Tommy Brown

Photographer Tommy Brown at his exhibition

Neil Swanson wrote in the Comments the other day:

Fifty years of shooting in formats from 35mm to 8x10, 22 years of making my living with a camera and what do I miss? Prints. I just don’t print or pay someone else to. It’s not a photo till it’s a print, and yet I’ve got no idea what to do with dozens of boxes of prints I did make and nobody ever sees. But I miss prints.

I know what Neil means. I realize it anew every time I get to see great photography in the form of great big beautiful prints.

The weekend before last I went to visit my old friends Scott and Marlene in their beautiful hilltop home in Manlius, a suburb (exurb?) of Syracuse. Together the three of us made the drive to Utica, New York, to see the Tommy Brown show at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica. Marlene and Tommy were friends in college at Colgate University in Hamilton; he later studied photography at Yale.

The exhibit consisted of dozens of prints, about the size you see above—some larger, some smaller—lining the four walls of a generously large oblong gallery space. Neat and clean, and eminently viewable even at the artist's lecture, which is what we were attending. There was a nice-sized crowd.

The show was primarily a pleasure to see, by which I mean good to look at. An odd thing to say, maybe, but the pleasure of seeing is something some curators forget or ignore these days. The show was curated by Mary Murray, whose title is Department Head, Curatorial and Exhibitions, and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. She and her staff did an outstanding job.

The show amounted to a "themed retrospective," a phrase I don't think is actually a thing. What I mean is that the pictures all related to one theme—"Upstate," meaning they were all taken here in rural upstate New York—but were drawn from all periods of Tommy's life, from early B&W "street style" rural portraits of people taken on Tri-X, to a more social documentary style later on, and finally to quieter, more lyrical scenic views and details. So while it's only one area of Tommy Brown's shooting, you could trace clear demarcations in his evolution as a photographer and the changes in his visual style and subject-matter concerns. A nice window through which it was easy to sense a deep and longstanding involvement with the practice of making pictures.

Tommy Brown, Dead End, 2014

I liked it all, but personally I was fondest of the social documentary style pictures such as "Dead End" and "Joseph" (below).

Tommy himself is genial and warm, straightforward and unpretentious. He shoots all in one exposure, with 50mm lenses or the equivalent, gets the cropping right in the camera, and doesn't make his own prints. It's difficult to convey here the presence the prints have on the wall. As we know, most pictures are not printed these days, but prints like these would change anyone's mind. Given how beautiful inkjet prints from digital files can be, it's a shame we don't see more of them in the culture at large.

Curator Mary Murray (left) observing the gallery talk from the back of the room

I was pleased to find out that Tommy has been a TOP reader for some time. Which I guess is something I should have known, as he told me he emailed me some time back. I'm ashamed to say that thousands of faceless names pass by my eyes every year and I can't keep them all sorted in memory. They say as you get older your brain shrinks, so that's the excuse I'm going to go with. But it was very nice to get such a warm and friendly greeting from a "fan."

Tommy Brown, Joseph, in the gallery

I'm a fan of his right back. I've only lived Upstate for three years and a bit, but I could feel the place in Tommy's photos—its quiet beauty, the shabby and worn aspects of old things weathering through time, its quiet little corners, the casual quirkiness of some of the local denizens. Brown is a photographer who doesn't play tricks and doesn't mess with viewers' heads—he's just a gentle, compassionate, forthright observer of the deeper qualities of the places and people he's loved. It's not the height of fashion, but it's what I happen to want most from photography, for one. And it's enough. Especially presented like this, prints on the wall.

You can see more of his work at his website.

