Ken Allen News

To Giclee or Not To Giclee

kasnews — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:10:29 +0000

…How about not Giclee pronounced (zhee-clay) and instead archival pigment ink print or more simply pigment ink print. Sure they do not roll off the tongue in the same way as the French Giclee does, but it is an honest and transparent way of identifying the process. Any internet search for the word Giclee will tell you that Jack Duganne appropriated the term in 1991 to classify digital prints made on inkjet printers. At the time words like inkjet and digital prints had negative connotations and Mr. Duganne thought that a better word may elevate them to high art and appeal more to gallerists. So he adapted the french word “gicler” meaning “to squirt, spurt, or spray” or as a noun “giclee.” At the time it may have been a good move on Mr. Duganne’s part and I am not going to argue that he was right or wrong, but 21 years later I think it is time to reassess his neologism.

One major problem with his word choice is that “giclee” in french is also slang for male ejaculation, which is enough of a reason to completely remove the word from any kind of photographic printing process and save photographers all over the world from the potential embarrassment. Another reason to move on to using “pigment ink print” (or some variation there of) is that inkjet printing does not have the same negative connotations as it did in 1991. Pigment ink prints are now available with a color gamut and subtlety that surpasses either Iris prints or c-prints while also offering the best lightfastness and overall archival stability. Museums and fine art galleries do not label these prints as giclees but as inkjet prints or pigment ink prints because they accept the digital technology and are not ashamed to make it transparent. We no longer need an inappropriate neologism of a french word to elevate inkjet printing in the eyes for the art world; It can now stand on its own as a beautiful printing process deserving of a place in the history of photography.

By: Patrick Allen

A Camera as Big as a New York Apartment

kasnews — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:41:56 +0000

Imagine looking at a 24-foot photograph of your face, created with such detail that if you got up on a ladder with a magnifying glass you could inspect the angles at which your eyebrow hairs were growing. This is what photographer Dennis Manarchy wants to create. Manarchy is bucking the trend towards tiny, discrete digital cameras and Photoshopped perfection by creating a camera the size of a New York apartment.

The camera extends 35 feet in length—big enough for the photographer and his assistant to throw a tea party inside it.

This massive dream camera has not yet been completed—Manarchy is still raising money on Kickstarter, but in the meantime he has been playing with this far less mobile prototype:

This camera requires 4.5 x 6 feet negatives, which are viewed using an actual window as a lightbox. Developing them requires taking a shower in chemicals. But now that Manarchy has finally found film large enough for his purposes, he’s enjoying himself. (As you can see in the gallery above; for a while, he had to piece sheets together).

“Last night, we were down in the dark room, processing these huge sheets,” Manarchy tells me on the phone. “I’m entirely covered in chemicals, but I’m thinking I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”

His excitement is evident in his voice throughout our interview. This man who has been making portraits for decades sounds like he’s just discovered a new superpower. And in a way, he has: the power of going very, very big.

“What motivated me was Chuck Close, the painter, whose photo-realistic paintings I almost found more striking than the photos that he was painting, because of the viewing size,” he tells me.

If you blow up a tiny negative that big, the resulting image looks clear and faithful, he says. But then you compare the eyelash in the photograph to an eyelash made with single brush stroke. “It’s like the difference between a paper airplane and a rocket ship and it brings the whole thing to another level.”

Of course, we are accustomed to seeing people blown up big—on the sides of buildings and on billboards. But using film of this magnitude—offering 1,000 times greater detail than the average digital photograph—gives it a different, rather surreal quality, Manarchy says.

“Stanley” by Chuck Close at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. (Gabriel Bouys/Getty Images.)

There’s another side to working at this scale (and price), of course. There’s no room for error or for retakes. He makes each person’s portrait exactly once, which requires extreme selectiveness when it comes to choosing subjects.

Who deserves to be photographed in such a way? Manarchy believes members of “vanishing cultures” do. This is the name he has given to the project, and his work with early prototypes has focused on members of groups on the verge of extinction—Holocaust survivors, the Tuskeegee airmen, tiny Native American tribes, remote rural communties. That said, he’s a photographer fascinated by faces, so he’s not opposed to just throwing some “fabulous people of character” in there, essentially because they’re cool.

Manarchy hopes to raise enough money through his Kickstarter project to get the dream camera-RV rig built and then take it on the road. Right now, his prototype is not particularly mobile; to take pictures of remote groups, he’s had to build cameras on location. In a swamp in Louisiana, he turned an old fish house into a camera, after spending several days fishing and hanging out with the Cajun community. Surprisingly, perhaps, his slow, on-site method did not prompt any particular skepticism, he says. What would have left them truly alarmed, he believes, is if another photographer had suddenly arrived, snapped 1,000 quick photos and then sped away.

Via: http://www.slate.com

South Street Seaport Museum

kasnews — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:41:56 +0000

The South Street Seaport Museum successfully reopened on Jan. 25th 2012 under the direction of the Museum of the City of New York. Ken Allen Studios has a longstanding relationship with MCNY and Pure + Applied who beautifully designed the re-opening exhibitions. We reproduced the following 3 large historic prints and mounted them to Sintra for display in the new exhibition.

Judith Joy Ross

kasnews — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:27:42 +0000

Judith Joy Ross taking a break from printing to photograph our resident fish Lola with her 8×10 camera.

New Film Scanner

kasnews — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:50:40 +0000

We have added a new scanner to our digitization lineup: The Hasselblad Flextight X1.

New Exhibit at Mid-Town Manhattan Library for CEO (Center for Employment Opportunities)

kasnews — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:11:08 +0000

Released Project Opens at Mid Manhattan Library from CEOWorks on Vimeo.

Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s

kasnews — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:02:06 +0000

Daniel Meadows, Photographs by Daniel Meadows.
Published by Photoworks, 2011.

