sounds great - wish I could see it. Most of HCB's printing after WWII was done by Pierre Gassmann's team in Paris. Their aim was to bring out as much of what was on the negative as possible, without resorting to extreme stuff such as you might see from someone like W E Smith. You'll probably find that they have the full range of tonality. The apparent low contrast may be relative to what we have become used to in recent years; perhaps also a result of different film stocks and processing chemicals and techniques. I like HCB prints because they are all about the subject matter, not the technique.
Peter Galassi, the curator, published one of the classic HCB books "Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Early Work" for an exhibition at MOMA NYC in 1987. At the back of the book he has a note about the prints, in which he explains that HCB printed many of the earlier ones himself, and the pictures are now known only from those prints since HCB destroyed many of his negatives. Although HCB could be a very good printer, he was not always patient enough to be so, so the quality of some of the earlier prints is sub-prime. When I saw Ansel Adams prints from the first time I was also surprised at the relatively low contrast compared to what we see in the books, but in that particular exhibition they also featured side-by-side prints of the same negative made years apart, and the later ones always had higher contrast than the earlier ones. It seems as though our tastes have changed over the years. Bob > > Hi Everyone: > > Well, I've seen 300 HCB photographs, and I purchased the paperback edition > of the exhibition catalogue. Wow, what an experience. If you're in the > Midwest area, I'd definitely recommend flying in or driving in to see it. > Overwhelming majority of the prints were 7ish by 11ish in size, and grouped > thematically--early work, photo essays in LIFE magazine (China & Russia), > beauty, portraits, and later work--just an amazing collection of subject > material. > > What surprised me was the low contrast in a good many of the prints, and I > don't know if that is because of age of the print or intent. The photographs > in the exhibition catalogue have stronger contrast. I had this same surprise > when I saw Dorthea Lange prints (Migrant Mother etc) at the photo museum > at Columbia College. in Chicago. > > Because of the small print size, the photographs, to my eye, didn't *pop* off > the wall as I expected, though I think that's because some of the images > loom large in my mind's eye. Soft focus and grain very noticeable through > out the collection. > > All in all we had a nice time. No pictures of note, just a document of the > entrance way. Security was tight and no pictures allowed in exhibit area. > The show runs until 10/3/2010. > > Cheers, Christine > > > http://www.caguila.com/caguila/hcb/ > > http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/cartierbressonmodern > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