Scott and Marlene at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute

The exhibit is up till April 7th. Nothing is close to anything else Upstate, and nothing Upstate is close to all that many people, but hopefully this post has given you a little taste of the show. Big thanks to my friends Scott and Marlene for making the weekend possible. If I could get to a show this fine every weekend of my life, I'd do it. Always good to see friends, and prints.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Michael Perini: "I love this post and I love Mr.Brown's work. I have been at this for a long time, and you are completely correct about how beautiful modern pigment inkjet prints can be. It is almost hard for me to believe that given the relative ease with which stunning prints can be made (good color prints have always been hard) that printing is declining. I've been using an Epson P5000 with the 10-color 11-ink HDX ink set, along with the Image Print RIP, and I am astonished at the relative ease with which it can print images that I struggled to print well on the Epson 4000. I tend to make two sizes of prints, most 6x9" for the pictures that look better small, and 16x24 for those that benefit from a larger print. Thanks."

Animesh Ray: "'Dead End,' 2014, is a wonderful photo—the glow off the slightly wet dead end street, the woman in wheelchair almost heading towards the glow, the blue overcast sky, and young woman separated from the other by a faint smartphone light—so very nostalgic and sad simultaneously. The print promises to be a classic."

Neil Swanson: "Since I made that comment I've been looking at printers. My Epson 2200 is gone. I like the P800 though do I really need a 17" wide printer? I do like the far larger ink cartridges than the P600 offers. I'm sure either printer would surpass what my 2200 did. Still, just looking even though there is another rebate going on the P800. I wish I were closer to Upstate NY. 'Dead End,' love that one."

Rod S.: "Re 'It's difficult to convey here the presence the prints have on the wall': Yes, it's easy to say, as we often do, that prints in a portfolio or on a wall 'are more real,' but it's hard to nail down why that makes them look better and more convincing than images on a screen.

"Here's a clue, I think. I've come to regret having spent twenty years shooting 35mm transparencies and being satisfied with projecting the slides onto a screen. I simply went along with the advice and advertising repeated in the big magazines.

"Those projected images were really wonderful; they were huge, bright and sharp. They were affective and became a very real part of my life. But, quietly, something bothered me. The images seemed to live only in inadequately short bursts. The visual spirit was momentarily freed from its containment, then, suddenly, abruptly, it was gone, stuffed back in the tiny slide, invisible.

"Digital images on an electronic screen are similar in this respect to 35mm images projected to a screen, with even less physical presence.

"My feelings for the physical presence of a real print as an artifact grew from going to exhibitions, something that my work locations had previously prevented. In more recent years, photographing architecture with 4x5 cameras and having my photographs printed and exhibited has totally changed my practice and understanding of photography. My second exhibition finished at a local gallery here in Sydney just two nights ago. Having the 30 photographs printed onto heavy cotton art paper was a thrill.

"So, as a foreigner, it's very interesting to see a glimpse of someone else's exhibition from so far away, and the marvelous way it is being presented. Congratulations, Tommy."

Comments

[Pierre Charbonneau]

The pictures from Mr. Brown are excellent. This fellow has a beautiful photographic voice.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Now yer talkin', Mike! Photography! Photographs! Exhibitions! Woo hoo!

Looks like it was a lovely opening of a good show.

"...but the pleasure of seeing is something some curators forget or ignore these days." Yup. I agree.

[Dave Levingston]

A great review of the work of a fine photographer. Thanks.

[Rob Campbell]

Nice prints on those walls! Really like the style insofar as it shows in your report.

He seems to have a point of view, though as I'm aurally tuned to the tv right now, worrying what these damned Brexit-lovin' politicos are going to do to my health services as an expat living in Spain, I can't go look at his website yet. Still to master thinking about more than one thing at a time, something my late wife could do without any trouble at all.

Rob

[Paul]

Looking at Mr Brown's website I get the distinct feeling he's a very nice and peaceful loving human being. What lovely hearted work.

[Ned Bunnell]

Very nice article and introduction to Tommy’s work. I love going to exhibitions since, for me, prints are still the only way to truly appreciate a photograph. However, I’m always amused at the number of folks taking camera phone snapshots of the prints. I assume to claw them back to their digital world.

