Not a day has gone by in the last 10 that I haven’t received a quick and happy e-mail from one of the artists whose work I represent telling me of a competition they won or a show they were accepted into or some other honor. Great way to make these wintry days shine bright, I can tell you. I’m feeling giddy.

But what I’m discovering is that they learned about a lot of these quality opportunities by subscribing to Jim’s blog at http://56×56.com.

Nightfall, Otter Cliffs©Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved

Jim Nickelson is a friend. He’s also a terrific landscape photographer and I represent his work. He has become one of the top digital printers in Maine, and he prints the work of many photographers associated with VoxPhotographs. He recently gave up a career as a patent attorney (and before that an aeronautical engineer at NASA) (I’m not kidding about this) to focus entirely on photography and printing. Anyone who works with him loves him. And from time to time Jim writes about the technology of the craft on this blog for me. But all of this is an aside, actually.

Solar Sadie©Mary Woodman. All Rights Reserved

I want Maine’s fine art photographer community to put itself on the international map, and to that end I never cease reminding the VoxPhotographs artists to get their work out there. COLOR magazine is a good example: Abigail Wellman’s image was on the cover of the COLOR Single Image Competition issue two years ago – the first competition she had entered in years. This time around, Sharon Arnold and Mary Woodman’s submissions have received GOLD Awards in the same competition – awarded to only 15 images out of this year’s total submission of 1900 images. And that’s not all: 6 more images submitted by VoxPhotographs artists have been awarded MERIT awards by COLOR. I want the world to know something incredible is happening in Maine with respect to fine art photography, and this is a darn good way to get the word out – the magazine will be out in March.

Lost Highways#4©Sharon Arnold. All Rights Reserved.

In the current issue of B&W/COLOR, VoxPhotographs artist Arla Patch is a featured Spotlight artist and won that right over hundreds of other artists after submitting her work last year for COLOR’s portfolio competition. Others have won regional, national and international competitions, awards and acceptance into a myriad of show and exhibits, from the 2012 San Francisco International Photography Exhibit Top 40 (Boucher) to PhotoPlace Gallery/VT juried shows (Nickelson, Yudelman, Szwajkos, Boucher), to Creative Portland’s next Pecha Kucha presentation evening/Feb.16 (Wade) and everything in between.

These successes increase their appeal to curators putting exhibits together here in Maine as well. It says they are serious players who believe in their work.

You play, you win. And nice guy that he is, Jim Nickelson is willing to help. http://56×56.com/.

b.1950B©Arla Patch. All Rights Reserved

In the current issue of Black & White/COLOR magazine Dean Brierly, the editor, writes about recently finding several of his images on a design website in his editorial “Are We Losing Control of Our Images?”. No one had asked his permission to use them. If that isn’t bad enough, someone wrote a description of how he made these photographs that is totally inaccurate.

He includes a quote from Bill Gates: “Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”

I asked some photographers in Maine to tell me how they protect their work from online pirating and got a wide spectrum of answers:

1) Nothing.

2) Copyright all images with the U.S.Copyright Office. Easy and inexpensive and it protects you in case someone uses your image unlawfully.

3) Watermark on each image, or at least when uploading to Facebook.

4) Upload only limited dimensions and resolution for any images for public viewing.

5) Use a web-host designed to prevent image theft, like foliosnap.com.

6) Copyright notices in the metadata (XMP – Extensable Metadata Program), on the website and integrate a tool into the website template that makes pirating much more difficult.

A couple of these photographers have had images used without their permission, including for advertising/commercial purposes. Definitely theft and the thief knows it. One photographer had his entire site lifted, duplicated and put on another server.

Everyone who responded said putting a watermark on all images on their websites is just not a viable alternative. You just give up too much of the point of a website – so your work can be seen and appreciated. A watermark is annoying and severely detracts from the work, they said.

On a slightly different note, here’s a straightforward response to a more subtle form of “theft” -  the never-ending requests to artists to give their work away, posted by Californian photographer John Mueller at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/01/10/this-photograph-is-not-free/. I am constantly reminding people that artists must eat too. Asking artists to donate work for endless fundraisers, or swap it for “exposure”, is a not-so-subtle message that art really has no value at all as it’s so easily given away. It’s time to work other professionals into the “donated work” mix for such events.

