Darkroom DAYdream

By the way, speaking of darkroom dreams, my darkroom daydream was echoed partially by Alan Carmody: "My darkroom dream (recurrent) is that I find a used 8x10 enlarger for pennies, set it up and use it to make 2X-enlarged 16x20 proof sheets. An actual dream, which I've had a few times, well into the digital age and 20 years after I last used a darkroom. It's a dream from which I wake quite happy."

In my darkroom daydream, which is predicated (naturally, as daydreams often are) on sudden vast wealth, I'd go back to shooting Tri-X with a couple of Leicas and hire several darkroom assistants to develop all the film and make Carmody-style enlarged proof sheets, work prints, and final prints for me. I'd just shoot, like Cartier-Bresson did (the independently wealthy scion of a famously prosperous French family, he never did his own darkroom work).

The only snag in the daydream is that my work wouldn't be worth such resources. I don't have the appetite for shooting to keep me at it with the persistence that would be required; I know I lack the "people skills" to approach people and ingratiate myself sufficiently to gain access to the kinds of photographs I'd want to take; and I'm too old—I no longer have the energy and vitality needed to engage in the kind of travel and hard work needed to keep such a support system busy.

So all is well just as things are. George Bernard Shaw put the following words into the mouth of Mendoza, the Spanish brigand in Man and Superman: "Sir: there are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Tim Bradshaw: "I find your daydream odd: if you don't enjoy making prints, why would you want to shoot film? I know a lot of people do, but I'd assumed this was a combination of hipsterism ('my photographs are artisanal') and practicality. I certainly would not use film if I did not love the process of making prints (I could live without the film processing, which is boring). If I had a private income I would practically live in the darkroom. I suspect pretty strongly that if HCB was working today he would not use film, for just this reason."

Gordon Lewis: "Re 'I know I lack the "people skills" to approach people and ingratiate myself sufficiently to gain access to the kinds of photographs I'd want to take.' Really? During the short time I visited you at TOP World Headquarters, you seemed to know the names and backgrounds of half the people we met and some we didn't. I even watched you make friends with a part-time apple farmer / full-time Corning engineer you had never met. You're one of the most neighborly people I know. So unless the kind of photographs you'd want to take are nudes, I seriously doubt you'd have a problem with that aspect of photography."

Mike replies: That's kind of you, Gordon, but I do have lots of trouble when it comes to taking the camera out.

Tim Bradshaw: "Here's a tangential comment to a couple of the other comments (mine included). Are Henri Cartier-Bresson's prints (by which I mean prints of his work, since he did not print) actually good? Note I said prints, not the pictures. I am actually not sure: I have seen original prints of his work (which I think were 'vintage' or whatever the right term is) but not for a long time, and my memory is not reliable about them. I have a copy of the recent edition of The Decisive Moment, but it has reproductions of prints, not prints, and I have not seen the original so I don't even know how it compares. And finally I am not sure what I think of the reproduction quality in the book: well, I think it is too heavy to hold comfortably and the images are too large for 35mm prints to look at at the natural distance for a book, and I hate the gutter-crossing. So, in fact, I don't like them: but that might be just me. So the question is still there, in my mind: was his work well-printed? I realise it is heresy to suggest it might not have been."

Mike replies: It really depends on what you're looking at. Henri's prints were made for the last 30 years of his life by Voja Mitrovic, and those prints are excellent, or perhaps running a range from very good to superlative. But some "scholarly" shows of Cartier-Bresson's work have displayed—as if they were finished work, which they were not—reproduction prints, which were deliberately printed small, soft and dark to suit newspaper reproduction methods at the time, often on cheap paper because they weren't intended to last. Peter Galassi's large retrospective show "The Modern Century" in 2010 was to my mind a spectacular failure in presenting a case to the public for Cartier-Bresson as a photographic artist: it showed huge, diffuse groups of prints including large numbers of workprints (used for editing) and repro prints, many of which were very poor. Of course they were indeed "vintage," a concept which is exalted by the art dealing crowd, if sometimes brainlessly. Add to that the fact that Cartier-Bresson preferred his workprints printed excessively "soft" (low contrast) so he could see how much information the negative held, and it meant that many of the prints were not good to look at. To the public generally, that show was virtually reputation-ruining; no one seeing Henri's work for the first time could have come out of it very impressed at his ability. It was a show pitched at specialist scholars but billed as an extravaganza for the general public, which not infrequently happens in the museum world but seldom so glaringly. I thought it was dreadful.

The best case for Cartier-Bresson is made by his books. If you have only one, it should be Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photographer, published by Bulfinch (at least in the States), which was in print for some 20 years. It's now out of print but still widely available for not much money.

Comments

[Jack]

Speaking of heart’s desire:
I once was smitten by a lovely lass in Colorado. What most caught my attention was her house contained the most fantastic home darkroom I have ever laid eyes on before or since. I still have an image of it in my memory though it was forty years ago. Unfortunately she suspected that I loved her more for her incredible darkroom than her wonderful personality and nothing further developed.

[Daniel]

Why not work in your darkroom with a 4x5 enlarger to make enlarged proofs? Put 9 35mm negatives in a glass negative carrier and project to 8x10 or larger paper. Expose and develop. Enlarged proofs you can view easily.

4x5 enlargers are more plentiful than 8x10 units. Generally take less space as well.

[Ernie Van Veen]

I once had a nightmare that I had to shoot photographs on film and process them in a darkroom. Where's the computer? Where's the COMPUTER! *Wakes up in a cold sweat*

[Douglas Chadwick]

Do you think you would be happy giving up the joy of watching the print come up in the developer tray? The other stuff, yeah.

And do you really like H C-B's prints? I only recall one show at ICP of his work with really crappy prints, great images though. Crappy prints, but that was actually talked about at the time.

I do still have a darkroom like that, lot's of enlargers, only a 7' sink, and a 5' contact printer. I don't use it much and would like to. Just make time I guess. RIght?

I did give away a Chromega F earlier this Summer, and I hope the recipient does good work with it. But I do still have a Durst 10x10 enlarger.

But here I am making B&W prints on the Epson? A tiny first step? Or not?

[Jim Bullard]

"I'm too old—I no longer have the energy and vitality needed to engage in the kind of travel and hard work needed to keep such a support system busy."

Really? Buck up Mike. I'm about to turn 73 and I'm still climbing mountains in the Adirondacks. Okay, I concede that I have a harder time winding up my enthusiasm than I used to but hey. Doing what I love (once I get over the "stay at rest" inertia) is what keeps life enjoyable in this crazy and disheartening world. Take some vitamins, pop one of those energy drinks, get out there and do it.

BTW I still have all my darkroom gear, a Besler 4x5, and all the accouterments to make up to 16x20 prints. No darkroom to put them in though. I'm content scanning and printing digitally.

[Bpb F.]

A couple of years ago, I saw a show of prints from early Ansel Adams photographs. They were uniformly flat, a stop or two from 18% gray. The captions didn't say whether they were his own prints or ones done by a later worker. Either way, I took away a lesson that even the greatest photographers don't produce their best images with a "straight," unprocessed B&W image.