[Ernie Van Veen]

I like Tommy Brown's style and aesthetic. I can relate to his photographs; which is more than I can say for most of the semi finalists of the Moran Photographic Prize currently in progress in Australia. They recently made available, on their website, the top 230 semi finalists (judged from JPEGs), from which 30 will be selected to be printed for the finalist exhibition and a winner chosen. This is an Australian prize and, according to their website, "The Moran Arts Foundation invites photographers to tell a story of how they experience living in Australia; places, people and lifestyle that make our lovable country quintessentially Australian. It may be a landscape, portrait or action shot (photographs do not have to be portraits)."

The thing is, I don't get it. I can see that a handful of the photographs are outstanding, but I just can't relate to most of the photographs in their top 230. Now, I'm 61 years old and I'm not stupid. I love art and photography and have been raised in an artistic and musical environment (for whatever that's worth), but the reasons the judges chose many of these images is just beyond me. It makes me wonder if I really have been, both as a patron and a photographer, getting it all wrong for the last 60 years. (That would explain a lot!)

[Jack]

Mike,
Prints are unusually easy to make these days to pretty good quality at a very reasonable price compared to the darkroom chemistry days. The internet has made it fast and inexpensive at scale.
Framing remains expensive regardless of the internet scale. Beyond prints in a box, if you want a nice frame and matte it's going to be expensive compared to the cost of the print.
Finally, the value of wall space can be an issue.
I no longer give people prints unless they allow me to pay for the framing and express an interest in wanting it. Usually I will put it in a 5x7 frame that can self support on a table, rather than wall space.

I have found that giving people prints in a digital book is more welcome. And require no framing, nor wall space.

When people choose to purchase a very large print from me at a price including nice framing, I toss in a complimentry digital book that includes the shot of their large print on the cover, and other prints inside. I works as good marketing too.

Either way, at least we get a print in their hands.

[Mike Plews]

To me the act of holding a print on paper in your hand is the difference between photography and imaging.
Mr Brown's photos are lovely. I wish I could make his show.

[Marcelo Guarini]

Love the prints I can see in the photos, beautiful photography.

I love to print, I do at least one letter size print a week to avoid the printer from clogging. I try to preview in my mind the best possible output for the selected image/s, and preprocess them accordingly. Sometimes an exceptional print comes out, then I work for a larger version.

Last February I took a picture of an abandoned mini market wooden building in rural southern Chile, a very colorful construction. The print in Matt paper came out really nice, so I prepared for a large print, in this case a very large print (to me). Since I took the picture with my Olympus Pen F, mounted on a tripod, using the high resolution mode, the original file has a lot of details. I further increased the size of the file using Topaz Labs A.I. Gigapixel in order to do a 24x50" cropped panoramic view of the building. So far I have made three letter size prints of selected parts of the image at full resolution. The level of detail in this prints is just jaw dropping, I never expected this level of quality from such a small camera. You just don't get the quality and impact from the 5K computer screen.

[Bob Johnston]

I too greatly appreciated these "proper" photographs by Mr. Brown.

Just a note for Neil Swanson. Having owned an Epson 2200 and a P800 (my current printer) I can assure you that the P800 does far exceed what the 2200 could do in terms of quality. Go for it if you can.

[RubyT]

I really enjoyed his website, thanks for introducing me. I find it quite interesting that in the picture of him next to the picture of the print of the white barn against the sky the print in the digital photo is more appealing to my eye than the much larger digital version of the same photo I can see on his website. Really underscores the value of a good print.

[Tommy Brown]

Here’s a gallery talk by show curator Mary Murray for those of you on Facebook. Thanks Mike for your generous words. I’ll write more when I’m at my computer.

https://www.facebook.com/MWPAI/videos/310399709664099/UzpfSTE1OTI0OTc3MDU6MTAyMTI5OTY2OTgzMDQxNDQ/