Vale Ian Lobb (1948-2023), photographer

December 2023

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Ian Lobb, Station Street, Fairfield
5 October 2022

The luminosity of Ian Lobb

These words are a celebration of the life of an extraordinary human, a heartfelt stream of consciousness text that touches on aspects of the life of Ian Lobb, photographer.

Ian Lobb was my friend. He was a poet, photographer, raconteur. He my first photographer lecturer at university who I could always rely on for advice on art, photography, writing and life. He was an audiophile and a lover of music, anything from classical to jazz to Nina Simone, Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan. He was a lover of women. He was dreamer and a philosopher. He adored the American artist Cy Twombly. He was a rabid Sydney Swans fan!

In the early 1990s monthly reviews of student photographic work at Phillip Institute of Technology (PIT, which later became part of RMIT University) with Ian and fellow lecturer Les Walkling were electric. Ideas and passion for the work abounded, discussions ran for hours on how to create work – with feeling and insight into the condition of image (and human) becoming. Here Ian introduced me to Tarkovsky, Eisenstein and Joseph Campbell, and the Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, Kyoto, Japan. And of course he introduced me to the French photographer Eugène Atget – oh how we loved Atget, and Strand, Weston, Caponigro and Minor White. We could talk on any subject. Many years later, at our regular coffee catchups in Fairfield, I would take him new photography books that I had bought and recent object d’art purchases and, over lunch, the conversation would range far and wide about photography, art and life. He helped me sequence my work – have you thought about this pairing together, what about swapping this one over – and we drew inspiration from the sequences of Minor White and his use of “ice/fire”.

Ian was a storyteller. His photographs tell stories. From the teachings of Minor White (especially his “Three Canons”) there was an acknowledgement in his work of the spirit of the object he was photographing – a moment of revelation sought in the negative and subsequent print through a connection and circular transmission of energy between artist and object back through the camera and onto film (Zen)(for example see Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson 1975, below). A moment of revelation of spirit that was so important to Ian that this moment of “revelatio” can still be seen and felt in his recent mobile phone images.

Ian was aware, fully present. He was attuned to his surroundings like few people I have met for he was tremendously attentive, tremendously awake and sensitive to the environment and the vibrations of energy that emanated from the city, the land, the sky. Imagine travelling to a small patch of earth in the Black Ranges year after year to photograph in all seasons and in all weather something that he could see and feel in that land… something any other human would not even recognise, would walk past without a moments hesitation as though nothing was there, was of no import. But not Ian. He recognised and felt the energy of that place, space.

Talking to the wonderful Australian photographer David Tatnall who was also a friend of Ian’s we reminisced the other day. Ian had won an Australia Council grant and went to America on board a cargo ship teaching yoga on the way over, first going to South America and then on to America. There he visited Barbara, Wynn Bullock’s wife, and Ralph Gibson, Brett Weston, Harry Callahan and William Clift. He attended workshops with Ansel Adams and Paul Caponigro. He visited the Museum of Modern Art’s reading room and examined box after box of iconic prints by the masters, all jumbled together as he told me in folders with little order or care for their preservation. David told me he rocked up unannounced at Eliot Porter’s and said he was a visiting photographer from Australia, and while Eliot made a pot of tea he was left to go through boxes of dye transfer prints. Back then there was a camaraderie of photography very different from the present. Can you imagine doing that today!

He conversed with the masters. Like a pebble making ripples in a pond the energy of these photographers was transferred by osmosis through Ian to a wider network of artists. David and I remembered how Ian taught us to look at the print upside down in order to understand the balance of the print and develop an appreciation of its structure and the music inherent in it. Look at the image of Caponigro’s Reflecting Stream, Redding, CT (1968, below) – one of Ian’s favourites – and you just know that water has to be “wet” in that print, that the shadows of the trees on the water have to be (Ansel Adams) Zone 2, and that the Zone 7 patch of grey under the boulder in the centre of the image is critical to its music, its balance. Ian knew these things instinctively, intuitively. Ian also taught both of us how to make Ansel Adams’ “burning in” tool… three pieces of stiff black board (with the top two pieces secured by tape to make a hinges) with gradually larger holes in each board for use under the enlarger, so that you could easily flip the boards to a larger or smaller hole for “burning in” while making a print. We both still have these indispensable tools, passed down like an oral history from the master. On reflection, learning from Ian and Les during those early days printing black and white photographs in the basement darkroom at Phillip Institute of Technology (PIT) in Bundoora, Melbourne were some of the happiest days of my life.

