's work in print. I was aware of the history of the process, Herschel's invention in 1843 making it one of the earliest methods of fixing an image. The accomplished practitioners of cyanotype seem to have been few and far between, with Anna Atkins being one of the most prominent. Her photograms of British algae were assembled into the first photobook. Algae has perhaps never been depicted so sublimely.

John Dugdale was a successful commercial photographer in Manhattan in 1993 when an AIDS related stroke left him in the hospital for months often near death. While he recovered, CMV retinitis blinded him in his right eye and took all but 20% of his vision in his left eye. 

John returned to a personal photography after leaving the hospital switching to an antique large format Kodak camera. John employs friends and family, personal belongings and his home in his portraits, still lives and landscapes. His work hearkens back to the time of Herschel, Talbot and Cameron - an emerging time of photography and photographic vision. Relying on an assistant to focus the image on the ground glass, John directs his personal vision and style in the composition in front of him. He relies on his previous professional experience when he had full vision in understanding how light strikes and models objects, and how a slight turn of a vase or flex of an arm can strengthen the final expression. His intimate and delicate images are confidently and strongly composed. While acknowledging his 19th century influences, his work has the leanness of a modern simple sensibility.

I've seen his work in reproduction in several books. His first book, Lengthening Shadows before Nightfall, was published by Twin Palms in 1995 and was followed by Life's Evening Hour which juxtaposes John's images with passages from Dickinson and the Bible. The reproductions are quite good. I went to PhotoLA in January in the hopes of seeing some of his original prints but was unsuccessful. As I scouted around the net looking for John's local gallery representation I came across a reminder that 21st Photography had published The Clandestine Mind in a deluxe edition with photogravure reproductions of John's work. Given my additional interest in the photogravure process, I called up Lance Speer and asked if there was any remote possibility of one of those editions remaining. He said I was in luck, and he quickly shipped a copy out. The photogravure reproductions were wonderful. Lance mentioned they were made by Jon Goodman, and I mused again at how small the world is and at the connections to be found.

I was nervous calling up John. So much of my communication is by e-mail, I'd forgotten how personal a phone call could be. I'm not sure when the last time was I called someone up unannounced.  I left messages at both his numbers (his message in the country mentioning he was probably in the field). He called me back later that day and the first thing that struck me was his voice - a bit unexpected, warm and no nonsense. I told him how much I loved his work, and we talked about some of his prints, and we chatted at length about making cyanotypes. 

It was a simple and unadorned conversation about family, photography, and vision. I went into my darkroom later and tackled cyanotypes anew.

Sonnets from the Portuguese

I went up to the Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco this past weekend. There were many bookstores selling their wares ranging from illuminated manuscripts to 8" x 10" glossies of Bettie Page ($500, signed - thanks, I already have one). I was looking for examples of photogravures in books. I stopped at several booths, and spent about three hours walking around. Pretty much for nought. Too many books to open, too many booths, too little time.

On returning home, I went to my faithful resource Biblio.com and tracked down a copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with 20 tipped in photogravures by the pictorialist Adelaide Hanscom (Leeson). The sonnets were written immediately prior to her marriage to Browning, the most famous being Sonnet 43.

I have been tracking down and acquiring original vintage examples of dust grain photogravures being guided primarily by a list to be found at the truly wonderful site The Art of the Photogravure. They have good reproductions of significant photogravures from the early 1900's, but the images on the web pale in comparison to the originals.

Adelaide Hanscom began significant contributions to pictorial photography with the illustrations she produced for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Her images are heavily manipulated (starting with glass plate negatives) to achieve a painterly style - this same approach was used for the Sonnets from the Portuguese. Many of the images do not look photographic. The Rubaiyat is perhaps the first book to show a photograph of the male nude. One of several tragedies in her life struck in 1906 when the San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires destroyed her studio and all the negatives for the Rubaiyat.

