You may have noticed that Hull , or as nobody ever calls it ‘Kingston upon Hull’ is 2017 UK City of Culture, with a year-long series of events. It has already started in some ways – I went to a preparatory (and rather limited) film festival there back in October 2014, and already things were being tidied up in preparation. And 3,2000 naked people painted blue posing for photographs made the news earlier this year, though I expect many of the pictures taken by amatuers and the press will be rather more interesting than those by Spencer Tunick to be unveiled at the Ferens Gallery next year (there are a few on The Guardian.)
Back in 1983 I too had a show at the Ferens Gallery, though with rather less publicity. My images were on a rather smaller scale than Tunick’s and despite the subject matter I think considerably more intimate. There were quite a few pictures – I sometimes call it a ‘gross show’, though I think it was may have been 4 more than that at 148 prints, mainly in black and white but with about 30 in colour.
The black and whites were on Record Rapid or Portriga rapid, both silver-rich Agfa papers ideally suited to the rather heavy printing – but with highly detailed shadows and a warm richness of tone (perhaps connected with the Cadmium content which was removed in later years on health and safety grounds) which I think unmatchable on current silver gelatine papers – though you can do it on the right papers using multiple black and grey inks on an inkjet printer, and probably with expensive quadtone printing for a book.
Silver gelatin is no longer king – though it never really was, with good carbon prints knocking its socks off both for quality and longevity. But carbon printing was a lengthy process – and very messy if you made your own carbon tissue, as I found when I tried it more than 20 years ago. There is an excellent article on it by Anthony Mournian, Carbon printing: An alternative process not for the faint of heart, in which he correctly states “Carbon printing relies on patience, fortitude and exacting darkroom techniques.”
The colour was taken on transparency film and were as I recall printed with Cibachrome, known more recetly as Ilfochorome, a dye-destruction process with fearsome chemicals that inherently increased the contrast and saturation of the already overcontrasty and oversaturated transparencies.
Ciba could be tamed by the tedious process of exposing with the tranny in contact with an unsharp negative, and I wasted many hours if not years of my life in getting good prints before finally turning to colour negative in the mid-80s. I still somewhere have most of the black and whites from that show, but though I will still have the transparencies I’m not sure if I’ve kept the colour prints
Or for that matter if the colour will have kept. Even Ciba prints have relatively short lives compared with the best inkject colour, although considerably better than the Kodak colour papers of the era that almost literally faded in front of your eyes. Fuji papers and films that came out around that time were considerably better and really gave the yellow giant a kick up the jacksy. They’d been resting on their reputation as No 1 for far too long and despite considerable efforts never quite managed to catch up.
Of course I’d taken many more pictures – and continued to photograph Hull at fairly frequent intervals for the next 20 or so years, and occasionally though much less often in more recent times.
Back in 2010-1 I took another look at my old Hull pictures, and produced a book of black and white images based loosely around that 1983 show but with slightly roughly twice as many photographs. I kept the same title, ‘Still Occupied – a view of Hull’ but included a few pictures from the two years after the show, and the book covers 1977-85.
I’d intended to produce a new book in time for the 2017 UK City of Culture, but time ran out, and instead I’ve tidied up the old one, correcting a few minor errors (and a really annoying glitch that crept into the page numbering while my back was turned) and will shortly announce the revised version here.
The other thing I’m doing to celebrate the City of Culture is a new web site, Hull Photos (hullphotos.co.uk) or rather Still Occupied – a view of Hull. I put it on line a few days ago and I’ve been testing it – and invite you to also do so and please let me know if you find any problems. I’ve put quite a few photos on already – mainly those up to 1981 – and intend to add a new picture every day (or at least most days, as I’ve not automated the process of adding them, though I have several hundred images ready to go.)
Each new photo will be featured for a day on the page http://hullphotos.co.uk/hullintro.htm so if you want to follow the series, bookmark that page and visit regularly to see the latest. I’ll also be posting them on my Facebook page.
