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Eugene Smith and shadow detail
JimW
Registered Users Posts: 333 Major grins
B.D. wrote:
<<< if you can expose in such a way that there is detail in your shadows, then you have the option of showing that detail, or, like Gene Smith, burning it to hell and gone over the course of 36 meth-fueled hours in the darkroom >>>
<<< go look at Smith's stuff and you will find - by and large - shadows blocked up tighter … >>>
Actually, according to my studies of Smith, the opposite is true. By and large, Smith’s work is full of tonal range with considerable shadow detail, the kind you had to work hard for back in those days. One only has to look at his work to see this is true. The essays known as Pittsburgh, The Nurse Midwife, The Country Doctor, Great Britain, Spain and Schweitzer all demonstrate that he worked at keeping shadow detail. Interviews with his printers and his second wife Aileen confirm this, as reported in Shadow & Substance by Jim Hughes.
Or, we can just refer to Smith in his own words: “I overexpose flashes about three times. I know everybody says you will get flat prints and blocked highlights. It just doesn’t work that way for me … Sure, I have to burn in the faces, but I have all the crisp detail in the shadow.” (from Let Truth Be The Prejudice.” – Aperture)
(In the film era, it was common for photographers to overexpose and underdevelop. The overexposure kept the shadows open while the underdeveloping kept the highlights from blocking.)
Good examples of his extra efforts to retain shadow detail are “The Spinner” and “The Wake” from the Spanish Village essay in Life Magazine. The subjects were draped in black linen. They were shot handheld in low light, yet the shadows are open and full of detail. It’s pretty incredible, really.
As for the tones that he wanted black without detail, he wanted them very black, same as many of the best printers from the day. But shadow detail and black without detail are two different things. They had to work harder back then for good blacks than we do today. So he did spend many drug-fueled hours burning the blacks without detail in his darkroom. He was a dark and troubled guy who was famous for his somber treatment of often somber subjects. His world was a cave. But he loved shadow detail and worked hard at keeping it open and full of detail.
I’m posting this with respect for your efforts here B.D. Anyone who loves photography as much as you do is okay in my book. I’m uncomfortable with the tone of online communication, so I don’t post much, but support you when you encourage the study of Smith and other masters. Also, like you, I think that many of the questions and issues facing all of us who post here have been answered by the masters. It surprises me how little interest there is here for studying the masters. I just couldn’t let this one go because it’s important for some reason. It appears to me, from your photos and your text, that you are not a fan of shadow detail and tonal range in general, which is surprising I guess. But perhaps I misunderstand your comments and photos. Please forgive me if that is the case.
Jim
<<< if you can expose in such a way that there is detail in your shadows, then you have the option of showing that detail, or, like Gene Smith, burning it to hell and gone over the course of 36 meth-fueled hours in the darkroom >>>
<<< go look at Smith's stuff and you will find - by and large - shadows blocked up tighter … >>>
Actually, according to my studies of Smith, the opposite is true. By and large, Smith’s work is full of tonal range with considerable shadow detail, the kind you had to work hard for back in those days. One only has to look at his work to see this is true. The essays known as Pittsburgh, The Nurse Midwife, The Country Doctor, Great Britain, Spain and Schweitzer all demonstrate that he worked at keeping shadow detail. Interviews with his printers and his second wife Aileen confirm this, as reported in Shadow & Substance by Jim Hughes.
Or, we can just refer to Smith in his own words: “I overexpose flashes about three times. I know everybody says you will get flat prints and blocked highlights. It just doesn’t work that way for me … Sure, I have to burn in the faces, but I have all the crisp detail in the shadow.” (from Let Truth Be The Prejudice.” – Aperture)
(In the film era, it was common for photographers to overexpose and underdevelop. The overexposure kept the shadows open while the underdeveloping kept the highlights from blocking.)
Good examples of his extra efforts to retain shadow detail are “The Spinner” and “The Wake” from the Spanish Village essay in Life Magazine. The subjects were draped in black linen. They were shot handheld in low light, yet the shadows are open and full of detail. It’s pretty incredible, really.