Hanscom combined multiple negatives and drew in backgrounds and borders to achieve her artistic effects. The border designs reflect the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement at that time. The images for the sonnets were taken over the years from 1903 to 1915. Several of the images were made in Danville, California where she taught drawing in the high school. The house she lived in while there still stood as of 2003.

Tragedy began stalking her at a quicker pace. Her husband was killed at Verdun in 1916. Her father Meldon died after a brief illness in 1919.

In 1921, she spent all year in the Agnews State Mental Hospital in San Jose, California.

In the morning after my order for the sonnets, I got an e-mail from Ian Kahn, owner of Lux Mentis book store saying he was at the fair in San Francisco and I could pick up the book that day if I liked. I liked, and drove up 101 to San Francisco for a second time in as many days. A surprise at leaving, I spied a single volume of Curtis's epic work The North American Indian at the booth across from Lux Mentis. At $30,000 I very carefully, simply and only viewed the exquisite photogravures.

The pages of the Sonnets from the Portuguese are heavy and rough edged requiring turning each one by one, the tipped in gravures are sumptuous. The printing is sensual matching the sonnets. I spent a rainy day reading the book and viewing the images.

Adelaide Hanscom died in 1931, struck by a car as she stepped off a trolley in Pasadena, California and was all but forgotten.

Mike John Ware

Dr. Mike John Ware is an accomplished British photographer and rigorous chemist. An Oxford University doctorate in chemistry, his research focused on molecular spectroscopy. Mike has undertaken fundamental studies in historic photographic processes and preservation of photographs working with The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television and The Victoria & Albert Museum. Mike brings to bear hard science on alternative processes, providing refreshingly authoritative original material to a landscape littered perhaps to often of incorrect information passed from one historic text to the next. He has written three books that are in-depth modern classics of alternative photographic processes. 

The first, which is perhaps the bible of cyanotypes today, is Cyanotype: The history, science and art of photographic printing in Prussian Blue. Describing its history, practice and variations Mike presents his New Cyanotype Process which is a modern revision of one of the oldest methods of reproducing a photographic image to paper.

The second and third books form a pair, and are still in print, covering the use of gold in photography, and the chrysotype or gold print. Gold in Photography: The History and Art of Chrysotype is the first published history of gold in the arts and photography. It is a very good read on the use of gold in art, its manifestations and it many uses in photography and a history of the attempts at creating a practical method of printing in gold going back to Herschel. Mike perfected a practical method of gold printing he calls the chrysotype, a process by which a wide range of tones can be achieved. Ironically, the only tone that can not be achieved in the chrysotype is that of gold itself. Mike delves into areas of chemistry and materials, including nanoparticle theory unknown to Herschel, to finally explain the appearance of gold prints and to solve the puzzle of creating a practical method. This ability to convert pure science into practical methods of photography is one of Mike's strengths. The second book in the pair is The Chrysotype Manual: The Science and Practice of Photographic Printing in Gold which presents instruction for the advanced alternative process photographer on how to create chrysotypes using Mike's new method. 

Mike Ware's web site is a trove of information on the iron-based alternative photographic, or siderotype, processes. There is a detailed article on the re-invention of the chrysotype process.

Alternative photography process books are typically done in small printings, destined most often to never see a second edition. The Cyanotype book is only available used and fetches a premium. The chrysotype books are still available on Siderotype.com and can be paid for by Paypal.

I am not one to give out advice in strict ways, but these books on chrysotypes are a gold mine of information on the iron-based processes in general, and will occupy a place of honor in your collection. Don't complain to me when they go out of print. You have been warned.

Mike Ware's photography can be found in his online galleries.

Brigitte Carnochan

I went to Brigitte Carnochan's opening of Imagining Then at Gallery 291 in San Francisco tonight. The work struck me very hard and left me in an emotional state that I can't shake.

Gitta's hand-painted photographs of figures and still lives are exquisite. This new work is very different. Working from photographs and objects from her parents, Gitta constructed a view and interpretation of her memories, her parents, and a time. She found the time to focus on the project after putting it aside for a few years as she recovered from shoulder surgery. By that time she had acquired expertise in digital image making that allowed her to realize her vision.