Claudia rules at the Lewis Gallery at the downtown main branch of the Portland Public Library (Monument Square), but not for long.

From now until only January 28 you can sweep down the stairs into the gallery to soak up Bruce Brown’s latest curatorial offering: “Around the House”. The first thing you’ll most likely see are three big, stunning pictures by Luc Demers, including “South Window, 2010″, my favorite, below. These works push to the edge of reality and then beyond and I’ve never seen anything like them in Maine until now. I found them thrilling. If you spend time getting up close and studying them you’ll be rewarded with surprises.

South Window, 2010 (Darkened Rooms)©Luc Demers. All Rights Reserved

But as you ease your way around to the left be prepared for the shock of Ben de Haan’s three edgy works from a very well-explored body of work of 14 images called “Like Animals”. He’s a young artist and it’s unusual to see such complexity so thoroughly explored from someone who is 24 years old. “Like Animals” is about “crooked fairy tales” and “a darker and perhaps alternative reality regarding consumption, identity, and truth.”

There’s No Place Like Home©Ben De Haan. All Rights Reserved

Then you’ll meet Claudia. Jeffrey Becton’s newest work “Wharf House, Claudia” was causing a stir at the opening and, in fact, Claudia’s presence is so formidable, it is difficult not to want to start a conversation with her. Becton has been creating one-of-a-kind photo montages for years, at the very beginning of digital capabilities, and before anyone else in Maine even thought of it. His newest images have moved into a new realm, and the two in this show will demand your full attention.

The party doesn’t lag a bit after after you leave Claudia. The neighboring quartet of work by Ilya Askinazi is so powerful I could spend a day with them and still feel like I had a lot to learn. I’ve never seen a photo like “Untitled #1″  (listed as a Lodima Silver Chloride Contact Print) and am told it’s actually Sean Harris’ head and Bruce Brown’s apartment’s venetian blind. It’s astounding and completely supported by the three other stunning works presented. (Two of these are “Azo Prints” and Askinazi tells me: “Azo was the most beautiful contact single weight paper Kodak produced since the late 1800′s and was their longest paper in production until 2006, when they stopped all production of silver gelatin paper. Together with a group of other dedicated nut cases, I have am making a similar stock. This paper has an extra layer of a special chemical which reflects the light shined directly on it. Azo was the paper Brett Weston showed to his father Edward, marveling about its deep endless blacks…”.)

Untitled #1©Ilya Askinazi. All Rights Reserved

There is engaging work from well-known artists Cig Harvey,  Melonie Bennett, and Jon Edwards and not-as-often-seen artists Kate Philbrick, Claire Seidle and Roberta Baumann.  Some fresh work from Daniel Davis – beautiful, large selenium-toned silver gelatin prints – reflect his fairly new status as a young father, as do many of the works in the show – centering on children themselves or the detritus of their days.

Drawing©Daniel E. Davis. All Rights Reserved

Two artists presented their work as dye-infused coated metal prints and many people sought out Sarah Szwajkos and René Braun to ask them about their photographs. Szwajkos presents one 24×24 piece flanked by a set of four 11×11 works, all with a satin finish. Braun’s 12 small black and white on-metal pieces are presented with a glossy finish. It’s a presentation that is hugely popular with both private and corporate collectors, as well as Maine’s fine art photographers.

Crazy Lamp and Abstract Art, 2008©Sarah Szwajkos. All Rights Reserved

René Braun’s works were taken over the last ten years either at the artist’s home in Maine or his mother’s in Czechoslovakia. They stand on their own for sure, but I enjoyed hearing his stories about them, as they are very personal images for him.

Solace©René Braun. All Rights Reserved

I wrote about Noel Krell’s amazing image “Anina at Rest, 2008″ a couple of years ago and have not forgotten its impact, so I was delighted to be able to study it again. If you haven’t seen it, you are in for a chill and a thrill when you do.

When you end up at five of Thomas Birtwistle’s interiors you’ll want to get right up to them. They will leave you smiling – just to be a part of these hot slices of color and life.

Leaving, Harmony, Maine, 1997©Thomas Birtwistle. All Rights Reserved

It’s great to kick off 2012 with a show of work by 17 Maine-based or -connected photographers, and “Around the House”, sponsored by CMCA in Rockport, is a banquet of styles, sensitivities and processes, and a very satisfying repast it is. We would expect nothing less from Bruce Brown, curator emeritus of CMCA – and irrefutably one of Maine’s biggest champions of its fine art photographers.

“Around the House” – through 1/28/28 – and all under the watchful eye of Claudia.

What struck me from the first image Szarkowski writes about in “Looking at Photographs” (the book is set up so accessibly: left hand side is text, right hand is the image) is the “firsts”. The art of making photographs has a short history and every decade there were major changes in the medium. And I’m not talking about processes only. I’m talking more about how photography changed the way we see life. When I study photo history I constantly have to remind myself that the first photograph taken from above was in 1912 (Alvin Langdon Coburn). It is vital to understand how the young medium of photography changed everything in how we see the world around us, as well as ourselves. Here are a few of my favorite FIRSTS:

Early daguerreotype sample

• The first portrait (1839): Daguerre created an astonishing object – this coated silver thing, but…to what end? For painters to use? For science? No one really knew. Hmmmm. Let’s fool around make a picture of Grandma! HEY! Now make one of me! And I’ll make one of you! HEY! We could make pictures of everyone in the family!

• Multiple copies (1839): With this new calotype negative I can give a copy of this photograph of me to everyone I know!

• Big sky/Vistas (1851): Go way over there and take a picture of me climbing an Egyptian pyramid and get all the camels and everything in between. I can’t believe the detail in this picture from this new glass negative. HEY! I could sell these to people who have never been here! That makes me a “publisher”!

• The professional photographer (1840′s): Szarkowski writes: “It is self-evident that a truly radical invention is one that nobody knows how to use. In 1839 there were no photographers, only experimenters: ten years later every town of even modest pretensions had at least one daguerreotype gallery.” I’m tired of being a baker. I’m going to open a portrait studio and get in on this fad because it probably is just a flash in the pan.

• Pictures of war???: Sorry, Mr. Gardner, but…war? I know you are the first one to take battle pictures, but I want to forget the war, not remember it with your two volume set “Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the War” (1865).

The Dead at Antietam by Alexander Gardner, 1862

• Freezing motion (1880′s): It took six years of trying, but Eadweard Muybridge figured it out with his locomotion photography: a horse does lift all four hooves off the ground at one point while running. Who’d a thunk it?

Horse Galloping by Eadweard Muybridge

• Making nothing something: “Photography…was quick, easy, ubiquitous, and cheap, and was used to record everything, most of which seemed, by painters’ standards, evanescent and trivial.It is true: Most of what photography recorded was trivial. Nevertheless, once the pictures were made a curious thing happened: By the very fact of being transfixed, these trivial things were somehow elevated, and became part of formal history and tradition.” (p. 58, “Looking at Photographs”). By “quoting out of context” and “photographing the trivial” photography transformed the way we see the world around us. It made something out of nothing.

• Winning the war: During the WWI, snapshots taken from planes became one of the most vital sources of information as they morphed into series of shots of squiggles, lines and squares, which were then turned into goldmines by trained interpreters. Edward Steichen completely revised his photographic style after his stint as an aeronautical photographer during the war. Find out how in the book.

• Reaching the world: the half-tone plate revolutionized photography and photographs became an integral part of publications worldwide. Now you got an “assignment” from a magazine editor and the world was your oyster. Mom! I’m famous!

•  When a green pepper is not just a green pepper: Edward Weston was “a man whose work has changed our perception of what the world and life are like.” As Szarkowski says, “the things of everyday experience had been transformed for Weston into organic sculptures” and the rest is history.Pepper No.30 (1930)©Edward Weston. All Rights Reserved

“Looking at Photographs” is a vitally important trip to the corners of the world of photography for anyone interested in photographs. It costs almost nothing and you don’t even  have to leave your house to take this trip, but your understanding of photography today – and your own work, if you are a photographer – will never be the same. Get your year off to the best start by investing in these two books.

It is no understatement: from it’s inception, photography transformed the way we see: the object in front of us, the world and each other. And it is breaking new ground today faster than we can keep up. To say it’s exciting is the understatement of the year.