As for the tones that he wanted black without detail, he wanted them very black, same as many of the best printers from the day. But shadow detail and black without detail are two different things. They had to work harder back then for good blacks than we do today. So he did spend many drug-fueled hours burning the blacks without detail in his darkroom. He was a dark and troubled guy who was famous for his somber treatment of often somber subjects. His world was a cave. But he loved shadow detail and worked hard at keeping it open and full of detail.
I’m posting this with respect for your efforts here B.D. Anyone who loves photography as much as you do is okay in my book. I’m uncomfortable with the tone of online communication, so I don’t post much, but support you when you encourage the study of Smith and other masters. Also, like you, I think that many of the questions and issues facing all of us who post here have been answered by the masters. It surprises me how little interest there is here for studying the masters. I just couldn’t let this one go because it’s important for some reason. It appears to me, from your photos and your text, that you are not a fan of shadow detail and tonal range in general, which is surprising I guess. But perhaps I misunderstand your comments and photos. Please forgive me if that is the case.
Jim
I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.
http://www.jimwhitakerphotography.com/
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Comments
Thanks for the kind words, and also for pointing out the difficulties of communicating in this medium. I know full well that there are a number of people who think I'm a nasty sob because of my directness in postings and because they can't hear tone of voice, or see expressions or body language. There's no doubt that some of those people would think the same thing if they knew me personally <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/rolleyes1.gif" border="0" alt="" >, but it's also safe to say that most wouldn't. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >
Anyway - Smith. First, there is no question that Smith was a master of the medium, and worked all sorts of magic in the darkroom - with substantial 'help' from meth and alcohol. There are images with enormous amounts of shadow detail. And then there are images with virtually none - and they exist within the same projects and essays. The infamous Pittsburgh project - which took a year to shoot, produced more than 10,000 images, and ultimately destroyed Smith - produced both types of images. As did each of the essays you site. While there's no question Smith would work for literally days to get the detail out of an image, by the same token, he would burn an image to hell, until nothing was left but a few central portions and an ocean of black. For an example of that, see the image of the Haitian 'mad woman.' One of the major Smith books shows the original image, and his final version of it, and it's hard to believe they came from the same negative. In fact, were Smith shooting today for a newspaper, he'd undoubtedly be fired for what he did to that image. But that isn't to say that he wasn't fulfilling his artistic vision, as he obviously was.
The interesting thing about some of the masters is how easy it is, when you look at contact sheets, to come to the conclusion they never met a light meter they cared to read before shooting. The wonderful new book, Looking In, which includes far, far more than almost anyone would ever want to know about Robert Frank's The Americans, includes all the contact sheets. And while I'm happy to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that some of the exposure error is simply a result of sloppy contacting, it's amazing how many images are significantly over or under exposed. Much of their magic was worked in the darkroom.
As to your commenting on the apparently lack of interest - here particularly - in the work of the masters, I don't get it. I firmly believe that if one wants to be a better photographer, one has to spend significant time with the work of the best photographers. Frankly, if I had a choice between taking a half-dozen photography courses, or taking one technical course or workshop and putting all the rest of the money into monographs and collections of the work of best photographers, I'd go for the photo books - and I have. (And one thing to keep in mind is that generally, if the photographer is collectible, the books will become collectible - either a short time after publication, or in the future.)
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Smith also used Cyanide to increase the contrast of his photographs
I think I'd rather use Photoshop.
He used to joke that he would drink the stuff
:lurk
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There is a great segment on him in the tv series "Genius Of Photography"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/smith.shtml
for those with directv
http://www.ovationtv.com/programs/16-the-genius-of-photography
This seems so obviously true that I don't understand why there is any debate on the subject at all. If you do not know (and know well) the history of the art, you are unlikely to make any significant contribution to it. One should know not only the names and the images, but the history, the intention, the social context, something about the technology used... the list goes on and on.
I'm far short of your 120+ books of photographs, but I do have, oh, 30 or so, including all of the Getty Museum's In Focus series, some of the Thames & Hudson Photofile series, Beaumont Newhall's History of Photography, Szarkowski's The Photographer's Eye, the Taschen edition of all the photos from Steiglitz's Camera Work series, and Ansel Adams' Examples. I regard this as hardly a beginning, especially since the collection so far is strongly biased toward pre-WW2 work.