The images are collages of pictures, documents and letters mostly from the 1940's. Images of Gitta and her parents are juxtaposed with scenes from World War II Germany, and then Gitta's journey to the United States. Gitta as a young girl against the backdrop of a massive, painful conflict that left its impression on her life.

The show itself is well presented, and it starts on a strong portrait of a bold child, and then leads the viewer emotionally through a devastating time with images seemingly rising from a young child's attempt to understand the change and pain around them. The final image of is one of hope and closure.

Gitta's show runs from January 8 - February 28, 2009.

It's morning now. And the images still haunt me. Isn't that what good art is about?

Paul Strand

I just finished watching the documentary Strand: Under the Dark Cloth. The commentary went "[Late in life] Paul Strand went to Ghana... where he used a handheld camera for the first time." Yeah, what looks to be Graflex RB single lens reflex. 

Cataracts waylaid him briefly in his old age but still he printed - trying to direct his wife Hazel in the darkroom (operations restored his vision and he never drove again, but immediately returned to the darkroom).

Paul Strand was a much younger contemporary of Alfred Stieglitz, and the young Strand at first emulated the pictorialists he saw at the 291 gallery. He later moved to formal abstractions in his images and helped define early American modernism in photography. There is an interesting write-up on the Metropolitan Museum site.

Strand looms large in the world of photogravure. Stieglitz's seminal magazine Camera Work reproduced several of Strand's images in photogravure, the final issue being devoted almost entirely to Strand's work. The quality of the photogravures in Camera Work is said to be outstanding.

In 1940, Paul Strand issued a portfolio of twenty photogravures entitled Photographs of Mexico in an edition of 250. In 1967, Strand reissued the work from the original steel faced copper plates as The Mexican Portfolio in an edition of 1,000. Published by Da Capo Press, with the photogravures printed by the Andersen Lamb Company, of Brooklyn, on Rives BFK paper. Beth Moon observed when we sat down to view them with Mark Nelson and his friend Richard that the photogravures seemed to be varnished. Mark later found a reference to a letter by Strand confirming this. The above note indicates the varnish used in the 1940 edition has in many cases since darkened. The varnish in the 1967 portfolio in my possession seems quite clear. Aperture has available six of the images in an edition of 350 printed by Jon Goodman, from the original plates.

I picked up the 1967 portfolio (said by Strand in the preface to exceed the quality of the 1940 edition - but perhaps that is marketing) to have an example of outstanding photogravure work to set a goal, that is probably unachievable by me in my lifetime, of quality for the process. 

Various searches on Google yield interesting articles about Strand and photogravures. Anne Hammond's article on Photographic Art and Gravure and Letterpress: A Comparative Study of Paul Strand and Ansel Adams being worthy of a read. A reprint of an article about Jon Goodman by Andrew Wilkes that appeared in Aperture #133 is also worth reading.

I first saw a reference citing The Mexican Portfolio as an outstanding example in photogravure in the excellent text Copper Plate Photogravure: Demystifying the Process.  Amazon.com indicates I purchased that text on July 5, 2007. I wonder what led me to do that?

Annals of My Glass House

Julia Margaret Cameron is a hero of mine. She is an inspiration to follow one's passion no matter when in life you find it, to find supporters for one's endeavors, and to make progress in the pursuit of art through determination and hard work.

The Internet is a great resource for photography and opens up many early sources if you know to look for them. One interesting find is the brief unpublished record of Cameron's first ten years in photography - Annals of My Glass House. She is disarming in her practical approach to setting up a workspace for her new hobby:

I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl-house I had given to my children became my glass house! The hens were liberated, I hope and believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon new laid eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathized in my new labour, since the society of hens and chickens was soon changed for that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens, who all in turn have immortalized the humble little farm erection.

The "glass house" is of course the natural light studio in which Cameron created many of her images. Her nonchalant brush off in her brief memoir of the rejection of her work by some conservative bodies then governing photography and instead focusing on her achievements and progress is refreshing. 