He asked questions and listened to the answers and asked more questions. He was respectful of the level of work available to him and “got it”.  He was there to enhance his family’s home and lives with art. He was engaged. And such a client is always a gratifying experience for a dealer.

Every sale I make at VoxPhotographs is a big deal whether it’s one image or 35 (yes, it happens). But the most meaningful sales – the ones that confirm that the artists whose work I represent and I are doing something truly worthwhile – are the sales that result when a collector views an image and something clicks in the soul. Without it in his life, there will be a void that didn’t exist a minute ago.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” - Thomas Merton

I know the work in the portfolios at VoxPhotographs represents the best of what my artists have to give creatively. They think about their work all the time, and make sacrifices to create it and make it available for viewing by others. All of them make photographs because they must. In the end, these acts of creation are what feeds their souls.

  South Branch Pond©Mary Woodman

So the best gift for me is this: enhancing someone’s life with a work of art that colors their daily existence, takes them somewhere aesthetically they haven’t yet been. Connecting the soul of the artist to the soul of the collector. It’s what matters.

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” - Pablo Picasso

TO BE PUBLISHED, OR SELF-PUBLISH?

with Mary Virginia Swanson
Sunday, January 15th, 2012
10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. at the Griffin Museum
Members: $50.00 – Order On- Line
Non-Members $90.00 – Order On-Line

The print-on-demand revolution has opened up new publishing possibilities for photographers; it has never been easier or more affordable to produce and market a book of your photographs. Traditional publishing brings a specialized team with experience with design, production, marketing and distribution systems to your project. In a self-publishing scenario you create the book you envision, but without the input and publishing house expertise. Which scenario is best for you?

In this three-hour illustrated presentation, MVS will discuss the pros/cons of both avenues to publishing towards determinng which path is right for you and your work. Swanson will share resources from her recent title Publish Your Photography Book (co-authored with Darius Himes, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011, ), as well as  insights she has gained through her own experiences and those of artists with completed publications.

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT WITH MS. SWANSON, current Members of the Griffin Museum who attend Ms. Swanson’s seminar will be eligible to sign up for a one-hour consultation at a one-time discounted rate; a limited number of sessions will be booked on a first-come, first-served basis with Ms. Swanson during her visit to Boston. Sessions will be held January 17-20 at the Doubletree Hotel, Downtown Boston; contact Kelsey Vance for further information and to book your session.

——————-
The Griffin Museum is an important resource for fine art photographers and should be on your radar.

67 Shore Road, Winchester MA 01890
Tel. 781-729-1158 | Fax: 781-721-2765
photos@griffinmuseum.org

Atmosphere #002, 2011©Cole Caswell. All Rights Reserved

“Formal Evidence” was pulled together by David Segre and features the work of three artists: Thomas Birtwistle, Cole Caswell and Bryan Graf. Before you go to the gallery, I strongly recommend you visit their websites – it will make a difference to what you take away from seeing the work itself. While Birtwistle’s work is eminently accessible, the work on view from Caswell and Graf left me feeling very much like I was missing the point and I found their artist statements impenetrable. I didn’t feel that way when viewing their websites. For all three artists, the work on view at Zero Station is but a tip of the iceberg of their extensive portfolios of work and the website visits will help you appreciate the whole pie of what they create.

Pickled Eggs©Thomas Birtwistle. All Rights Reserved

Birtwistle’s artist statement does enhance the back story of the particular series of work featured in “Formal Evidence”. I know his work as I represent it via VoxPhotographs and this is a strong collection and it’s been very much in the public eye the last 3 years.

However, I couldn’t get the link between it and the other two artists in the show, so I e-mailed David Segre to ask him to explain the point of it all and he responded:

“Through analog and contemporary methods of photo capture and printing, all three artists portray the relationship between our natural world and the chemicals that can not only damage and preserve our surroundings, but that can also be used to represent stories captured in images.  Thomas, Cole and Bryan use experimentation and chemical manipulation to create photographs that reinforce our conflicted relationship with nature.”

Hmmm.

Well…here’s another go at it – obviously my confusion represents a minority of one – Phil Isaacson gives intelligent insight into the show in the 12/11/11 Maine Sunday Telegram and I reproduce it in its entirety here:

“FORMAL EVIDENCE” at Zero Station introduces itself as work by three artists utilizing formal, historical and experimental methods related to photography. It’s an apt description. In one way or another, the show has components that draw upon traditional, pre-digital image making. It speaks of commitment to the values of photographic tradition and non-electronic skills. I note the substantiality of the event by pointing out that it is produced by a guest curator, David Segre, an applaudable effort by Zero Station.