With friend and fellow director William (Bill) Heimerman (1950-2017), The Photographers’ Gallery and Workshop, Melbourne brought to Australia some of the most respected master photographers from around the world: Wynn Bullock, Emmet Gowin, Eikoh Hosoe, William Clift, Harry Callahan, Paul Caponigro, William Eggleston, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michaels, Lisette Model, August Sander, Aaron Siskind among others … and promoted local Australian photographers such as John Cato, Carol Jerrems, Christopher Koller, Jeff Busby and more. I was privileged to have several solo exhibitions in the gallery space. For the opening of Carol Jerrems exhibition at the gallery, Ian asked her who she would most like to attend – and Carol said Ron Barassi, then the most popular sporting and cultural personality in Australia. And on the day of the opening who attended – the great man himself. I don’t know how Ian did it, but he did!

David Tatnall took Ian to Cape Paterson only a couple of weeks before his passing, the first time he had been there since his father’s death many years ago (see the photographs below). Ian took some photographs with camera on tripod and on the mobile phone and then sat down, sat down and just looked at things in that self deprecating way of his. He just looked at the rocks and the form and the light and soaked in the spirit of the place. The same with his favourite tree, his beloved lemon scented gum in the garden of his church in Fairfield. Much as the Black Range series many years earlier, he took thousands of photographs on his mobile phone of this tree in all weather conditions, at all times of the day and year. He saw and felt something there that he kept coming back too, searching for the answer to that one great question that he could never answer.

David said that he believed that he was only using the mobile phone as a visual notebook before he came back to the place to photograph with an SLR – but respectfully I must disagree. Increasingly in his later years Ian surrendered the use of his bigger digital cameras to the flexibility of his mobile phone camera, trading in their heft for the felt immediacy of the mobile phone image and his ability to study the results as he pleased. While many would dismiss these phones images as preludes to the finished work, Ian recognised (as do many artists) that these impressions, these deeply felt visual sketches, had become fully rendered works of art. He moved with the times. As he observed, “For the last 18 months I’ve been spending the first few hours of the day in the local church yard where I am photographing a lemon scented gum. I’m doing this with an iPhone as a way of exploring different ways of working that facilitates.” (Email for William Clift sent to Marcus Bunyan 22 January 2023)

Ian loved telling a story. And he was passionate about the Sydney Swans. He regaled me with the story of how he was so incensed by seeing photographers inside the circle of players celebrating in the rooms after a victory that he wrote to the club to explain that this space, this inner sanctum of celebration, should be a “sacred space” as he put it just for the players… and that photographers should not be allowed in to that space, but only be able to look in from the outside. He was special like that. He understood the significance of that circle and the energy that flowed across the space as players linked arms and belted out the club song. Nothing should disturb the sanctity of that space, much as nothing should disturb the energy of a rock face.

Ian was a (com)passionate man. He was a spiritual man. Throughout his life he had a deep abiding faith in Jesus and the benevolence and goodness of the Almighty. Now he is be gone but his energy still surrounds us. In his beloved lemon scented gum and in the many memorable ideas and images he shared with us.

Ian Lobb was my friend. I will miss his wise counsel.

God bless him xx

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. A very interesting analysis by Gary Sauer-Thompson on Ian Lobb’s Black Range series and new concepts in contemporary landscape photography can be found in the article “Ian Lobb + contemporary landscape photography” on the Thought Factory website January 28, 2024. Recommended reading.

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Many thankx to David Tatnall for allowing me to publish his images that are included in this posting.

“If you think of all the wonderful experiences of making images – and then sequencing them – really it is top of the world experience. If this then happens when society is particularly in flux – on spiritual and identity issues, and sequencing happens by someone who is sensitive to the time and the issues. And is sensitive to “image”. Then you really really hope that the book is well produced.”

Ian Lobb email to Marcus Bunyan, 29 May 2015

“In “LA Confidential” they give away their source by using the word “valediction”. A good name for a poem, maybe the best, but not an exhausted idea. Look out I have been inspired by genius. People say that they have to do something more difficult than they need. That’s ok. – there are angels to prevent that – but if you don’t want to go that way, most of them aren’t against us.”

Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Monday 11 September 2023

“Marcus – can we be told how to love ? The first thought is no – but I’m not going to rush into an answer. Can we be told how to love a photograph or which photographs to love? I do know that my walk this morning has been recalling which photographs I have loved – and stopping on those where I have not lately dwelt. I didn’t get past the Paul Strand of the white picket fence. Sitting now on Station st as the coffee shops carry out their tables and seeing it.”

Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Saturday, 16 September 2023

Ian Lobb speaking at a celebration of the life of William (Bill) Heimerman (1950-2017)

Windsor, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, October 21, 2017.
Thank you to Peter Leiss for allowing me to publish this video.

Paul Strand (American, 1890 – 1976)
White Fence, Port Kent, New York
1916 (negative); 1945 (print)
Gelatin silver print

Paul Caponigro (American, 1932-2024)
Reflecting Stream, Redding, CT
1968
Gelatin silver print

During this particular workshop Caponigro was sometimes in a room where he could display several prints at once – he would never take them all down after talking, but move the first images away and attach new images to the right as he talked. The workshop was with the senior students of an Oregon art school, it can be dated because it was during the impeachment of Nixon.

~ Ian Lobb email to Marcus Bunyan, 6 January 2015

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Point Lobos, California
1948
Gelatin silver print

Marcus, have you been to Point Lobos? I think you would find it a big experience if you were there at a quiet time. Imagine Minor White going to visit Weston on Wildcat Hill, and then the short drive down to Point Lobos – there would be some frisson in that car!! It’s not quite Nietzsche going to visit Wagner – but it’s not bad. For a lot of the year the day starts with fog and then the fog pulls back a little offshore and then comes back again. I think Weston’s Pelican would have been photographed in fog.

~ Ian Lobb email to Marcus Bunyan, 29 May 2015

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Merced River, Cliffs, Autumn
1939
Gelatin silver print

When talking to him [Ansel Adams] you can imagine the number of mediocre questions. While I was listening all of his answers were quotes from his books. There had to be an extraordinary move to get him to break ranks with this rule.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Sunday, 5 March 2023

Black Range series

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled
1989
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
36.9 × 36.7cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Hallmark Cards Australia Pty Ltd, 1989
© Ian Lobb

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled
1989
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
35.6 × 35.6cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Hallmark Cards Australia Pty Ltd, 1989
© Ian Lobb

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled
1986, printed 1989
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
26.4 × 26.4cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Hallmark Cards Australia Pty Ltd, 1989
© Ian Lobb

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled
1989
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
36.5 × 36.5cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Hallmark Cards Australia Pty Ltd, 1989
© Ian Lobb

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
No title (Soft focus landscape with branch detail in foreground)
1989, printed 1998
from the Black Range series 1986-1989
38.2 × 38.4cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by the artist, Fellow, 2000
© Ian Lobb

The Photographers’ Gallery and Workshop

Peter Leiss (Australian, b. 1951)
Untitled [Bill Heimerman and Ian Lobb at the rear of the Photographers’ Gallery]
c. 1975-1980
Gelatin silver print

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Untitled [Atget’s Work Room with Contact Printing Frames]
c. 1910

I am very familiar with the old suitcases under the desk – I think that only one – if any – is a suitcase.

This is typically how an exhibition would arrive at the Photographers’ Gallery – it would hold about 40 matted prints. Undo the strap and open the box to typically find 2 or 3 brown paper parcels. Maybe some archival tissue on the next layer down = sometimes not = and then about 20 mounted and matted prints sometimes face to face. This is the way Caponigro for example sent his prints – I’m trying to remember William Clift – Maybe one box like that and a handmade bigger one – or maybe 2 wooden boxes = but at least half the exhibitions arrived in boxes like that.

But have a look to the left of those boxes –what are they? They look like old fashioned double-darks – maybe for a quarter plate camera. The distance from the emulsion to the edge of the case was different for these compared to the last generation 5×4 double darks. People sometimes tried to make a way of putting the old film carriers onto 5×4″ cameras – but they would be focussing on the wrong spot by not making adjustments for the different positions of the emulsion.

To return to the boxes – they would be waiting for us at the airport, and we would have to spin a yarn to the customs agents telling them that the prints were for “educational purposes only”. It was a great educational experience to unwrap some of the prints when they came with a piece of tissue paper between the print and the mat – you could see something of the image and then get to imagine it before removing the tissue.

Re Robert Frank – also note the size of the Lupe next to his hand. Ralph Gibson had Robert Franks Leica enlarger – For some reason it was in his “living room” – I have seen it!!!