Got bored with digital and went back to film.
Real Body Integrated Arts
GMT -5
And it's also strongly biased toward pre-war art photography. ;-)
I've made a couple of half-hearted attempts to catalog my books, but it always comes to naught. If I ever get around to it, I'll post it here. I can say that my collection includes both the major Smith retrospectives, plus "Pittsburgh" and "Jazz Loft"; all Eugene Richards's book with the exception of his latest; three versions of The Americans; several Cartier-Bresson's; Nachtwey's "Inferno;" a couple of Danny Lyons books; two Diane Arbus collections; several Capa collections, including "Images of War;" a Helen Levitt; several Bruce Davidson's; "Telex Tehran;" a reprint of "Vietnam Inc." - the damn original is close to $1000 - if you can find one; "Requiem," an incredible collection of Vietnam War photography by photographers who died there; a Susan Meiselas; Larry Towel's book about the Mennonites; "The Photo Book;" a number of general collections; several Walker Evans monographs; etc. etc. As you can see, no pre-war art photography, and very heavy on documentary people.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
A couple of books I would recommend for you is.
Bystander: A History Of Street Photography.
http://www.amazon.com/Bystander-History-Photography-Joel-Meyerowitz/dp/0821217550
Magnum Magnum
The original very large edition
http://www.amazon.com/Magnum-Brigitte-Lardinois/dp/0500543429
Got bored with digital and went back to film.
Bystander is such a good read.
Magnum Magnum weighs in around 15 lbs, if it had legs it could be a table
I absolutely love Larry Towell's work, a farmer from Ontario who went to photograph the war in El Salvador and Palestine, and I suspect wore his straw hat and suspenders. Just a real treasure. His work with Mennonites in Canada and Mexico is so good. His new book "The World from my Front Porch" (2008) is just an amazing retrospective swirling around the central theme present in all his work of people's connection with the land, how it shapes them, and what happens when it is lost. It's an inspiration.
I have a copy of In the Balkans by Greek photographer Nikos Economopoulis, a contemporary Magnum photographer who no one seems to know about. Very underrated.
And I'll throw in another pitch for Jonas Bendiksen's Satellites where he spent 7 years as a young man traveling through the former Soviet republics. He took the old formula of Nat Geo and made it something new and fresh and his own. Got him into Magnum. Tough to find a reasonably priced first edition of that book though (came out in 2006 and over $200 now) ... and it's in color too ;-))
So many good books, so little money ....
Go for Magnum Stories, rather than Magnum Magnum. It gives you assignments shot by a wide range of living and dead Magnum photographers, and interviews with them - living and dead.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
I know...If my wife ever did an inventory and added up what I've spent over the years, I'd have some 'splainin' to do. On the other hand, the books will go to my kids - who will appreciate them - much increased in value. So....
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Just FYI - Here is the list of "Required" and "Highly Recommended" books for my MIT and Harvard Documentary photo classes:
Doing Documentary Work – Robert Coles – the compilation of a series of lectures the Harvard psychiatrist and documentarian gave at the New York Public Library. The lectures explore the ethical, intellectual, and technical challenges facing anyone who would do documentary work. While photography per se is only a peripheral part of this work, the principles and ideas discussed by Coles apply as much to documentary photography as they do to any other type of documentary fieldwork. Available in paperback.
On Photography – Susan Sontag. You may well hate this book. Sontag is often pedantic, often boring, often wrong. On the other hand, when she is right, she is so right that she cannot be ignored. This is a seminal work about photography, and if you are going to photograph, you must be (painfully) familiar with it.
Fundamentals of Photography: The Essential Handbook for Both Digital and Film Cameras – Tom Ang – A truly excellent “how-to” book that will serve as your technical text. If you haven’t had a basic photography course, this book will fill in virtually all the classroom gaps – it can’t make up for your lack of shooting experience. If you do have experience and technical knowledge, it will provide an excellent refresher.
Photo Idea Index – Jim Krause – As the cover blurb boasts, “not your typical ‘how to’ book.” This really is a book crammed full of ideas intended to expand your way of seeing, and shooting, from how to capture action, to thoughts about visual hierarchy and using space in your photos.