There are three participants: Cole Caswell, Thomas Birtwistle and Bryan Graf. Caswell’s principal images are of the Meadowlands, the gigantic toxic dump that has served the New York City area. They were obtained through the ancient wet plate collodion process, a technique of heroes. It requires hauling a darkroom around from site to site and other efforts that are indescribable.

Caswell prints the large negatives so obtained on lightly treated common newsprint. The resulting huge images, in their physical coarseness, speak eloquently of the subject matter. The grittiness and imperfection of their sheets become adjuncts of the horror of the dump.

On a different subject and a more experimental level, two large black-and-white images garnered by exposing film treated with chemicals in a damp cellar have celestial suggestions. The bizarre markings, whatever their cause, suggest things that are not of our world.

Birtwistle offers five formal portraits of jarred vegetables and other consumables (can you eat dried clover?). In their self-assurance and perfection of their arrangement and elegant state of preservation, they achieve iconic status. They seek veneration, and meet you head-on in homely splendor.

Graf’s work is a presentation in the workings of an aesthetic evolution. It starts with a Polaroid of a simple view from a window or perhaps of a clutch of wisteria or a borrowed snapshot of a lake. From there, in reproduced form, it makes its way onto a sheet of sunbleached paper, which, in turn, inspires a photo created on a black-and-white negative.

My details on the process may not be precise, but the fact of the transition is the thing. The existence of a path is where the fascination lies.

This is a fresh, unusual show. It tells us something about where photography was, and suggests realms to which it might go.”- Phil Isaacson

Location #001, Meadowlands NJ, 2011©Cole Caswell. All Rights Reserved

I first heard about Limelight Gallery while reading the book “Street Scene – The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940-1959″. From there I ordered Helen Gee’s memoir “Limelight” (1997) and her book “Photography of the Fifties – An American Perspective” (1983). All this took place last winter (2011) and I’m finally getting around to writing about this amazing scene.

Helen Gee opened the first gallery in the country to exhibit only photographs. The Limelight Gallery was located on Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village and operated for 7 years.

Gee’s ability to run a business was non-existent but she was an avid photographer and one day while eating a sausage sandwich in NYC where she lives, she had an epiphany: “Why not open a European-style coffeehouse and combine it with a gallery devoted exclusively to photography?” Thus starts the story of a 7-year odyssey of horrible business practices, few – very few – sales, and a photographers’ hangout that became a legend.

Rarely had any gallery included photographs in their exhibits and even more rarely did a photograph sell. As Gee says, photographers just exchanged photographs and talked about them, but a sale was hardly considered part of the program. Helen Gee had to have a way to support a gallery to show photographs – assuming sales would be infrequent – and as coffee houses were springing up in NYC, she decided to create the combo.

Limelight was the first gallery in the USA to exhibit only photographs.

She decided the right photographer to launch the gallery would be Robert Frank and she made a decidedly bizarre visit to his studio/living quarters. Frank was not agreeable to the notion, but over the next year Gee featured the work of 24 fine art photographers (including Frank in a group show) ranging from Rudy Burckhardt to Berenice Abbott, and Ansel Adams to Edward Weston.

As the Limelight Gallery and coffeehouse exploded into the scene, Gee accomplished another of her goals for the place: it became THE hangout for the photography crowd. On any given evening you could wander in there and chat with Arnold Newman, Weegee or Lisette Model, among other now famous artists.

Frosted Window, Rochester, New York, 1952©Minor White. All Rights Reserved.

It was six months before she had her first sale. Minor White’s work was on display for 5-6 weeks in the fall and a young guy had been pondering the exhibit for an hour before he decided which image to purchase. AND he wanted to take it with him! In a panic, Helen Gee phone Minor White to ask his permission, seriously doubting he would give it, as the sequencing of his work in any exhibit was vital to him. Surprise! Here’s what he said to her on the phone:

“WHAT? Somebody wants to buy a photograph? And he wants you to take it off the wall? TAKE IT DOWN!”. It was a $10 sale, White receiving a check for $7.50 representing the balance after the gallery’s commission. He was delighted.