She seems to have two major subjects for her photography, constructed scenes such as Whisper of the Muse, and intensely psychological portraits. Her portrait of John Herschel is powerful, immediate, and piercing in its gaze on her mentor and friend. Her unconventional focus technique, her closeness - bordering on intrusiveness - to her subjects, and her unwavering vision make her portrait work speak more to our sensibilities today than to her near contemporaries who quickly forgot her.

Cameron emerged from obscurity in the 20th century, and her work can be seen in many collections.

Alain Briot

"Focus." Alain Briot replied when I asked him what it takes to be a great landscape photographer. In all senses of the word. Alain's work testifies to his intense focus to producing unique and beautiful landscape images.

In discussing creativity he remarked, as I've heard others, that it's increasingly hard to find a place that's never been photographed before. The challenge is "seeing a place in a way someone hasn't seen before." He had made an earlier comment regarding people buying art because "we want someone else's view of the world."

Alain has a great web site called Beautiful Landscape. He has many essays on that site covering all aspects of photography from creativity and personal vision to marketing and selling your work. Alain is very articulate - not a requirement for a visual artist, but very helpful for those wanting to learn more.

I've taken several of his workshops, and studied with him privately. He broke me in to using view camera movements for landscape photography. Natalie Briot, his wife, assists and runs the workshops and brings a visual artist's background to the experience for all participants.

During a print review today, Alain showed some of his recent abstract landscapes where he intentionally moved the camera during the exposure. The images were exquisite, forcing the viewer to focus on the light and the colors as opposed to the details. He asked the workgroup participants to try the exercise during the workshop to relax and flow into a pure creative process and move away from viewing landscape photography as always sharply technical. If only to try it out.

I'm writing this post from a workshop with Alain and Natalie in Death Valley National Park. As a fellow student was telling of a rather harrowing experience getting separated from a group in a workshop in White Sands, I suggested to Natalie and Alain a new tag line for their workshops - "We've never lost a student!" But then thinking back on a quote from our current governor in California in the movie Terminator 2, I thought "Come with me if you want to live." would be a catchier phrase.

Beth Moon

Beth Moon and I have been running across each other more and more frequently. I met Beth briefly through Mark Nelson when he was working with her on his Precision Digital Negatives system. I was also working with Mark (and still am) and ran by her place to take him out to dinner. Beth makes large digital negatives to contact print in platinum using Mike Ware's method - a process I find challenging even to read about!

If you're unaware of the nature of many of these historic processes, they are often only UV light sensitive, The fun side effect is you can work with ordinary incandescent bulbs on and see exactly what you're doing and who is doing what. Not requiring a darkroom, converted garages make an ideal place to set up your work area - the weather is pretty good in California and the cars don't mind staying outside. Beth declined to join us for dinner as she was fiercely focused on making prints. I saw a woman extremely engaged in making art.

When I talked to Beth - in our class on polymer plate photogravure that we took with fellow student Gitta Carnochan - I was impressed by her vision and direction in her printmaking. She looks for a process that expresses her view of how the image should be presented. I tagged along with her to a private (with me semi-private) workshop on oil printing with Larry Shapiro. Again, she was looking into a process to see the technique and determine whether the end result had merit for a future project.

I too often slip into the technical side of photography and do not spend enough time considering the goal in presenting the final image in the best way.

Beth is good for me.

Michael Garlington

I had the opportunity to meet Michael Garlington recently in his darkroom in Petaluma, California. I'm glad the directions were good - as there is no cell phone coverage where he lives and works - he's off the beaten track in more ways than one.

I am fascinated not only by his work - my favorite being The Fishmonger's Daughter - but by the extraordinary passion and energy he exudes. Watching him print in a converted barn is a blast - as he moves his hands through the air under the light of the enlarger looking for an organic connection to the final print.

He is wandering Europe now, and last I heard was in the Greek Isles shooting away. He is making his way to Germany to create another photo car.