Edward Weston's Enlargements

[Wisbl]

Hello,

I've noticed that all the talk about EW's prints is about contact
prints. What about enlargements? I noticed in "Forms of Passion" that a
great number of his negatives are graflex 3x4 and 4x5. He even spoke
about larger prints from these negs in the "Daybooks". Does anyone know
what papers he used, or what papers were used by COle to print these
negs after EW's death? How big are these enlargements, typically?

Just curious,

WL

[James Meckley]

My recollection is that he made 8x10 negatives from the smaller Graflex
negatives and then used the enlarged negatives to make 8x10 (naturally)
contact prints. This technique was applied primarily (exclusively?) to
his portrait work from the 1930s. Since the final print was made by
contact, he would have been free to use the same contact-printing papers
that he used for his conventional work.

James Meckley

[Silver Image]

On Sun, 09 Jul 2000 17:00:45 -0400, James Meckley
<jmec...@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu> wrote:

>Wisbl wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've noticed that all the talk about EW's prints is about contact
>> prints. What about enlargements?

>My recollection is that he made 8x10 negatives from the smaller Graflex

>negatives and then used the enlarged negatives to make 8x10 (naturally)

>contact prints. ... Since the final print was made by

>contact, he would have been free to use the same contact-printing papers
>that he used for his conventional work.

Any idea what these papers were??

[bmitch...@my-deja.com]

Although it has been written about, it isn't clear to me how he got
from small negative to 8x10 negative. Apparently in one step he used
the 8x10 camera to copy the smaller original, but did he copy a small
contact print, or a negative which would give him a positive which
would have to be contact printed to give a negative. I'd sure like to
have an informed opinion. And while we're at it, how did Paul Strand
do the same thing?

In article <3968E7F9...@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>,

jmec...@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu wrote:
> Wisbl wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I've noticed that all the talk about EW's prints is about contact

> > prints. What about enlargements? I noticed in "Forms of Passion"
that a
> > great number of his negatives are graflex 3x4 and 4x5. He even spoke
> > about larger prints from these negs in the "Daybooks". Does anyone
know
> > what papers he used, or what papers were used by COle to print these
> > negs after EW's death? How big are these enlargements, typically?
>

> My recollection is that he made 8x10 negatives from the smaller
Graflex
> negatives and then used the enlarged negatives to make 8x10
(naturally)

> contact prints. This technique was applied primarily (exclusively?)
to

> his portrait work from the 1930s. Since the final print was made by

> contact, he would have been free to use the same contact-printing
papers
> that he used for his conventional work.
>

> James Meckley
>

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[Michael Gudzinowicz]

Wisbl <isabe...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>Hello,
>
> I've noticed that all the talk about EW's prints is about contact
>prints. What about enlargements? I noticed in "Forms of Passion" that a
>great number of his negatives are graflex 3x4 and 4x5. He even spoke
>about larger prints from these negs in the "Daybooks". Does anyone know
>what papers he used, or what papers were used by COle to print these
>negs after EW's death? How big are these enlargements, typically?

The following text is a partial quote from the article "Thirty-five Years of
Portaiture" by Edward Weston published in the Sept. and Oct. 1939 issues of
"Camera Craft". It is long, but it does provide insight into how he worked
and why, and the source of information is reliable.

Most of the enlargments are 8x10 contact prints made from copies of the
smaller negatives enlarged by an 8x10 camera. They are not projection prints.

They've been printed on platinum, pop, old chlorobromide and "modern" silver
gelatin. With respect to Cole's print paper, I'd suggest that you contact
him, perhaps through the Weston Galleries or his workshop. I doubt that paper
selection has much to do with the quality of his prints from Edward's
negatives - Cole is a superb printer.

I don't know if he prints the portraits though. If I'm not mistaken, the
Edward Weston collection copyright was given to the Univ. of Arizona, and I
believe they were to share royalties with the Weston family. The family may
retain physical ownership of negatives and a right to print them. Anyway, the
portrait negatives may or may not be in AZ and available for printing.


Edward Weston...