~ Ian Lobb email to Marcus Bunyan 1 December, 2015

Carol Jerrems (Australian, 1949-1980)
Untitled [Bill Heimerman and Ian Lobb at the Dog Rocks near Geelong]
c. 1975-1980
Gelatin silver print

Cape Liptrap and Cape Paterson

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Ocean (Cape Liptrap)
1979
Gelatin silver photograph
17.3 × 22.5cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1980
© Ian Lobb

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
No title (Black sand and rocks)
1989; printed 1992
Gelatin silver photograph
34.3 × 34.3cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by the artist, Fellow, 2000
© Ian Lobb

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson
1975; printed 1979
Gelatin silver photograph
17.6 × 17.4cm (image)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1980
© Ian Lobb

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955)
Ian at Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson
November 2023

This was the first Ian time had returned to Cape Paterson since the death of his father many years ago.

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955)
Ian at Eagles Nest, Cape Paterson
November 2023

Lemon scented gum, Fairfield

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Ian Lobb, Fairfield
December 2021

Maxwell Allara (American born Italy, 1906-1981)
Untitled (Minor White During a Workshop)
1959
Gelatin silver print

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955)
Ian in front of his favourite tree, Fairfield
November 2021

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Moencopi Strata, Capital Reef, Utah
1962
Gelatin silver print

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
24 January 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
14 February 2023

“The light comes down the tree. But for some days it twists right to left and makes an early morning shadow.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Monday 11 September 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
22 February 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
8 March 2023

Marcus – thanks for the mystic particles. After I have apple and rhubarb I’ll be walking to check on the tree in the church-garden. I’m interested in this, rather than my own garden. Who knows why I can’t photograph my own. Do you have a garden close by that you can walk through easily? I can’t wait for the sun to move a bit further and the light to come back on church gum. A few weeks.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Wednesday 12 July 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Lemon scented gum
13 September 2023

Mobile phone photographs

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (Green woman)
22 November 2022

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Alex
21 December 2022

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (pink and black)
31 January 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
The path from the coffee shop
Fairfield, 4 February 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
The path to the coffee shop
Fairfield, 4 February 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Building his ying, Ignoring his yang
21 February 2023

The First One

First one through the forest
First one on the beach
First one through the shallows
First one in the deep
Yes, first in the water
To swim out of reach
First one to belong
And then to be gone
First one to be gone too soon.

First foot off the platform
First step off the map
First one to learn
With nothing to teach
First one in this life
To whisper my name.
First one through my shallows
First one in my deep
First one to be gone too soon.

First winter field night
When the fires are lit
First soul at midnight
Watching burning trees twist.
At your back is the darkness
That turns you to see …
First one to the shadows
First one to the deep
First one to be gone too soon.

There’s a sound that’s so big
We can’t even hear
Not a murmur, a pulse
A note, nor a song
After midnight it wakes you
To its echoes and trace
First one to be swallowed
First one in the deep
First one to be gone too soon.

You’re the first, yes its true
On the roll call of friends
Now there’s spaces, not names
And you: you’re the worst.
You’re a very faint glow
On a very faint path
You were first through the shallows
First one in the deep
First one to be gone too soon.

Ian Lobb 28 August 2018

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
A small moment with…
25 February 2023

“If only the lens didn’t have anti flare – it would have been an Atget moment.”

~ Ian Lobb

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Saint-Cloud
1926
Albumen print

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Billiard
2 March 2023

Ian: Please see full screen for pleasing puns

Marcus: Love how the graffiti imitates the shape of the wood in the trolley and how the triangle of white dots is a metaphor for the billiard triangle used to rack up the balls

Ian: Yes. And with the billiard signage I thought it was like a players gesture – towards the corner pocket

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Friday, 3 March 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (Mother)
30 April 2023

Apart from the teenagers at church, the mention that you were talking to your mother, was one of the few mentions of that relationship since my mother had passed. One minute after that I took this on my way home.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Sunday, 30 April 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (black oblong)
Fairfield, 8 May 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
Untitled (My walk this morning)
Fairfield, 11 May 2023

On my second roll of HP4 were pictures of a young lady lying under clear sheets of curved 2mm plastic that I had sprayed with water (1968?). The attached is from my walk this morning. The similar mood is quite scary.

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Thursday, 11 May 2023

Ian Lobb (Australian, 1948-2023)
mmmm, Pasta Poetry
Fairfield, 21 June 2023

Thinking about John Cato this morning. If you can google “the world is too much with us” – Wordsworth – and give a toast to John. Proteus!!!

~ Ian Lobb text to Marcus Bunyan, Wednesday, 5 July 2023

The world is too much with us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;–
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
William Wordsworth 1802

Cy Twombly (American, 1928-2011)
Coronation of Sesostris (Part III)
2000

Affirmation: When you Sing

(An affirmation from Cy Twombly’s Coronation of Sesostris)

If you sing, don’t let them hesitate
When you sing, don’t let them make signs of regret
When you sing, let them bear the loss of silence
When you sing, the lost gods are found
When you sing, the birds and trees love their shadows
Lying quietly on the ground
When you sing, the mark of nature and the mark of the mark rejoice
When you sing we trace to the source of trace – the realm.