Magnum Stories– This is a massive collection – available for $50.37 from Amazon – of work by 61 past and present members of Magnum, the world’s premiere photo agency/collective. Magnum was founded after World War II by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger, and Chim, on the principle that photojournalists should have some control over their work and the ways in which it was used. From that day to this the list of Magnum photographers has always included most of the world’s leading documentary photographers and photojournalists. This book is made up of interviews with Magnum photographers, in which they talk about how they handled a particular story or project, and includes key photos from the project.
HIGHLY recommended, but not required:
The Photo Book – This overview in photos of the history of photography is a must-own, particularly as it’s available in a $9.95 miniature version.
The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings – Kaylynn Deveney and Albert Hastings. If this book doesn’t inspire you – sell your camera. It is a little jewel, a successful marriage of art photography and pure documentary photography, and demonstrates how the simplest of ideas can produce a sublime project.
Digging – Michael Hintlian. The Big Dig as you have never seen it or thought of it. As I wrote in an Amazon review – “At its most basic, Digging is to the workers of Boston's Big Dig, the endless construction project that has remade the face of downtown Boston, what Lewis Hine's work from the early 1930s is to the workers who built the Empire State Building: a memorial in photographs to the pure muscle power that makes real the dreams of engineers. Hintlian set out more than four years ago to preserve for the ages the contribution of the workers whose daily toil would otherwise be forgotten when the last concrete was poured and the Big Dig was finally finished.
W. Eugene Smith’s Pittsburgh Project,available in hard cover and paper. Selections from the seminal work by the inventor of the modern photo story – if you are not inspired by this, sell your camera.
The Jazz Loft. Between 1957 and 1965 W. Eugene Smith lived in a loft at 821 6th Avenue, in the heart of New York’s wholesale flower district. The rest of the ratty building consisted of loft studios used by jazz musicians, world renowned and unknown, as night-time rehearsal hall. Over the course of those eight years, Smith shot more than 40,000 images, and recorded 4,000 hours of audio tape of life in the building, and on the surrounding streets as seen from his windows. This is a truly wondrous book.
Requiem : By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina, by Horst Faas and Tim Page, out of print but worth digging for. This is a magnificent collection of combat photographs by, as the title makes clear, photographers who did not survive the combat they were covering. Here you’ll find work by some of the known greats, including Robert Cappa and Larry Burrows, as well as by some of the unknown greats, including, especially, Henri Huet- the best combat photographer you never heard of.
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, the Image and the World: A Retrospective. This is the ultimate collection by the man who ‘invented’ 35 mm photography, helped found the great photo agency/collective Magnum, and who coined the term, “decisive moment.” Although Bresson is often described as a “photojournalist, he really wasn’t one. He adopted the label because his Magnum founding partner Robert Cappa told him that if he described himself as what he was, a surrealist photographer, he would never get work. [Yes, Rutt, I know you think his photo journalism of the post-war period was his best work. It wasn't.
Inferno, James Nachtweys overwhelming collection of anti-war photographs of combat and its ultimate results. A book that will weigh as heavily on your conscience as it will on your lap.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Got bored with digital and went back to film.
You should take a look at Daido Moriyama too.
I received the small version over the holidays. Thy only problem is that it's proved that I need to see the optometrist soon to read the text.
Nachtwey is, at the moment, at the center of an ugly controversy. This is worth reading and thinking about - not that I am suggesting a drawn out discussion here.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Just picked this one up this weekend. Man am I humbled.
I know. It is amazing. I will freely admit that shortly before I bought that book I had, over a number of years, reached the conclusion that HCB was overrated. This is not to say that I didn't think he was very good - one of the greats - but...Then I got that book and worked my way through it and can't for the life of me figure out how I had reached such a demonstrably wrong conclusion.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Come on, B.D., we could either agree to disagree or keep boring each other and the world with this disagreement. There are ways to put this so that it isn't an invitation to reopen this pointless discussion, a discussion where I don't really think you've held up your end other than just to say that you are right and I am wrong. If you really want to discuss this, I think you need to start by defining "surrealist", a question I've asked you more than once.
Or you could just have said the same thing without being so contentious, perhaps: