Contact Printers Guild Newsletter
January 2006
Greetings for 2006! The new year is taking shape as a very active and exciting year for the Guild. Besides the new images by Guild members, we are adding work by honorary members Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee to the online store.
Each month, we will focus on an image by a member of the Guild, accompanied by that photographer's discussion of the work. This should be good reading throughout the year. All of our members have scheduled shows, workshops, and discussion groups during the year, so be sure to check the newsletter for events in your area.
The Large Format Journal, a British online publication, is spotlighting Guild members Susan Huber and Patrick Kolb in its February issue. Following up their coverage of the Contact Printers Guild last fall, the Journal continues to support fine art photography with these features.
Subscribers' Survey
We are asking your participation in a very short survey we are conducting. This should take only a couple of minutes.
Click here to be part of our survey.
Contact Printers Guild Online Store
The Contact Printers Guild would like to invite you to browse our online store, where you will find more than 350 fine prints for sale. The store is a secure site that allows you to purchase using your credit card or PayPal account. This makes it easy to start or add to your collection via the Internet.
Be sure to bookmark our store, as we are adding new work each week and there will always be something new to see.
Members' Shows
Joe Freeman and George Provost
The images of Joe Freeman and George Provost will highlight a group show at the Metropolitan Center for the Visual Arts in Gaithersburg MD. It will be the inaugural show for the 2006 season and is curated by Paul Paletti from Louisville, KY's Paul Paletti Gallery. Three other photographers (Jim Shanesy, Scott Killian, and Steve Sherman) are also featured in the show.
Be sure to check the current issue of View Camera Magazine for their article on the show, which runs from January 8 to February 4 at Metropolitan Center for the Visual Arts, 9300 Gaither Rd., Gaithersburg, MD. Call (301) 869-8623 for more information.
Susan Huber
Susan Huber's images have been included in a prestigious exhibition of platinum prints during January-March in Banff, Alberta at the Peter Whyte Gallery. Alan King and three other photogravure practitioners are also featured. Go to www.whyte.org for more information.
Matthew Magruder
Matt Magruder's work is being featured January 6 to February 26 in the entryway of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden/Museum, 605 Robert E. Lee Road, Austin, TX. He has been scheduled to give a lecture on February 1 about his work and the show. For more information, please go to www.umlaufsculpture.org.
George Provost
Galerie Johannes Faber will exhibit photographs of Alaska by George Provost from February 18 to April 15. The address of the gallery is Brahmsplatz 7, Vienna, Austria. For more information, please go to: http://www.jmcfaber.at.
Patrick Kolb
Portland's Camerawork Gallery will hold an exhibit of Patrick Kolb's Azo prints from July 22 to August 18. The gallery is located at 2255 NW Northrup Street in Portland, OR. An opening reception will be set at a later date.
Gerhard Bock
Gerhard Bock's collage "Desert Road Fantasy" will tour with the Texas Photographic Society's 21st Annual Members Only Show. The show will open in San Francisco and travel to Houston in time for FotoFest 2006.
Members' Workshops
Christian Nze
Christian Nze is offering two workshops in March. The first is scheduled March 11-12 and covers platinum printing; the second is March 18-19 and is a Cyanotype - Vandyke workshop. Both take place at Vire, France, during the "Mois de la photo de Vire." To sign up or get more information, contact Christian at cnze@club-internet.fr.
Ray Bidegain
On May 19-21, 2006, Ray Bidegain is teaching a workshop in conjunction with the Portland Photographers forum. It is entitled "The Fine Art of Platinum Printing with Ray Bidegain."
IN FOCUS with Bill Bartels
Since I was born in Wilmington, Delaware, I have
been taking trips to the Delaware beaches for most
of my life. My maternal grandparents built a home in
1965 on Herring Creek, just off the Rehoboth Bay,
and I visited them often over the years. They are
both gone now and their home was sold long ago, but
Lewes, Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany, and Fenwick
Island
are all Delaware beaches very familiar to me. I
usually spend a week in August in Fenwick Island
with family and friends. While there this past
August, I watched while crews surveyed the ocean
bottom for an upcoming beach restoration project.
The photograph that accompanies this article was made at the end of October 2005. My wife, Barb, and I were offered our friends' home in Fenwick Island while they visited their son in California. We had exceptional weather that week, with highs in the seventies. We drove to the beach only to find most of the beach accesses closed to the public because of the dredging project. Luckily, there was one open access, and I took my 8x10 equipment down to the beach. I was excited to see the many tracks in the sand being made by the bulldozers as they ran up and down the beach, working to build up the dunes. I worked on the beach for over three hours within a span of several hundred feet. It was a great day.
I make most of my photographs close to home and while on these vacations. I believe that good photographs can be made anywhere and don't feel the need to make long trips to photograph in national parks and other frequented places, although there are places that I would like to visit someday to photograph. I make photographs for the experience of making them. I think it is very difficult to convey this experience in a two-dimensional photograph, so that is not what I try to accomplish. I seek only to make the best photograph that I can, one that will stand on its own as a piece of artwork. No one except those present could hear the sound of the surf crashing, the bulldozers' engines roaring a mere 50 feet away, or the gulls crying. No one could feel the warmth of the sun, smell the ocean, feel the sand between my toes or feel the 15-knot breeze that kicked up out of the south. I had to wrap my dark cloth tightly to keep it from sailing away, and I was fearful that some of my last exposures might have suffered from camera shake.
Many analogies have been made between music and photography. I think Ansel Adam's is a good one: "The negative is the score and the print is the performance." For me it is about lines, shapes, forms, and tonal relationships, and I am most times drawn to abstraction. Some would argue that photography needs to do more, and that's okay. There are plenty of photographers out there filling that need. One of my favorite books over the past few years is Dune, a collection of photographs of the dunes at Oceano made by Edward and Brett Weston over their working lifetimes. For me it makes no difference whether you are standing on the dunes at Oceano or in front of a pile of old tires. The goal is the same: to make the best photograph possible, a stand-alone piece of Art.
Azo Update by George Provost
Seven of the twelve members of the Contact Printers Guild print primarily on Azo. This means that only a limited number of Azo contact prints can be made. Once the paper is gone, it is gone. If you have never seen an Azo contact print, get one while you can, and see why this legendary paper is so valued by contact printers above every other silver gelatin paper.
Special-Offer Prints by Guild Members
Please have a look at this issue's special-offer prints on our website.