The Worst Exhibition Lighting I Ever Saw

My new picture "One Gull" highlights the problems of controlling viewing environment for pictures. It is, first of all, exaggerated modestly in order to preserve the feeling of what it was like to stand there and experience the sight; that is, the primary goal was something other than a judiciously objective recording of the relative luminances of the scene.

Small problem: looking at my computer screen in ambient daylight, it looks too dark.

I work on the front porch of my small home. I have a family room that could be converted to an office nicely, but it's a former one-car garage and the WiFi stubbornly refuses to reach it, regardless of various repeaters and extenders placed in various spots—and anyway, it, too, has too much daylight, with windows on all four walls. The ambient light on the porch (which has wondows all along three walls) is bright, and varies throughout the day as the sun passes through its arc and filters through the trees. This is what led me to abandon my 27" 2011 iMac four or five years ago and invest in a NEC MultiSync PA272W monitor*: the Mac's screen was reflective, and looking at it all day was frustrating. The NEC has a hood and a non-glare surface, and works much better. New Mac displays (their word for monitor), especially the nano-texture glass models, have much better glare control, I'm told.

Typically, I work on pictures on the computer in subdued lighting in the evening, after sunset. I have a color-corrected light placed in back of my monitor, and overhead light in the living room comes through the windows between the living room and porch illuminate the keyboard adequately. In this environment I can see tones much better, and I typically correct for the way pictures look in this environment. However, with "One Gull," the values of the sky on top and the water of the lake are delicate; a little change too much either way either closes the picture down or opens it up too much. With many pictures I compromise, seeking an average, because, of course, I can't know how you're viewing the picture, or how anyone else is—you probably have a color-calibrated monitor, but a lot of people don't. Either way, I don't know if your workspace is brightly lit (in which case this picture will look too dark) or has subdued lighting.

In the dark
This was always an issue with darkroom printing as well. When galleries and museums used strong viewing lighting, it was usual to try to reproduce that light level, minus a little bit as a fudge factor, for controlled viewing lighting in the darkroom, where the prints were made. But now, museums, at least, have adopted dim, murky lighting as a cost-saving measure [UPDATE: this is wrong, it isn't done for cost saving] (which is truly cutting off the nose to spite the face, but I've already ranted about that several times elsewhere), so pictures printed for bright viewing light look terrible. The worst, most catastrophic exhibition lighting I ever saw was a Paul Strand show in Chicago; Paul printed strong, bold darks, with a tonal palette tilted toward the lower end, and under murky Sav-a-Buc lighting the shadow contrast vanished and the highlights** just looked depressed and gloomy. Put a bright light on the same print and it comes alive. (But you should not let a museum guard catch you using a flashlight to inspect a print, and please don't ask me how I know that.)

When viewing exhibitions of B&W prints from film in museums and galleries, I could often tell you what the printmaker's darkroom inspection lighting was like. If the print tones looked tepid and the darks were too elevated, pale and weak, it meant they were judging their prints under lighting that was too dim. If the prints were too dark and the shadow contrast clotted up, I knew that their darkroom printing light was overly strong. Personally, I usually tried for just the right intermediate balance; at one school darkroom, where I couldn't control the viewing lighting, I would wander around looking at the wet test print in a tray under different light levels: over by the window, in a shaded corner, under incandescent lights, under fluorescent light. Of course, after a while I had a firm grasp of what I wanted and I didn't have to do that.

Anyway, if you would like to see "One Gull" (here's the link again) as it probably should look, try turning the lights down or off in the room in which you have your computer, and see how that looks.

Prints and sales
The only way to really make sure the tones are right is for the artist, who gets to say, to lock them down in an immutable medium: the fine print. As you know if you've been following along, we're going to have a print sale of some of these monochrome prints soon; I've been through the JPEG review with the master printer who will be making the prints, and the set of guide prints will be shipped to me for review this week. This sale will follow the time-honored strategy I developed years ago, which has served us very well (and has been copied or adapted here and there around the Internet): we take pre-orders for a short period of time, close the order window, and only then make all the prints in one batch. This makes it efficient to produce the prints while also keeping the price-per-print quite low.

