From Darkroom to Daylight. Harvey Wang

      

      Originally published as From Darkroom To Daylight, Harvey Wang

      Cofounders: Taj Forer and Michael Itkoff

      Designer: Ursula Damm

      Copy editor: Elizabeth Bell

      © 2015 Daylight Community Arts Foundation

      Text © Harvey Wang & Amy Brost. Interviews used with permission of the subjects.

      All rights reserved

      ISBN 978-1-942084-29-7

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of copyright holders and of the publisher.

      Daylight Books

      E-mail: [email protected]

      Web: www.daylightbooks.org

      CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE DARKROOM

MATERIALS: THE ENDANGERED AND THE EXTINCT

Photography Is Always Changing: Eric Taubman

The End of Kodachrome: Alex Webb and Jeff Jacobson

Photographic Papers: Paul Messier, Robert L. Shanebrook, Alison Rossiter, Howard Hopwood

THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION IN PHOTOGRAPHY

The Invention of the Digital Camera: Steven Sasson

The Invention of Photoshop: Thomas Knoll

The Decisive Moment Becomes Day to Night: Stephen Wilkes

New Realities: Ruud van Empel

On Photoshop: Richard Benson, Mark Bussell, John Cohen, David Goldblatt, Jerome Liebling, Platon, Stephen Wilkes

Photoshop Before “Photoshop”: Alfred Gescheidt

      BRIDGING THE DIVIDE

       A Platinum Printer Falls for Inkjet: Richard Benson

       Going Back to the Delta: Eugene Richards

       Two Centuries of Technology: Sally Mann

      PERSPECTIVES ON THE DIGITAL (R)EVOLUTION

       Takeshi Akagi

       Adam Bartos

       Deborah Bell

       Richard Benson

       Meghan Boody

       Mark Bussell

       John Cohen

       Gregory Crewdson

       John Cyr

       Ruud van Empel

       Elliott Erwitt

       Jason Eskenazi

       Alfred Gescheidt

       David Goldblatt

       Ken Hackman

       Charles Harbutt

       Chester Higgins Jr.

       Howard Hopwood

       Jeff Jacobson

       Sid Kaplan

       Edward Keating

       Thomas Knoll

       Jerome Liebling

       Nathan Lyons

       Sally Mann

       Constantine Manos

       Paul McDonough

       Susan Meiselas

       Paul Messier

       Alison Nordström

       Platon

       Eli Reed

       Eugene Richards

       Alison Rossiter

       Richard Sandler

       Steven Sasson

       Robert L. Shanebrook

       Eric Taubman

       George Tice

       Jonathan Torgovnik

       Alex Webb

       Rebecca Norris Webb

       Stephen Wilkes

      AFTERWORD

       INTRODUCTION

      I began taking pictures for real at the end of middle school. It was unusual to walk around with a camera in the Queens, New York, neighborhood where l lived, but from age 15, I was never without my Nikon camera. I would shoot black-and-white film and develop it in the basement darkroom of my house.

      I loved the ritual of developing film and making prints: removing the exposed film from its metal canister, spooling the film onto reels in darkness, measuring the chemistry, and pouring each chemical into the developing tank. After the film was in the fixer, I could open the tank and see the negative images on the film for the first time.

      When the film was dry, I’d cut the negatives into strips and make a contact sheet. The negatives were placed in an envelope, and a number was assigned to each envelope. The same number would be put on the corresponding contact sheet, and they were stored in boxes. Every year, a new box was added, and the contact sheets became a diary visually documenting my passage through the years.

      For over 25 years, I exposed black-and-white film, developed it, and made contact sheets and prints.

      I stopped adding to this multi-decade collection of sequential envelopes in about 2000, when I started to shoot more color, and eventually to shoot digital.

      Some time later, I realized something had changed about my relationship to photography.

      I wasn’t sure that the new ways of working suited me. I wondered if other photographers’ worlds were turned upside down when they stopped mixing chemicals and isolating themselves in the dark.

      —Harvey Wang

       This book is the product of my interviews with photographers and important figures in the field of photography conducted from 2008 to 2013. All the text in these pages is excerpted from those interviews and from correspondence that followed.

       THE DARKROOM

       I remember my first experience in a

       darkroom, of watching an image come

       up in a black-and-white developer tray,

       and it is astonishing.

      —Alison Rossiter

       When I saw that print come

       up in the developer, I said,

       “I have found my life’s work.”

      —Alfred Gescheidt

       Not a unique story.

       You see a print come up

       in the developer, and you