Vernacular Photos

Friend of the Giuliani’s posing on an automobile licensed NJ, 1938

Outside of an air-conditioned theater

Engineer at Empire Brake Company ready Popular Photography Magazine

Looking out from Empire Brake Company

Giuliani Family Picnic, young boy running obstacle course

Henry Giuliani, self-portrait, ca. 1930s

When you are a photographer, photographs come to you. Much as a doctor or a lawyer at a party is often asked for advice, when people know you are a photographer, they often ask for your opinion about photographic matters or tell you about their personal or family photographs.

It is almost 3 years since I was visiting my aunt Peg in Florida, when she told me that her aunt had just sent her a box containing dozens of rolls of film. These were taken by my great-aunt Ruthie’s husband, Henry Giuliani, who had passed away some 20 years ago. I asked to see the film and she brought out what looked like a small ammunitions box from World War II. It was metal and painted army-green. Inside the box were dozens of rolls of very flammable, nitrate-based film. This was family history and it was in danger of being lost forever.

I asked my Aunt Peg to let me take the film. She said that it had been in this box for 60 years and it would be fine in her care. I told her that the box had been in Massachusetts where it is cold and dry. In the hot and humid Florida climate, it would be destroyed in a matter of months. In this case, the photographs didn’t come to me so much as I begged her to give me the film in order to preserve it.

Back in New York, the rolls were scanned, yielding 1500 images that had been shot on Kodak, Agfa, and Dupont film in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. There were pictures of dinners on the town, my cousins by a pier at a lake, and a boy clowning it up for the camera at a family barbeque. My uncle was a leg man and there are many pictures of my great-aunt’s beautiful limbs, including experimental pieces with filmy fabric draped over her legs. He was an avid amateur photographer and took photographs of trees covered in snow, landscapes in all different kinds of light, and portraits, including self-portraits, which were clearly meant for artistic purposes rather than recording family life.

From the 1500 images, I chose 25 images to work with. I retouched them, removing dust, dirt, and scratches, and adjusted the contrast for printing. One of my favorite photographs from this group is a self-portrait of my uncle looking into the camera and holding a pipe to his mouth, looking like William Holden in his middle years.

One of the ideas I have is to create a Family Preservation Archives service. The minimum project would perhaps contain 500 images and have a minimum cost of $1,000. Digital files would be made from film and prints, which the family could then make into digitally printed books or upload onto a website for family members. At blurb.com or lulu.com, photobooks can be made starting at $13 per book.

If you have any thoughts on this, send in your comments. If you know anyone who is interested in this, please have them contact me.

-ken

Pigment Ink Prints vs. C-prints

For the past decade, digital c-prints have been accepted as the standard for color fine art prints. They produce a print with rich color and soft tones. C-prints have been used by the best fine art photographers, including Richard Prince, Andreas Gursky, and Cindy Sherman. With the rise of the fine art photography market, prices for fine art prints are soaring, but even the most recent Fuji c-prints only have a longevity of 40 years displayed under glass. When a collector has paid over $100,000 for a photograph, this is a problem.

In 1991, the first digital fine art photography printing company, Nash Editions in California, opened for business with an Iris 3047. Almost from the beginning, there was a concern about the lack of permanence in these prints. Dye-based inksets were soon developed with improved longevity. In 1999, beta testing was begun for the Epson Stylus Pro 9500 large-format printer which, unlike the Iris printers, were able to use archival pigment inks. Today, the best fine art photography printers, including Nash Editions, use pigment ink printers exclusively.

Depending on the support used, pigment ink prints can last for over 200 years* displayed in frames with a UV filter or in dark storage. Besides increased longevity over other forms of digital fine art printing, pigment ink printing also provides finer detail, smoother gradation, deeper blacks, and a wider color gamut than other formats. There is a wider selection of papers to choose from. With options ranging from bright white to natural, you can create perfectly neutral black and white as well as sepia-tone images.

The only remaining advantage of c-prints is that large photolabs can produce huge quantities of prints faster and more cheaply than most inkjet printers. For short-term commercial applications, c-prints are the best. For fine art photographers however, there is no advantage.

At PhotoPlus 2006, Joel Meyerowitz stated that digital pigment ink printing today has, “Greater capacity to reveal the subtlety of the color image, compared to c-prints …. Inkjet printing has truly arrived.”

– ken

* See http://wilhelm-research.com/epson/11880.html

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