Advertisement for the Limelight cafe and photography gallery located at 91 Seventh Avenue South at Sheridan Square, published in The Village Voice on February 15, 1956.

Selling photographs is still a tough road for artists and galleries alike. When I was reading these books, I had just come off of a frustrating fall – I had put out so much energy promoting the work of the twelve artists associated with  VoxPhotographs and had little to show for it. It was a sort of schadenfreude consolation to read that at Limelight, sales were few and far between. But on the other hand, it was deeply depressing. After 60 years, had nothing changed?

Tetons and the Snake River, 1942©Ansel Adams. All Rights Reserved.

In February of 1956, Ansel Adams had his first show at Limelight. Over 50 prints were installed at a price of $35 each. Frankly, it’s painful even typing that sentence. Included in the show were two portfolios of work priced at $100. One of those portfolios was the only sale during the show. In fact, it was not overly popular, especially with other photographers. Comments were made that it was too dramatic, too romantic, not gritty enough for the NYC crowd.

Interestingly, Vincent Hartigan, head of the art dept. at the University of Maine, booked the second venue of Adams’ show. He had collaborated with Helen Gee previously – providing a second venue for Eliot Porter and Arnold Newman shows. Gee considered it a bold step for Hartigan to be including photographs in the mix of exhibits. Very few institutions were doing so.

Can you see why this whole scene is a fascinating read? It’s the BEGINNING of photographers showing work in galleries. And the stories! weird and amazing about Imogene Cunningham, Edward Steichen, and many others.  There are stories about W. Eugene Smith that will curl your hair.

Gee is the first to admit in her memoir, “Management was not my forte. I was not good at firing. Neither was I good at paperwork.” And I can assure you this lack of business acumen and people management resulted in some really wacky scenarios more befitting the “I Love Lucy” series.

Men’s Fashions, Atget, Eugene (1857-1927). 1925 / printed 1956 by Berenice Abbott from Atget’s negative toned gelatin silver print.

There’s an interesting scene too, with Berenice Abbott, who approached Gee about an exhibit, but not of her own work. She had made prints from Eugene Atget’s plates and had had no luck in getting anyone interested in exhibiting them – including MOMA, George Eastman House and many other institutions. Julien Levy, who had collaborated with Abbott to save and preserve the Atget oeuvre, had had an exhibit of the prints priced at $10 – but no sales. Helen Gee tried $20 – Abbott insisted on keeping the price down, being very pessimistic about the success of the exhibit. But Gee had a hunch the Atget images would strike a chord with her crowd – and she was right. Forty of the sixty prints on view sold during the show.

As Gee worked her way through exhibits of the works of well over 100 photographers of the day including David “Chim” Seymour, Robert Doisneau and Gordon Parks, the strain and struggle of keeping the Limelight going became too much and she sold it. It went through several morphs, eventually becoming a transvestite bar “with a heavy drug scene” and was closed by police in 1971.

Her penultimate show of work, in 1960, featured the photographs of Paul Caponigro and Minor White. And the final kicker? From 12/16/60 – 1/31/61, the vintage works of none other than Julia Margaret Cameron were exhibited as the last hurrah. Did I mention Gee had no insurance by this time?

“Mrs. Duckworth” by Julia Margaret Cameron.

Helen Gee’s last sale as proprietor of the Limelight Gallery and coffeehouse was to Beaumont Newhall. He purchased a Julia Margaret Cameron portrait of Mrs. Duckworth (Virginia Woolf’s mother) for $45.

“Limelight” is just an amazing read – Helen Gee is not afraid to tell it like it was and my jaw was dropping constantly as I turned the pages. Winter’s here. Find a copy of the book and give yourself a big, juicy and unforgettable treat of a read to pass a few of those snowy hours ahead.

Photography of the Fifties – An American Perspective – published in 1983.

While the book is far from perfect, for me it’s a Tutorial 101 about the transition from film to digital photograph printing. Nash Editions was the West Coast mecca for many artists in the early 90′s where they sat at the feet of the Iris 3047 inkjet printer there and marveled at the incredible renditions of their work coming off it.  The fact that that printer is now ensconced in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History speaks volumes about what has happened since then in the world of digital printing of photographs.

