Whether you are someone who has never made a print in a darkroom or one of us who paid our dues in that respect, you will almost certainly find the post Magnum and the Dying Art of Darkroom Printing by Sarah Coleman on her The Literate Lens blog of interest, in showing a little of how a master printer – in this case Pablo Inirio of Magnum in New York – thinks and works. And my thanks to Petapixel for commenting on and linking to her post.
What I find a little disturbing is not the post itself, but some of the comments that it has provoked, although Coleman did perhaps set them up when she wrote:
“Over the last fifteen years, almost every photographer I’ve interviewed has waxed poetic about that “magical” experience of seeing an image develop in chemicals for the first time. You have to wonder whether today’s young photographers will rhapsodize as much about the first time they color-calibrated their monitors.”
Digital has of course removed some of the mystique. No longer do we have the quasi-masonic initiation into the dark arts that used to be necessary, and digital comes without those smells (for which I say thank goodness, as taking some of that toxic chemistry out of our lives must be a good thing.) But I still feel there is something magical about pressing a button and then seeing a miniature image on the back of the camera, and even more being able to show it and zoom into it on a large screen on the computer. But colour-calibrating your monitor is perhaps equally exciting as measuring out 10ml of Rodinal or learning to keep the developer temperature constant at 20 degrees.
Coleman’s is an entirely false comparison. What was important in photography was the image; what still is important is the image, though now it appears in fractions of a second in an automatic way without all the fuss we used to have.
Digital printers still have to do all the kind of things that we did in the dark to get good prints, just that these are much simpler (and can be reversible) on the computer. In the darkroom Gene Smith used to get through a box of paper and a bottle of Scotch to make the final print, we can do it by viewing on those calibrated screens and save the Scotch for later. Though personally I’d prefer a decent glass of wine – or two.
While we still need to make all the kind of adjustments that Inirio records on his annotated images, in Lightroom the computer remembers them for us, saving us the need to draw the diagrams. We can also do them with ease more precisely than the best master darkroom printers, and once you have made the ‘perfect’ print (or the best you can make) then can repeat it at the click of a mouse.
That doesn’t mean you or I can be a good a printer as Initio. Printing has always been a matter of vision, of being able to see the potential in a negative. Without that you can dodge, burn and use all the other techniques in darkroom or digital and never produce a great print. Many great photographers have never managed to, and have collaborated with others to print their work better than they ever could (and despite what it asserts in the ‘Media Space’ show, Tony Ray-Jones was one of them – see here and here.) Perhaps a true problem of digital is that is has more or less dispensed with the talents of specialist printers – such as Inirio – because everyone thinks they can do it as well as the best.
Of course once you have the vision, it isn’t always easy to transmit that to the material. You have to learn (and make tests, tests, tests) to see how the materials react. In the digital world this is also much simpler, with much of the necessary information being stored in print profiles and curves etc.
The same is true of digital images. Our raw files (or even camera produced jpegs) are only starting points – if you like Ansel Adams’s musical analogy – the scores, and the digital files we send to clients or use on the web or to make prints are performances, some better than others.
Adams is the man I first learnt to print properly from, not in the flesh but in the revised 1968 version of his Basic Photo series, Volume 3 The Print (more recent versions perhaps somewhat dumbed down) and it was a good starting point on which to build. In my darkroom in the old days there were always two developer trays (later vertical ‘trays’ to save space, keep temperature constant and reduce developer oxidation) containing low and high contrast developers and prints were usually transferred from one to the other at an appropriate time for the contrast required – at least until I changed to using Multigrade papers. I had a few little tricks and nudges that I’d learnt talking to other printers or thought of myself, and I enjoyed making good prints, but I don’t regret that I never use the darkroom now. Because I know I can do better on the computer and making inkjet prints on baryta papers, though I could also get a lab to print the digital files on genuine silver halide paper. I’ll not go back to the ferri, the flashing, the Blu-tak, cut masks and all the rest of the wands that were a part of the magic – when needed.
I certainly have some regrets over cameras and lenses that I no longer use because they take images on film. The panoramic cameras, the Minolta CLE and Leica, the Konica Hexars and the Olympus OM4s were all better tools for what they did than anything digital yet produced. You can do more with the Nikon DSLRs, take pictures in much lower light and more, but they don’t have the same ease of use or responsiveness, though things are improving (and they will probably get there in a few years, just in time for cameras disappear for good.) But on the very few occasions I take film now, it doesn’t go into an enlarger, but into a scanner. It just wouldn’t occur to me to make darkroom prints.
Back in the days when I taught photography, I used to find the best way to get students to see the possibilities of making good black and white prints in the darkroom was to get them to use Photoshop. They could then quickly (and at zero cost) learn about getting the contrast and exposure correct, and go on to see the effect of dodging and burning. Years earlier, before we had computers in art departments, I’d taught lighting with the aid of video cameras, because you didn’t have to develop film to see the results.
But the idea that printing in black and white is a good way to learn about how to make good images in the digital age which some in education suggest is nonsense. It is at best a slow and inconvenient method to learn about making images. Digital is a far better medium for both teaching and learning about photography. Using film and darkrooms is essential for teaching about working with film and darkroom printing – full stop.
I’m not against craft skills, but think it is only generally worth teaching those that are relevant now. I think it’s great that a few people like to learn how to use the wet plate process, but despite arguably representing the pinnacle of photographic practice, I certainly wouldn’t want it to be an integral part of normal photographic courses. It’s time to let go of darkroom printing in education, just as we (I hope) no longer teach other outmoded processes. Except as history, and there is nothing wrong with that. We just need to be clear it is history, or that it’s a bit of fun, rather than something that all photographers could benefit from.
But you can see another view on (again a link from Petapixel) Long Live Film, which has a trailer from a film of that name, made by mail-order processor Indie Film Lab and Kodak both with a certain vested interest.
Nostalgia junkies who hanker after those colour and tonal distortions that were a signature of different film stocks will find that there are plenty of ways to reproduce these from your digital images. I’ve not tried any of the products from ‘Totally Rad’, not being a believer that clicking on a pre-set can give your pictures an ‘individual’ look, but they claim to have carried out an impressive amount of research to develop “the most faithful film emulation available” in their Replichrome. Personally I’ll save the $99 and concentrate on trying to get something individual in the viewfinder.