"About 1912 I had acquired a Graflex. (Aside from the occasional commercial
speed jobs that came my way, I had to be prepared when some reckless
daredevil wanted to be done at the wheel of his Model-T-Racing.) One day
after trying unsuccessfully to keep an especially active child in focus with
the 8x10, I resorted to my Graflex. From that time on I used the smaller
camera for children even though it meant making many enlarged negatives since
most of my work then was finished on 8x10 platinum. Gradually I began to use
the Graflex for older subjects when they were nervous, restless, or otherwise
hard to control, but it was not until I moved to Mexico City in 1923 that I
began to use it for portraiture exclusively. My sittings there were mostly
from the Spanish-speaking population and my Spanish was anything but fluent.
Since I had come to depend on casual conversation as a means of disarming my
sitter, this lack of language was a gross handicap. ouldn' sittequite long enough with the studio camera: by the time I had focused, closed
the shutter, placed the holder, the right moment was gone. The Graflex gave
me just the needed increase in working speed. When I left Mexico I left my
studio camera behind. And with that camera I also left behind platinum
printing and negative enlarging. I was broke, unsettled, and Palladiotype was
expensive, did not keep well, and took five or six weeks to get since it had
to be imported from England.

Some years before the war I had acquired a brass mounted Verito -possibly the
first soft focus lens in professional use on this coast. At first I swallowed
the idea with all the enthusiasm of one who saw retouching lessened if not
eliminated, saw pleased patrons and increased sales. And I soon began to use
it for my personal pictorial work. I sent 16x20 platinums, printed from
enlarged negatives made with the Verito, to the London Salon. In 1917 I was
elected to membership, and to the company of such distinguished Americans as
Clarence White, Gertrude Kasebier, Wilbur Porterfield, Yarnall Abbott,
Rudolph Eickemeyer, Spencer Kellog. The honorary secretary pronounced my
entry the best group in the salon. I do not write boastfully for I am writing
of another person: all this is but a memory. But at the time I was elated.
More salon honors followed-medals, cups, professional awards, even an
editorial in the Los Angeles Times! I had arrived!

But had I? The day of glory was a short one. Within a few years I had stopped
sending to the London and other salons. I knew that my new work would not be
acceptable, that I would waste my time and the juries' by entering it.

Then came a rift between my own work and my portraits; the soft focus lens
remained a part of my portrait equipment long after I had discarded it for my
other work. The sincere enthusiasm with which I adopted it at first is in
some respects difficult to explain. I was never a frustrated painter; my
interest in photography had always been based on the unique qualities of the
medium. (I had tried gum prints, then popular, and rejected them at once.) I
think one of the main reasons for my adoption of the soft focus lens was my
lack of technical ability at the time. Just as at an earlier date I had used
a vignetter to remove imperfections I had not learned how to avoid, I then
welcomed a lens whose diffusion would hide the detail I could not handle.

Our own vision is automatically selective: we see what we want to see. It is
a long job for the photographer to train his eye to lens-sight, and then
learn to use that undiscriminating lens-sight selectively to suit his
purpose. This is not an apology. I still like some of my work of the soft
period-when not too soft. After the first debauch I usually stopped the
Verito down to f.11 or smaller. Even now for landscapes I like the quality
of the single element Protar which has not the critical definition of a
Tessar doublet, and for portraiture I use a Meyer Plasmat for like reasons.

I continued to use the soft focus lens for portraiture for purely economical
reasons. Portraiture had to support me if I was to do the work in photography
I wanted to. It was not the time to quarrel with my bread and butter.
Bread-and-butter reasons also kept me retouching my professional portraits
until 1934. I was a good retoucher, expert enough to flatter a sitter into
actually believing he looked that way. I would spend hours on one negative,
working so carefully that almost no trace of the pencil remained. At the same
time I was careful to preserve modelling. After I abandoned the old studio
camera, I made negatives with a sharp lens on 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 film and enlarged
them to 8x10 with the soft lens, stopped down just short of being sharp. The
illusion was complete; the retouching disappeared.

From the time I left Mexico in 1926 until 1933 all of my professional
portraits were made that way and printed on matt paper. But during that time
I was constantly campaigning for the kind of portraits I wanted to do:
unretouched contact prints on glossy paper. I preached unretouched portraits
to everyone who came for a sitting, and sent only unretouched ones to
exhibits. It was a long fight but my propaganda finally brought results.
Gradually more and more people came to me who had seen my unretouched
portraits in exhibits, and almost invariably they came with the same
complaint: "I had a set of excellent proofs from the Blank Studio, but when
the finished prints were delivered they were so retouched there was nothing
left." In 1933 I had reached the point were 75% of my orders were for
unretouched prints. The other 25% were a rattling skeleton in my closet. I
put the negatives away where I wouldn't have to see them but I knew they were
there. I was tired of preaching one thing and having to practice another.
Every order I retouched made me a little more desperate.