But the scale has changed over the years. TOP's audience has consolidated to a smaller group of more committed readers, and traditional photography in general is getting less popular and less "status-y" in the general culture, in this age of Instagram and Facebook, of color as the default, of phones as the most ubiquitous cameras, and of printmaking going the way of the dodo (how terrible to be the go-to metaphor for the utter annihilation of extinction! Poor dodo). We're never going to reach the heights of the go-go years of the 2010s again: we had one sale in which we sold well over 700 prints, and another that grossed over $130,000 (most of which went to the photographer). The conditions for that level of success have vanished.

So I'm thinking of a new method, one much more similar to the gallery model: making a very small, limited run of prints of my best B&W pictures from the Sigma fp(m), and offering only a handful for sale—but offering them more regularly and more often. Let's say we do it every Friday. On one Friday I might offer a custom 17x22" print of "One Gull" at $495, but limited to say, seven prints; and then the next Friday there would be another image offered. Miss one you like? No matter; keep an eye peeled for the next. Finally find one that really speaks to you? Jump on it. I could tailor the number of prints based on what I imagine the popularity of the image might be: for "Corn at the Harvest," which everybody seemed to like, I could have, say, 13 prints made, a large run; for "Little Girl with Alpaca," which is not the sort of picture most people would display on their walls, maybe only two. For images that don't sell out right away, they would simply remain available until they do.

I have no idea if that would appeal; the proof of the pudding is to eat it, and the only way to test this idea would be to try it. We'll see.

At least it's not an impulsive idea: I've been considering it for years.

Mike

*I looked for a current model, but it appears NEC doesn't really make one. They appear to have scaled back on color-correct monitors for photography; their representative suggested the NEC EA271U as being an appropriate replacement, but, although it has higher resolution, it has less color gamut. Specifically: the EA271U covers 73.6% of the Adobe RGB color space, 69.5% of NTSC, and 95.1% of sRGB, whereas my monitor, which "feature[d] enhanced color accuracy," covered 99.3% of Adobe RGB, 94.8% of NTSC, and 146.4% of the sRGB color space. So it's not really a replacement, which is why I'm not linking to it. The EA272F-BK-SV 27" comes with built-in Spectra-View calibration like mine did, but has a color gamut similar to the business model. I can't find an NEC monitor with the color accuracy of mine, although I—and the rep I talked to on the phone—might be just missing it.

Probably grist for a future post: current recommendable monitors for photographic work.

**"Shadows" is the term of art for the dark areas of B&W photographs and "highlights" is word for the light areas.

Jim Meeks: "I've worked in museums for 36 years now...it's not a cost cutting measure to exhibit works on paper in dim light! It is a means in which to preserve works for future generations. Works on paper (photos, prints, drawings, etc.) are sensitive to light and deteriorate when exposed to UV, bright light and even infrared. I've seen many, many examples where something has been on display for a long time and the paper turns brown, colors fade, etc. You might not like the light levels, but please stop saying museums are trying to save a buck on our light bills."

Mike replies: Nothing personal Jim, but why bother preserving works for future generations when nobody between then and now will be able to see them properly anyway? The reductio ad absurdam of this principle is to store everything locked away in darkness all the time. What good would that do? I'm a photographer. I was a printmaker. I want people to look at my work and to be able to see it the way it was intended to be seen.

Even the Niépce Heliograph is "Currently on View" at the Harry Ransom Center.

Sal Santamaura: "It's doubtful museums made that change to save on electric utility and lamping costs. LEDs rendered any potential savings minuscule. Rather, conservators' influence transcending that of curators is the likely culprit. As a result, institutions will prolong the life expectancy of prints that no one will be able to see as intended. Thereby ensuring fewer and fewer visitors will return, thus endangering museums' survival and putting the prints at greater risk than they would be from a few more lumens."

