From Darkroom to Daylight. Harvey Wang

you go through the morgue in any newspaper, and you see how things were airbrushed, and how things were changed, and how things were printed, and cut out, I don’t think you would be worried about Photoshop either.

       WILKES:

      This is where there’s a great irony, for me, is supposedly the great masters never manipulated, or did anything. Clearly that’s not the case. Guys did everything from drawing on negatives to layering negatives. I mean, photoshop was invented way before “Photoshop.”

       PHOTOSHOP BEFORE “PHOTOSHOP”

       Alfred Gescheidt

      I call myself a photo illustrator. And they say, “But you’re a photographer.” I said, “Yeah, that’s why I say photo illustration.” My first published work was in Life magazine, in 1951. I’m 22, I’m just a kid, and I just know, intuitively, if I’m ever going to get my career started, I’ve got to do something quote-unquote “different.”

      [Showing his work below] This happens to be a nude, and I did a number of them. People asked, “How’d you do that?” I said, “Well, very simple.” I had a jig, which I put underneath my enlarger. I’d make one exposure, and turn the jig. Just keep turning it. Just keep turning it. Turning it. Oh, what happened if you screwed up on one? You start all over again, that’s what you do! So I did a bunch of them, and they were wildly successful. I mean, a magazine called it “Alfred’s Asterisks.”

      I remember, there was a photographer called Jerry Uelsmann, either he or his assistant, or somebody associated with him, said, “We want to know how you’re doing these things. How many enlargers do you have?” And he came up to my little apartment, and he saw one D2 Omega, and said, “Well, where are the others?” I said, “That’s it.” I mean, they thought I had a whole battery of enlargers. In some cases, I said I did; they were someplace else. I mean, I didn’t want to [laughs]—you know, they were so intrigued.

      I met the art director of Playboy, and after I showed my work, he says, “I want your stuff in my magazine.” I said, “Me, for Playboy! You’re crazy.” “I just want you to do what you want to do.” So I had a box that said GESCHEIDT’S WORLD, and everything was erotic, and silly, and stupid.