Blipoint: A website where photographers and illustrators have a freespace of auto-management

Lady Gaga, a pop culture icon, appears shooting photos with a new Polaroid en her latest video clip, lomography shops are opening up all over the world, and cameras like the Harinezumi (that take digital photos and videos with an analogue aesthetic) are becoming all the rage.

It would appear that chemical photography is back in style. We have spoken with two experts regarding photographic techniques whose results are impossible to achieve with digital technology: José Gago, a photographer that has been researching photochemical processes for 40 years, and Antonio Ortega, a collector and editor of photographs that have been reproduced with processes from the 19th century.

José Gago gives advanced courses regarding analogue photography in Galicia and has a business, Productos Gago, that produces chemicals for working in black and white; the latest one in Spain that is dedicated to this activity. Upon speaking with him, he gives the impression that he dominates almost any method for setting a photographic image on paper. And we say “almost” because after asking him if he has ever used a digital camera he confesses that it doesn’t even interest him.

He considers them to be a step forward from the printing press, because they create images from weaves, but not an advance in photography. Gago, who worked for years as an assessor of Kodak, knows the photographic market well and is critical of it. He points out that today to take high quality photos it is important to invest in technology, something that didn’t happen before.

When he is asked if he thinks that a small industry dedicated to chemical photography will survive, he explains: “it’s what we want; it’s possible that the market is increasing because a lot of people are getting tired of digital. Others that learned with digital photography are discovering chemical photography. We will know in 4 or 5 years, when the economic crisis is over.”

Upon being asked if he has a predilection for any particular method of photography, he tells us that the direct carbon technique, used by, among others, the photographer José Ortiz Echagüe in the 20th century, especially interests him. It is based on the use of carbon, and not the traditional silver halides, as the prime material for obtaining photographic copies on paper.

And just like an authentic alchemist, he reveals the secret of his choice: the key is the long life of the copies that is obtained with direct carbon, greater than in the case of the platinotype (considered by many photographers to be the most long lasting procedure). He tells us that those that go to his workshops in search of secrets like this, since they show interest in applying the old photographic techniques to their pictures, are more like painters than photographers. A paradox that makes one think.

Photogravure, an enduring technique

Photogravure is a procedure for reproducing photographs by way of engraving. It was very common until the beginning of the 20th century. It was created and developed by the creator of photography itself, Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce, and was abandoned at the beginning of the past century once the Rotogravure and offset technologies appeared, since their applications are cheaper and faster methods.

We can also find a good example of its use in the images that appear in the book published by Taschen regarding the Camera Work magazine. Created by one of the greatest names in photography, Alfred Stieglitz.

Currently, the technique, due to the fact that it is capable of reproducing photographs with extraordinary qualities and achieving very special shades of gray, is used by some photographers to carry out short print runs of their work. Like the artist Unai San Martín.

His works can be found in the Archeles gallery, that distributes photogravures in series like “Suite San Rafael” (of which we reproduce some images here). It is a job of an extraordinary artistic quality that brings us back to the roots of photographic art and shows us that he is an expert in this discipline.

It also confirms the difficulty of carrying out these reproductions. To make the engraving plate with which the limited edition of each photo is carried out, two days of work are necessary, to which we must add several days more to carry out the tests necessary to achieve a correct image. Other examples of its use are the series of photos 94th street NY, where Unai photographed a street in New York at different times of day.

Two other artists whose photogravures can be seen in the Archeles are Jimin lee, who articulates his work around subjects with a very contemporary aesthetic, and Isabel Muñoz,, whose photos have always stood out for the extraordinary quality of the copies and have been exhibited in museums like the MOMA.

Both Gago and Ortega show us that certain analogue techniques can be useful for those that understand that photography means something more than reproducing an image.

Written by: Ramón Peco

Tags: Analogfotografie, analógica, analogique, analogue, digital, digitale, Digitalfotografie, eliografia, photography, heliograbado, Heliogravüre, numérique, photographie, photogravure, Ramón Peco

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