Keith B.: "NEC has given up on providing wide-gamut monitors after their merger with Sharp Corp. The current equivalent (through specs comparison) of your [now] old NEC PA272W is the EIZO ColorEdge CS2731. It is sold with calibration puck for about $1,350. If/when my NEC PA271 needs replacing, this is what I'll get."

Bear.: "I have the luck of doing two exhibitions in a row in the same gallery space—the second was significantly better than the first because I figured out that I should work backwards from the lighting to the prints. I'm planning a third for later 2023—which I have yet to shoot—so I will start my consideration of the process in camera. Ahh luxury...."

Jeff: "One of my favorite exhibits, at MOMA, in New York, in 1996, featured Roy DeCarava prints. Thank heaven that the curators ensured appropriately adequate lighting; otherwise I would have not been able to see the gloriously dark and rich tones. I’ve collected vintage silver/platinum prints, and printed my own work, since the '70s, and display lighting has always been a priority. Viewers often under-appreciate, or are completely unaware of, the importance of this issue. It can make the difference between what seems a mediocre picture/print, and one that 'sings.'"

Greg Boiarsky: "If museums are reducing lighting to preserve prints, they're doing both the prints and patrons a disservice. First, as you've noted in a response above, is the problem of preserving the art but not allowing the patrons to enjoy it. Second, the primary causes of print degradation are UV light and free-radical airborne chemicals. UV light can be controlled with filters or by using low-UV lighting sources. The free radicals can be controlled with air filters and other airborne pollution controls. Second is the fact that almost all modern photographic prints are created using pigments rather than dyes. Pigments are inherently more stable than dyes and require much less babying. Also, modern photos are usually printed on low-acid or acid-free papers.

Steve Rosenblum: "The incredibly dim lighting at museum photography exhibitions also drives me crazy. I so look forward to seeing actual prints instead of reproductions in books, and then I get there and it feels like I'm viewing the prints with my sunglasses on."

David: "At the co-op darkroom I used to belong to, there was a viewing board just outside the darkroom entrance. It was lit by an overhead spotlight which simulated gallery lighting. You placed the wet print, or test strips, on the white board to view the print or compare the tests. I am not sure how accurate the light source was in comparison to gallery lighting. But at least it was a consistent, even lighting. I do miss printing at that darkroom. The sink was large enough that you were sometimes processing with three other people, and there were often really good conversations (photo-based or otherwise)."

Joseph L. Kashi: "About the most egregious example of misguided lighting that I've seen occurred in a university gallery where the museum-grade medium intensity halogen lights had been replaced by a motley mixture of compact florescent bulbs and other mismatched lighting. It was explained to me that the faculty 'wanted to save the planet.' We did find some of the units 'liberated' by faculty but the gallery lighting was significantly degraded."

Kye Wood: "Prints in very limited numbers? No. Great prints beautifully printed in very limited numbers? Most definitely, yes. You'll have to lean on publishing positive feedback from your buyers, to help push prospective purchasers to commit. If running a software company taught me one thing above all else, it's the importance of perceived value. Your best most discerning customers are your priority. You share their aesthetic and speak their language."

Luke: "Re poorly lit visual displays: It's like a zoo with 'natural habitats' for the animals to hide in, so the paying public can't see them."

Adam R: "Dim lighting is the car bra of the museum world: By trying to preserve something so it looks good at some indeterminate point in the future, you succeed in making it look awful all the rest of the time."

Comments

[John Shriver]

Might the galleries also be using low light levels to prevent their very expensive artworks (prints) from fading?

[Bill Tyler]

You write at some length and quite convincingly about how the viewing light affects the viewer's experience of the print. But then you state that the fine print is the way to "lock down" the right tones. This seems inconsistent. The only way it works is if you also lock down the viewing light.