Then one day a rather unattractive couple came in and asked for portraits,
specifying that they wanted to look beautiful and handsome. I retouched the
negatives before I showed proofs; the man and wife were pleased with them and
gave me a good order.

Then, without even realizing the proofs were already retouched, they
proceeded to enumerate the things they wanted taken out! And what they wanted
out was precisely everything.

It was a $400 order. I removed everything from the negatives as instructed,
and when I went into the darkroom to print, the sight of them made me
physically sick. It was then I decided what the $400 would be used for. The
couple seemed a little startled when they first saw the finished prints, but
after a lengthy inspection decided they liked them and gave me a check. I
cashed it at once and the next day ordered the 4x5 R.B. Auto Graflex fitted
with an f.5.5, 10 3/4" Meyer Plasmat lens which I have used for portraiture
ever since.

As soon as possible I had a row of 4x5 contacts hung on my studio wall,
opposite a row of 8x10s. To my joy I found an almost unanimous expression of
preference for the small ones. I found plenty of people who were tired of big
portraits, thought them vulgar, didn't like to give them to friends, saw no
place for them in modern homes and apartments. This encouragement was all I
needed. Soon there were glossy contacts in my showcase with a sign reading
UNRETOUCHED PORTRAITS.

There was a pleasant epilogue to the horror-order that bought my Graflex. A
few weeks after the retouched-to-death prints had been delivered, the man
wrote to tell me none of their friends would have the pictures. I answered
immediately saying I would be glad to give them another sitting free of
charge and $400 worth of prints free of charge-unretouched contact prints on
glossy paper. My letter was never answered.

(The second half of this article will deal with my present way of working,
technical problems, etc., with examples of work from 1934 to the present.)

II.

(Portraits illustrating this article were made with a 4x5 R.B. Auto-Graflex,
fitted with a 10 3/4" f: 5.5 Meyer Plasmat, on Panchromatic film, developed
in Pyro-Soda, printed on chloro-bromide developed in Amidol. Heads of
Stravinsky and Carma Lila were made in direct sunlight, latter with sky
background. All others were made indoors with window light. None were posed,
even by suggestion.)

The word retouch means to repair or restore. I retouch my negatives when I
remove imperfections due to dust specks, scratches, etc. Since photography
cannot very well be carried on in a vacuum, these flaws are bound to appear,
and if the photographer wants to present clean work he must retouch his
negatives and spot his prints. That is the legitimate and necessary place of
retouching in photography. But when the photographer applies this technique
to his subject rather than his negative, when he tries to restore the bloom
of youth to a middle-aged, double-chinned dowager by removing her actual
image and substituting a new one, the act should not properly be called
retouching any more than the result should be called a photograph.

I know a good many photographers who admit this. But, they say, we have to
eat, so we must please the customer and the customer wants to be flattered.
The answer to that is that image-retouching does not produce a flattering
photograph.

I have spoken before of the importance of authenticity in a photograph; in
portraiture this quality is doubly important. The chief charm of the
photographic portrait lies in its intense reality, its ability to vividly
represent a living person. As I have pointed out before, this quality depends
upon the integrity of the photographic image; and retouching the image, by
destroying that integrity, robs the portrait of its most important attribute.
Admittedly there is good and bad retouching; but no matter how adroit the
pencil work something of the living photographic quality is lost-and too
often the pencil work is far from adroit and all is lost.

Every beginner should study the portraits that date from photography's
childhood. In the work of D.O. Hill he will find the quality I speak of. When
he sees there what was once accomplished with the most primitive of
tools-paper negatives that needed three to six minutes' exposure in direct
sunlight-then he will be able to appreciate how far photography has fallen,
and perhaps he may bestir himself to do something about it.

