danielk

Hello all. Sorry for taking so much time to update.

The show in July is coming along. I have the first set of prints back from the printer. And by printer I mean actual printmaker and not a photo lab.

The importance of a good relationship with a printer was impressed upon my by a great local photographer namedOwen OMeara who was a fan of and knew the incredible Ruth Bernhard. Apparently, she hated working in the darkroom and making prints so she employed a printmaker who, with her approval and to her specifications, would do all of the printmaking for her. This greatly surprised Owen who couldn't believe that a second party could do justice to such a great artist's work, but when she showed him some prints that she made herself, he had to admit that they weren't as good as the work that he'd seen at the gallery show that they had attended that very evening.

Owen is very good friends with Kim Weston, grandson of Edward Weston, son of Cole Weston and nephew of Brett Weston so I just assumed that Owen would be a big proponent of doing your own darkroom work, but what I found out is that Edward Weston didn't do a lot of his own darkroom work but rather had his son Cole do it. This struck me as odd since Edward Weston was good friends with Ansel Adams who was a master in the darkroom and is credited with saying "Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships." and "The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways."

So I guess what I'm getting at is that I always felt "less than" as a photographer because I wasn't interested in printing my own work. Then I found out that I was part of a long tradition.

I can tell you that I was amazed at the difference in quality I saw in my work when a print was done right. My printer is Ron Landucci and I highly recommend him if anyone wants high quality or very large print work. He sat me down and we talked at length about the focus of my work and how I would like to have my work seen and what my aesthetic preferences were. Then we chose the paper and the process and discussed things like contrast and grain. My god it felt like home.

Anyhoo. Angela and I won the June Spotlight at Dark Artists with help from our friend Ron McDonald (not the clown). The contest theme was "Dark Mothers Day" and what's darker than giving birth to a demon baby?

I came up with the concept and made the umbilical cord, Ron made the demon baby out of clay and plaster and Angela was the patient and trusting model. We shot at night behind the studio using a generator I rented to power the lights.

You can see the shot and more of our work here.

Let me know what you think!


Daniel