[Not exactly. It's left up the whoever displays the prints to light it properly, but that's a requirement that can be met. And if it's not by one owner (as is the case with my Kenneth Tanaka at the top of the stairway, which needs strong light, which I haven't been able to give it yet), then it can be by the next. --Mike]

[Graham]

Am I the only one who thinks that the high resolution of these new monitors is a disadvantage? I find it much easier to assess focus with an older low-res monitor (mine is an Eizo).

[Keith B.]

A few years ago, I excitedly went to a big showing of William Eggleston dye transfer color prints at the L.A. County Museum (LACMA). These medium sized (maybe 16x20) prints were lit with what appeared to be tungsten lamps, dimmed way down so the correlated color temperature appeared to be about 2200K.A dull, dark orange colored light to view COLOR prints! It was a disgrace, and a complete disservice to the artist and the viewing public.

[wts]

"...WiFi stubbornly refuses to reach it, regardless of various repeaters and extenders placed in various spots..." My similar problem was completely solved with a mesh network made up of 3 mid-priced Netgear Orbi units about 2 years ago. Two of the units cover the main house and the third unit is in the adjacent converted garage. As for monitors, consider the Benq line.

[Rand Adams]

NEC’s apparent departure from wide gamut monitors is a real shame. You’re not just missing them, they’re gone. Some of my insider folk say to “just hold on” (perhaps meaning something new will emerge) but nothing in months and months. I use an NEC PA 302w SVII. It’s still calibrating with a dE less than .5 so I’m hoping it lasts a good while yet. I do color management consulting in my local area for photographers / printers and right now the only “really good” options are BenQ’s Wide Gamut models and the “most excellent” Eizo Coloredge monitors (hang on to your wallet).

Rand

[Rob Campbell]

If one can make good photographs, why would one buy somebody else’s?

I have never bought another photographer’s images, but I love buying their books, when I can afford them. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of spare space anymore: what was available has been fitted with shelves, and every new purchase means another old favourite has to be relegated to a cupboard. As for the walls, what isn’t hung with family-acquired paintings bears my own few prints.

The real value of photography is in the doing. I find the very same kind of slight insanity with sport. Indeed, in the case of soccer fans, in some places it isn’t even about kicking balls around and into a net hung between a couple of poles, it’s about religion and the singing of insulting songs. God alone knows about so-called American football: it seems, to the outsider, a version of that other strange, slightly perverted thing called rugby, but in armour. Never did fancy hugging other guys so tightly as to drag them down to the ground…

If print sales are dying it’s likely to be because folks no longer buy into the many art myths that have been sold to them since the 50s/60s came around, with the explosion of galleries, egos and easy money for the wheelers and dealers.

Basically, the scales eventually fall from the eyes, and even a single visit to a national museum where the work of real deal painters can be found should be enough to show the undeniable superiority of paint on canvas over, especially, pigment inks on paper. It boils down to comparative skill. Would anyone seriously rate an Adams in the same game as a Turner? Photography, I’m afraid, is full of charlatans. The right place for good photographers is in commerce, though it would appear that even there they are becoming surplus to requirements.

Game over, as is most everything else except politicians.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Further to Jim Meeks' spot-on comments, above, explaining the apparently low light levels you might encounter at some exhibitions...

Conservation of the works is, indeed, at the heart of such measures...not lighting costs.

Additionally consider that a great many works in an exhibition may be on loan from private collectors or other museums. The loan agreements for valuable pieces (even -moderately- valuable pieces) are often extremely detailed, Mike, usually specifying maximum light levels in foot-candles and UV exposure levels over the exhibition.* Insurers will not cover loaned works without such specifications.

And it's true that old photo papers were often, frankly, pretty shitty when it came to archival stability. Photographers were a bohemian crowd, using the cheapest materials, in this regard until some of their works began selling for upwards of six figures. (Yeah, I'm look at you, Paul Strand.)

