My life here is intensely social. I am living in an alternate self, one that I ordinarily put on only for rare occasions and for short durations. Here personal contact proceeds nonstop for days. I still need to peel away and center myself to prepare for my reviews, but usually I am in the thick of the hive in the break-out room where we show each other our pictures. I learn how my work functions when I make a small adjustment in sequencing by my exhibiting it again and again, and I learn how other people approach the medium in their own unique ways. Some are more cognitive in their approach and have an over-arching conceptual framework, others are sensualists or emotionalists in their imagery, some are so visual they are relatively inarticulate, and this is why they are here, to find others who can articulate it for them.
The socializing hit a climax at tonight’s viewing at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. It was the public’s chance to see our work. In a big hall we each had half a banquet table to lay out our photos, while hundreds of people crowded around to see. During the first shift I was able to get a good sample of the work being shown this week.
There’s a lot of inkjet prints now, and there is some very good black and white output, though silver prints still outnumber inkjet. Digital doesn’t look like a weak copy of a photograph like it did a few years ago. I thought inkjet would have swamped the color work by now, but an impressive number of people are still making color C prints. There are still the stalwart alternative processes—platinum and palladium, but sometimes done with an edge—one remarkable body of work was of female nudes on transluscent paper soaked in beeswax. Clumps of human hair were adhered to the back, giving it the illusion of bruises on the body. It was both conceptual and sensual, a combination I rarely see. Another woman had some astoundingly accomplished photo-gravures.
But earlier today I saw work by Joseph Glasgow that stunned and rattled me, because it represented a watershed that I thought was still a few years out. I was pondering the ratio of silver to inkjet prints in the room, and had this set tagged for certain as well printed silver. I was wrong. I still don’t believe it. I took off my glasses and closely examined the mid-level shadows, where digital often falls apart. It looked like silver. The highlights were a bit compressed, with not the separation I am used to, but that could be the film-developer combination (the image originated as film). These prints completely fooled me.
These were not quad-tone inkjets. They were from the standard inkset on an Epson 2200. The secret (besides a lot of skill and technical accomplishment—you don’t get prints this good by pushing a button) is a RIP software, in this case one called QTR. And a coating, which I think is what fooled my eye—the paper appeared as a glossy fiber print dried on a screen.
We’re there. My darkroom could be replaced now.
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