Charlie Pratt's Prints

I've told this story before I'm sure, but Lord knows where.

Many years ago, the photographer John Gossage helped organize a show of photographs by Charles Pratt at the Corcoran Gallery. Charlie, who had died of a heart attack at his gym four years earlier at the age of 50, had been the scion of a wealthy industrialist family. It turned out that John had other connections with the Pratt family, which included helping Charlie's widow Julie publish several books of Charlie's photography. Julie was an actress—I believe she acted using her maiden name, Julie Follansbee. She died at 88 as Julie Follansbee-Pratt Shattuck. She acted in the movie Regarding Henry and in episodes of  Law & Order among other things. Charlie was primarily a photographer of Maine and its coast, and published Here On the Island during his lifetime, a book that has long been valued by collectors of "all things Maine."

Julie had also endowed a substantial but under-the-radar photography prize which John helped her to administrate—I'm not sure if it still exists, but I suspect not—and on one occasion I got to go with John on a friendly business visit to Julie in her Upper East Side townhouse in New York City. Together he and I explored Charlie's darkroom, which Julie had closed the door to but left intact. Julie herself was a lively, radiant woman, attractive, with white hair, who exuded a gentle, caring sort of spirit. Charlie, it turned out, had quietly sponsored many of the photographers he believed in—I'm not sure how, entirely, but in many cases by buying prints.

He bought the first print that Robert Frank ever sold, for instance, and he helped W. Eugene Smith by buying Gene's prints. Charlie had an East Street Gallery print washer in his darkroom—it was the first of the "archival" print washers from the early days of archival processing, when not much was known yet about print permanence and LE (life expectancy).

And, unfortunately, that was reflected in the way some of Charlie's treasured prints were hung in the dining room of the home. All the prints in the dining room were glued to same-sized Masonite rectangles and varnished on the front, with a smaller 1x2" frame stuck to the back for the hanging wire and so the print "floated" off the surface of the wall.

Looked nice. But that's about the opposite of archival treatment! Did the method of framing "ruin" the prints? I suppose so. I'm sure it had an impact on their value. But few people really knew any better in the early 1970s. (Charlie Pratt died in 1976.) Of course, the prints hanging on the wall were only a small part of Charlie's collection.

Here's what the New York Times said of Charlie Pratt's own prints in the Corcoran show at the time: "They have an authoritative presence that, for all their echoes of Minor White, Eliot Porter and Paul Caponigro, seems unique and original. Pratt was a masterful printer in black and white, and used this skill with precision and restraint, not bombast. The color prints on display are equally successful, showing Pratt's painterly knack for limiting each composition to two or three syncopated hues." Their quiet gentleness was what I liked about them. He photographed with a Pentax 6x7 and made very small prints.

On that day in New York, I had with me my Leica M6 and a 35mm Summicron loaded with Ilford XP-2, and the room was illuminated only by the late afternoon sunlight filtering through the leafy trees of the garden, through what I remember as French doors. Somewhere out in the barn I have a motion-blurred snapshot of John Gossage in the lovely garden-level dining room of Julie Pratt's mansion holding that print, the first one Robert Frank ever sold. Compromised by a method of presentation we no longer would favor, of course. But also a talisman of Charlie Pratt's kindness and support for the artists, and the art, he loved.

Mike
(Thanks to John G.)

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[Kenneth Tanaka]

The Museum of Contemporary Photography has a brief bio of Pratt, along with some of his prints from their permanent collection.

[Tom]

Touching on the periphery of this post, I shot a ton of XP2 back in the day but it had slipped to the back of my mind. Looking at it now on the Ilford site I'm struck by two things, one is they still promote it as being 'easy to process on the high street' but more interestingly they suggest a maximum rating of ISO 800 and say it isn't suitable for pushing. I'm certain I used to shoot it at 1600 and there used to be instructions for that and 3200. Anyone else remember?

[Alan]

"He photographed with a Pentax 6x7 and made very small prints."

I have heard tell of the idea that size matters when it comes to prints and how smaller prints would entice viewers to get closer in order to 'digest' the imagery.

I have also heard tell how this mechanism had been leveraged by some folks to amp up viewer engagement; print photos of broad scenes, that would normally be viewed from a distance (and involve movement of the head to take in), small so that the viewer is forced to address what would normally be an expansive view from a very intimate distance or, the corollary, print an intimate view (say a tiny insect on a rosebud) very large to force the viewer to step back to digest a scene that would normally require a more intimate proximity.

Not sure how true that all is but I wonder if Charlie was leveraging that with his small prints? I also wonder how the modern view of imagery (much of it consumed via digital screens not much bigger than a laptop or cell phone) plays into those older ideas about print size and its effect on the 'consumption' of imagery.

[Jean]

Lovely story, Mike.

[Luke]

Mike, can you explain "syncopated hues"?
It sounds cute, but could mean almost anything.

[I take it to mean "colors that go together" but sometimes contrasting or complementary rather than close together on the spectrum? Generally I thought the article writer struggled with the art-critical terms, not quite fluent with the lingo. (I'm not quite fluent with it either, though.) --Mike]

[John Holland]

Ah yes, I have some of my own pictures glued to those board-mounted 'floating' frames myself. They were popular right into the late '80s. I thought it looked cool at the time.

The photo lab I worked for back then did a lot of that sort of thing, mostly for corporate and advertising, but also for personal photography and, yes, for gallery mounting. Aaarrrgh. What can I say, it looked sexy and it sold. Should I feel guilty for selling it? The customers were all happy with the result. Although it's said that all crimes must be paid...

I dug one out to see how it's doing. It's a Cibachrome, and it's coated with some spray-on "Pro-Tek 5" clear semi-gloss stuff. It's looking pretty good after 35 years, but in another 30, who knows? I'm no Robert Frank, so who cares?

I still have all the slides I printed from, so if I scan them and print to archival paper and ink, no harm done. Should probably do that anyway, given your recent posts on that very matter.

[Peter Randall]

Didn’t know much about Charles Pratt but here on this island has long been a favorite book. Thanks fit Charlie’s story

[John]

Charles Pratt was a friend of the late David Vestal. After Pratt’s sudden and unexpected death at an early age, David was involved in the posthumous production of a book of black and white photographs titled, “The Garden & The Wilderness”. With some text by Lisette Model.

An earlier and much smaller book of Charles Pratt’s photographs, the title of which alludes me, mixed colour with black and white. It contains an extraordinary, perhaps definitive photograph of a cow – quite wonderful.

David spoke well Charles Pratt, who seems to have survived the many curses of great inherited wealth, only to be let down by the mechanics of his own heart.