The good news is that UV protections and monitoring for artworks have become much more effective. Museum lighting is now quite well filtered and of much lower temperature thanks to LEDs. Coated framing glazings have also become standard for high-value pieces.

I don't know when that Paul Strand show was held in Chicago. The last time the Art Institute held a show with many of his works was over 15 years ago...and a lot has changed since then. So I think you'd be able to see his highlights now.

BTW, the institutional reaction to your position, Mike, would be not to lend works at all. That's already a big problem and getting much bigger every year as the expenses of loans is becoming ridiculous, even for photographic works.

---
* As an example of "detailed" loan agreements, the lenders of a rare and quite valuable vintage print shown at the AIC several years ago mandated, among other conditions, that at no time would at least one guard be further than 15 feet from the piece during exhibition hours. It is also standard practice to audit UV and light levels in an exhibit.

[Gregory Kriss]

I made an excellent "hood" for my iMac with three pieces of black Foamcore (top and both sides), some hot glue, and velcro to attach it to the sides of the monitor. Every two weeks I calibrate the monitor with datacolor's Spyder X Pro. My iMac resides in a room with three large windows with Venetian blinds angled upward. No other light illuminates the room in the daytime except for two small desk LED lights facing down on the desktop. Once the sun goes down I have a black light shining on the bookcase on the other side of the iMac... I just find it very relaxing. When I was in charge of running a Digital Photo Department for a State Health Center, the overhead fluorescent light fixtures had to be left on during working hours... Safety issues??? Absolutely the worst ambient lighting to have for working with digital imaging.

[Peter Komar]

Mike, slightly off topic but are you going to print images from your new B&W camera ? I think that printing your best images in color or B&W completes the process of photography. FLICKR, Instagram are good to post your images but nothing beats a framed print. I’m also curious if you have a printer or have you given any thought regarding which would do justice to your B&W images? I have had good success with my EPSON 3800 for B&W.

[Bob Johnston]

With archival papers and pigment inks, fading due to exposure to light is a thing of the past. However, those same galleries may display paintings, which are a different
matter. With photos exposure to chemicals, in paint and traffic fumes for example, is more of a problem. Over zealous application of archival principles is the cause of those dim lights.

Just a thought. If you only do monochrome, or at least rarely do colour, you don't need a wide gamut monitor. Only if you print colour do you need a monitor that can stretch to
argb. [sRGB? --Ed.] Why NEC anyway? Have a look at Benq. And, as Graham says, you don't need 4k either.

[Well, we do need full gamut in our monitors, because almost nobody buys a monitor just for one thing. If you only have one monitor, it's got to be all-purpose. --Mike]

[Dave Millier]

I'm always surprised when photographers manage to sell even a single print when their audience is other photographers. As Keith Cooper from NorthlightImages noted dryly, photographers are generally not buyers of other photographer's work. Too busy inspecting the prints with a loupe looking for technical flaws.

For myself. I have purchased exactly two photographic prints in my life. One from an art & crafts fair, the other from Finn Hopson's gallery on the seafront at Brighton. I think I paid between £25-£35 for each one (matted). I thought that expensive for just photos and had to think about it a lot!

I'm happier buying pictures that are not straight photos. I have a print hanging in my dining room that is ethnic art from a trip to the US, and some images of Scottish landscapes that are sandwiches of landscape photos with background textures that gives them a painting like abstract appeal. I have only one of my own photos framed and hanging on the wall. I love framed prints, but for some reason, decorating my own home with my own pictures doesn't appeal that much, because they are just photos. I can't think of any family or friends who buy and display "fine art" photos in their homes, either. Most people just buy posters from Ikea. There are a couple of photographers I like enough that I'd quite like one print from each, but I'm not going to pay hundreds of pounds for a photo :-)

I've given away framed prints of my own and provided others as items for charity raffles, but it would never cross my mind to offer any for sale. Who would buy a photo!