Along with the endless experimentation by many with respect to papers and other substrates, inks and print longevity, came a new lexicon. Thus was born the term “giclée”. According to this book, the art reproduction market felt “uncomfortable” selling something called “inkjet prints”. Jack Duganne decided to make up a word that sounded classier. Seeing as the inkjet nozzles spray inks onto the surface, he made use of the French verb (always sounds classier no matter what it is!) for “to spray” – which is “gicler”. Well, Nash Editions states Mr. Duganne meant the word as synonymous with “serigraph” but his website states pretty darn clearly with a quote from Publish magazine on the home page that he now considers it synonymous with “fine-art digital print”.

I have to admit that “inkjet print” always sounds unnervingly underwhelming to me and I was glad when we could actually claim that the print for sale was an “archival digital print”. Last year I was diplomatically updated by one of Maine’s esteemed fine art photographers that I should now be using the term “pigment print”. Even better. Considering everyone has their own inkjet printer and you get buy them for $50, getting away from that “everyman” term works for me.

Looking West (1994)©Jeffrey C. Becton

But what of “giclée”? I’ve always found the word pretentious and from what I’m reading so did most high level artists at the time – as well as the companies hired to make their prints. They refused to use it. So let’s go with the definition Nash Editions talks about: “The term is only applied to prints made with matte-surface fine-art papers or canvas.” It’s perhaps a good term for fine art reproductions on paper that are NOT photographs but anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a printer or photographer should studiously avoid the term in my book. It reeks of “fake” to me and with the other-worldly quality of prints coming out of digital printers these days, there’s no reason to use sleight of hand to sell them. They speak for themselves and besides, the market has kind of come around after all these years.

It IS interesting to read that the four companies who dominated the field in the manufacturing of printers, inks and papers had not traditionally been in the photographic films or papers (Canon made cameras and lenses of course) business. It would have made more sense if Kodak or Agfa had led the way, but that’s what happens when a process or industry completely changes course, transformed into a completely different creature. Epson took the lead in 2000 introducing dye-based inks to the market, then pigmented inks – and the rest is history.

In my book any photographer who prints their images on canvas should give up photography and take up painting. I hate it when photographers go to any lengths to make their photographs “look like paintings” – whether with digital darkroom gimmicks or substrates like canvas. And as for “giclée”? Let’s give it a decent burial and move on.

Pentecost (1981/1997)©Peter Ralston. This iconic image is also included in Nash Editions on p. 150. www.pralston.com.

From time to time I invite a few fine art photographers to my gallery for a Salon. I serve a light supper and we talk about photographs and what’s on their minds as photographers – anything to do with themselves and the work. Each artist brings a new image, hangs it on the wall and after dinner each talks in turn about what he/she is doing and where they are going.

Last evening I changed the program a bit and invited Maine Media Workshop’s faculty member – and an extraordinary photographer in his own right – Brenton Hamilton to lecture on “Beyond Digital”. He had covered this topic in two separate Salons I hosted in the last six months for Museum curators and I knew the photographers themselves would get a lot out of it. They did.

Maine can be a bit isolated and isolating. Everyone’s busy taking pictures and making a living and many live hours from other artists, so it’s vital the fine art photography community be and stay connected with each other and the outside world. Last evening’s Salon worked on both counts: thirteen hard-working and  mature artists came together to re-connect or connect for the first time, AND , thanks to Brenton, they got a darn good look at what’s happening out there in the rest of the world – how imagery is being pushed well beyond the digital camera experience.

You can’t see the future without knowing the past and in my opinion, Brenton is the state’s foremost authority on the history of photography. I studied with him for three semesters and would do so nonstop if the history of photography course were scheduled at a time that works for me and my bi-city life. I tell my photographers over and over – study the history of photography and know what and who has come before you. It’s vital to moving forward with a unique vision of your own.

I like the way Maine’s fine art photography community is eager to connect and stay connected. Many of last evening’s guests drove 150-200 miles roundtrip to have an evening with other professionals and increase their insight into their own work. I know friendships, professional relationships and real and valuable technical information being traded are some of the results of past Salons. Add the insight and knowledge of Brenton Hamilton to the experience and it’s a picture-perfect evening.