Many portrait photographers are handicapped by their steadfast belief that
the camera takes the picture and that they can have no voice, or very little,
in the matter until after the exposure is made. Their aim is to make
photographs without learning to be photographers. Through their efforts the
process of image-retouching has been incorporated into portraiture as an
indispensable ingredient

A. Make the negative
B. Remove the image
C. Substitute another image

This has come to be such a recognized procedure that the words unretouched
portraits instantly calls up an unpleasant image: the leering visage on an
old passport or a "modern" epidermis-map of enlarged pores and blemishes. So
it is well to remember that the camera is a machine and that there must be a
photographer to take the picture. The camera can flatter as well as distort,
even as the violin can produce sweet notes as well as sour ones.

There can be no formula for good portraits; rules, in fact, are a handicap.
But the very nature of the medium suggests the best approach. Spontaneity is
implicit in the photographic process. A costume piece always looks like a
costume piece; a carefully posed, intricately lighted model looks carefully
posed and intricately lighted. Stagey treatment fails because the
photographer is unable to put anything over on his basically honest
medium-his results invariably tell on him."

More follows in the article...

[C. W. Dean]

I couldn't bring myself to snip any of the above. This is great
information. I have always heard that Edward Weston, in later life,
wanted to suppress the portrait work of his pre-Mexico studio
career--despite the international recognition it brought him. His own
words seem to explain this. The retouching issues (and frustrations)
faced by the professional portrait photographer have never been stated
so well, and not much has changed since he wrote this piece!
--
Best regards & Good Photography!
C. W. Dean
Practicing Professional Photography since 1972
Photography Samples: http://www.erols.com/cwdean/home.htm

[Wayne]

Silver Image wrote:
>
> On Sun, 09 Jul 2000 17:00:45 -0400, James Meckley
> <jmec...@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu> wrote:
>

> >Wisbl wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I've noticed that all the talk about EW's prints is about contact
> >> prints. What about enlargements?
>

> >My recollection is that he made 8x10 negatives from the smaller Graflex
> >negatives and then used the enlarged negatives to make 8x10 (naturally)

> >contact prints. ... Since the final print was made by

> >contact, he would have been free to use the same contact-printing papers
> >that he used for his conventional work.
>

> Any idea what these papers were??

Defenders "Velour Black", for one.

Wayne

[Rod Fleming]

"Michael Gudzinowicz" <bg...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote in message
news:8kb01l$fhl$1...@freenet9.carleton.ca...

> More follows in the article...
>
>

Michael,

A big round of applause and many thanks. Not only is that the first time I
have read that article, which is a good start, but I am conscious of the
length of time it must have taken you to key all that in.

Well done.

Rod

[Michael Gudzinowicz]

I just told my scanner and OCR program that they have had received a big
round of applause.

I only pasted in a section of the article which was related to the request.
Articles written by Weston are reprinted in "Edward Weston On Photography",
and contemporary articles about him are in "Edward Weston Omnibus : A
Critical Anthology".

_______________________________

Edward Weston On Photography / edited and with an introduction by
Peter C. Bunnell
LC Control Number: 83000508
Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Personal Name: Weston, Edward, 1886-1958.
Main Title: Edward Weston on photography / edited and with an
introduction by Peter C. Bunnell.
Published/Created: Salt Lake City : P. Smith Books, 1983.
Related Names: Bunnell, Peter C.
Description: xxii, 158 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.
ISBN: 0879051477 (pbk.) :
Subjects: Photography.
LC Classification: TR7 .W47 1983
Dewey Class No.: 770 19
_______________________________

TITLE Edward Weston Omnibus : A Critical Anthology / edited and
with introductions by Beaumont Newhall and Amy Conger. --
PUBLISHER Salt Lake City : G.M. Smith : Peregrine Smith Books, 1984.
DESCRIPT 1)p. cm.
SUBJECTS 1) Weston, Edward, 1886-1958.
NOTES Includes index.
ADDAUTHOR 1)Weston, Edward, 1886-1958.
2)Newhall, Beaumont, 1908-
3)Conger, Amy, 1942-
LCCN/DYNIX 84003214 22566

[Msherck]

>Although it has been written about, it isn't clear to me how he got
>from small negative to 8x10 negative. Apparently in one step

Two steps, actually: you "enlarge" the small negative onto the larger negative
(which results in a positive image,) then "contact print" the enlarged positive
onto more film for an enlarged negative. Which you can then contact print onto
paper. :)
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
C program run. C program crash. C programmer quit.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>