It's clear there is a degree of prejudice against photographs as an art form in the UK from "ordinary people" (rather than investors and collectors).

Is this lack of respect and perceived value for photography just a UK thing, do you think, or is it more widespread?

[I think there are at least two good reasons to buy prints by other photographers. One is that you don't make prints that look like theirs, and the other is that you haven't seen what they saw.

I don't know how many prints I've sold with my various programs, first the Collector Print program at Photo Techniques magazine and later through the print offers here on TOP, but it could very easily top 5,000 and I wouldn't be surprised if it's twice that. I'm glad most enthusiasts don't feel the same way you do!

The best reason to buy a photograph you like is because it gives you pleasure to look at it.
--Mike]

[Doug Chadwick]

Like you I am mystified by dim lighting in exhibitions. The museum people hide behind "works on paper fade".

Is that true of properly made B&W prints? I have certainly alway been led to believe it is not. Don't they consider the display life of a B&W print to be 1,000 years?

So a Paul Strand exhibit in a dim space is just foolish wrong-headedness isn't it?

[Paul Judice]

I was disappointed by the Irving Penn show a few years ago at the Met here in NYC. The lights were absurdly dim for his platinum prints, which should be among the most fade resistant prints available. It seemed like an extreme measure and a loss for those of us wanting to enjoy all the details of these artworks.

[Jim Meeks]

One last comment on low light levels, it's not just UV that impacts deterioration, it's also the light level (foot candles or lux units). Scientists have studied this topic and have conducted accelerated aging tests to see what happens when a material is exposed to light. Light, heat, humidity and the materials an item is exposed to (a wood frame for instance) can all take a toll on the life of a print. It's not just the silver or pigments that are effected, but the paper itself. Crappy pigments and crappy paper deteriorate faster. At the art museum where I worked, our rule of thumb for paper was 5 foot candles, 6 days a week at about 9-10 hours per day and then the item would be "rested" or put away in storage for 3 years. Brighter lights dictated a shorter display time or a longer rest period. These recommendations came from paper conservators, people who had studied the science behind the recommendations. Thanks to Ken for pointing out other stipulations that might be impacting your museum viewing.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Addendum: The American Institute for Conservation, a mainstay of the museum conservation world, offers a "wiki" page showing some of the best practice standards and member-formulated guidelines for safe light exposure levels for photographic prints. It's only slightly dated but, as you can see, there really is no firm consensus.

Separately, I did not realize that NEC had dropped their color-accurate displays! Only two years ago while completely renovating / modernizing my image processing facilities I bought the 31" NEC PA311D monitor. I had been so happy with its predecessor for nearly 10 years, and the new display is even more better! But jeez... Looks like my next monitor (if there ever will be another) will be an Eizo, eh?

[Dean Johnston]

Hi.

"...you probably have a color-calibrated monitor, but a lot of people don't."

Grr, thanks a lot. I'd forgotten that my old unit doesn't work anymore. Now I have to go and spend hundreds of dollars.

Maybe next year. I'm still under tight pecuniary control following that Leica purchase...

Peace & all that,
Dean
p.s. internet clarification section - I jest, not really angry (but I really do seem to have gone about a year forgetting calibration is a thing...)

[robert e]

They don't work in all cases, but it's worth mentioning that there are network extenders that use home power lines or cable TV wiring that are already in the walls. One may have to use wifi for the last few feet for something like a porch or deck, but it would be starting with a steadier wired signal from close by.

On lighting, if the issue with artwork display is cumulative exposure before the piece needs to "rest", why not limit display time rather than light intensity? Have the dim lighting on all the time, but allow a patron to push a button for a minute of the kind of illumination the artist intended. A timer would keep track and shut off the feature for the day after a specified amount of exposure had been reached.

[robert e]

Small print runs open up interesting possibilities, like being able to offer different sizes, papers, printing methods, printmakers, or even different interpretations of the same image, as well as different price points.