Daniel Meadows Daniel Meadows
Photographs by Daniel Meadows. Authored by Val Williams
Photoworks, 2011. Hardbound. 248 pp., color and duotone illustrations throughout, 10-1/4×8-1/4″.

In 1973, Daniel Meadows got a UK Arts Council grant of £750. He bought a double-decker bus, converted the top deck into a bedroom, fitted a toilet, kitchen and darkroom and converted the bottom deck into an exhibition space. With all his equipment in place, Meadows hit the road. His goal; to provide a photographic survey of the people of England.

Portraits from the series Photographic Omnibus form the heart of Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s. The directness, open curiosity and charismatic anonymity of the pictures make them a UK antithesis to Richard Avedon’s star subjects of the American West.

Daniel Meadows, by Daniel Meadows. Published by Photoworks, 2011.

The bus portraits are relaxed, with a range of smiles that could be lined up in grids and displayed on the walls of Tate Modern. From Southampton, Meadows gives us the Brasher sisters, Lyn’s face wreathed in a smile that is game-show-hostess delighted. Resplendent in their Bay City Rollers style tartan jackets, a pair of friends from Barrow-in-Furness have questioning smiles for the cameras, the guy on the left sporting a Manchester United scarf and a haircut from a Farrelly Brothers movie.

Daniel Meadows, by Daniel Meadows. Published by Photoworks, 2011.

It’s bad teeth, bad skin, and bad hair, the Big Book of British Smiles come to life on the page, Meadows’ unpaid and unsaying sitters (“Running the free portraits sessions was a discipline. It was a Quaker thing….”) addressing the camera with curiosity, bemusement and sometimes a disturbing intensity.

As well as the Omnibus pictures, there are also excerpts from Meadows’ earlier free studio project from Moss Side, Manchester, some colour shots from his time working at Butlins’ Holiday Camp (with Martin Parr) and his later under-appreciated suburban documentation of the conservative 1980s in full flow.

Daniel Meadows, by Daniel Meadows. Published by Photoworks, 2011.

With an accompanying text by Val Williams that details the figures, funding and development of British photography from the early 1970s, Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s is a wonderful book that hits the visual high notes year after year.—COLIN PANTALL

purchase book

COLIN PANTALL is a UK-based writer, photographer and teacher – he is currently a visiting lecturer in Documentary Photography at the University of Wales. His work has been exhibited in London, Amsterdam, Manchester and Rome and his Sofa Portraits will be published as a handmade book early next year. Further thoughts of Colin Pantall can be found on his blog, which was listed as one of Wired.com’s favourites earlier this year.

Via: http://blog.photoeye.com

10 minutes with Henrique Plantikow

kasnews — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:01:21 +0000

When did you first know that you wanted to be a photographer?

I think it happened gradually. I realized I wanted to be a photographer when I started going out and seeing things around me for the 1st time. The camera gave me a reason to go out and explore.

Henrique Plantikow

Who are some of the photographers that influence your work today?.

I like the work of Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon, of course, and recently I’ve discovered Melodie McDaniel’s work which is great.

Henrique Plantikow

If you could go back 10 years, what advice would you give yourself?

I would tell myself that there are no right ways of creating, you just have to go out and try what works for you. And sometimes what you are taught can actually hinder your creativity, so you have to be careful what advice to take.

Henrique Plantikow

Do you have any goals for the upcoming year?

Yes, but I keep it flexible. My number 1 goal is to keep shooting and keep growing. I also plan on working with video.

(Henrique is based in New Hampshire. See more of his work, here.)

Via: http://www.thisisthewhat.com

Photographs of Iconic European Architecture Reconstructed in China

kasnews — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:01:57 +0000

Richard Rowland is a Brighton based photographer. About his series ‘Urban Fictions’ he writes:

‘Urban Fictions’ is a photographic and video project funded by Arts Council England, examining the emergence of simulated urban developments in eastern China. The work documents a series of new towns being constructed based on different European architectural models, including English, French, Dutch, German and Swedish pastiches. These idealised reconstructions appear as hyperreal utopias that seek to create rather than reflect historical reality; illusory spaces connecting to the broader national narrative of modern-day China – one of consumerism, spectacle and economic expansion. Being from the UK I am fascinated by these towns and, in particular, the questions they raise about the shifting and uncertain character of an increasingly international world in which we live.

Via: http://www.featureshoot.com

Clever Still Life Photographer Promo Contains Handmade QR Code

kasnews — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:00:51 +0000

To promote the launch of his new website and blog, London-based photographer David Sykes decided to create a QR code out of objects such as boots, calculators, briefcases, boomboxes and champagne bottles. The QR code was then photographed and sent out as limited edition prints so that lucky recipients can scan the code with their iPhone or iPad to launch Sykes’ new website. Sykes writes:

‘I wanted to promote the relaunch of my website and my blog with a bespoke shot and a mail-out. The QR code is the perfect example of something physical that links to the digital world. Just the QR photograph; no name, no other links or information, just that.

‘I wanted to play with the juxtaposition of a physical object linking directly to the digital, so I decided to build a 3D model of the code and create the image in one shot. This is in line with the way I like to work, I try to shoot as many things ‘in camera’ as I can. This meant scaling up and then building the 8 foot square model of the code. To create another link to my previous work I used objects from around the studio to build up the shot. Over three days, I worked with the stylist, Carrie Louise, to source the props, plan out and construct the QR city.

‘To further demonstrate the ‘in camera’ feel of the code I shot on film. To give the mail-out the sense of being a sheet of 10 x 8 film I retained the full frame of the shot, including studio in the background and rebates. I even presented it in the same bags you would get the film back from the lab in.’

Via: http://www.featureshoot.com