Sing to the ghosts, sing to those to come
Flow over – into – flow over
Let the trees rise from the earth because you sing:
New sunlight on new leaves cutting into space
Write your name
with their scintilla through the air as you sing
Then each letter narrows, fades white
Still unending trace as sing and sing as a lost god.
One majesty fades to another
Sing Osiris , sing that god into Orpheus

scribes
Porous sparse voice, could have been scattered
Empty surface – instead open sky
Bell
Nothing to shatter
Sing for the old rivers,
Sailors sink into sails,
The opposite bank still opposite
Take this – sing – most important , to the next life.
Like tall trees, rising from …

Gods cannot depart while love, I mean song, remains
Gods have not departed: it would have been heeded,
Reported as a hoax,
No arc of departure divulged
song, weightless
Gods have not departed – it is a drunken hoax, rumour.

Ian Lobb 30 August 2018

Cy Twombly (American, 1928-2011)
Coronation of Sesostris (Part V)
2000

Cy Twombly (American, 1928-2011)
Coronation of Sesostris (Part VI)
2000

Last house

Are you travelling to this very last house
On the very last street of this town?
That I built here for you,
Where I wait for you
If you go round the back you’ll find wild flowers
That you could almost touch
And you would watch the clouds come down from the hills

Long ago I promised this to you
It became my story that you’d come
To the last street
And to the last house
I watch all the doors to see you enter
So that we would almost touch
And you could watch the rain come down from the hills

Yes, it’s true, the house backs onto darkness
I swear there’s really nothing out there
Beyond this last street
Beyond this last house
Nothing you could be sure to name
Nothing we can almost touch
And at night you could keep watch, from here to the hills

You can smell salt in the air from all of the rooms
And hear the wind in the waves
But out the back you’ll only find wildflowers.
Not those grey choppy waves
That we can almost touch
On this last street
In this last house.

Ian Lobb 29 August 2018

Flickerd (Australian)
Zac Foot of Sydney during the 2019 NEAFL round 14 match between NT Thunder and Sydney at TIO Stadium on Saturday, 6 July 2019 in Darwin, Northern Territory
2019
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

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Text / review: ‘A Vocabulary of Printing and the Syntax of the Image’ from the exhibition ‘KHEM’ at Strange Neighbour, Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 11th April – 3rd May 2014

Curator: Linsey Gosper

Artists: Jane Brown, Ponch Hawkes, Siri Hayes, Ruth Maddison, Lloyd Stubber, David Tatnall, Claudia Terstappen

Emmet Gowin printing mask for The Hint That Is a Garden: Siena, Italy 1975 (below)

A Vocabulary of Printing and the Syntax of the Image

“No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen.”

“One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.”

Minor White

As an artist who originally trained in the alchemical, analogue art of photography, the magic of this process will always hold sway in my heart. No matter how many excellent digital photographs I see, there is always a longing for silver – that indescribable feeling of looking at a master printers work, an image that literally takes your breath away. I hardly ever get that in a digital print. For me, it’s the difference between the fidelity of a CD and the aura of an LP, with all its scratches and pops, hisses and, yes, atmosphere.

Minor White, that guru of enlightenment, knew how difficult it was to capture spirit in a photograph. To make a connection between photographer and object, back through a glass lens and a metal box onto a piece of plastic or glass (completing a Zen circle), then printed onto a piece of paper. There are three ways it goes: you see something (you previsualise it) and you don’t capture it in the negative; you don’t see it, and the negative surprises you; but, best of all, you see it and you capture it – the object of your attention reveals itself to you. Then all you have to do is print it – easier said than done. Much testing and assessing, dodging and burning to balance the print knowing that, as MW says, each negative is like a dragon that an image has to be wrenched from.

No longer for ears …: sound
which like a deeper ear,
hears us, who only seem
to be hearing. Reversal of spaces.

Extract from Rainer Maria Rilke Gong 1925

When you do the analogue printing yourself (or when assessing a digital test print at a lab such as CPL Digital), the most important thing is to understand the vocabulary of printing. In both analogue and digital printing it all starts from the negative/file. If you don’t understand your negative or digital file, what hope have you of attaining a good end result? You must study the negative to understand its pushes and pulls, what needs to be held back, what other areas brought forward in the image. You have to feel the balance within the negative/file in the sensibility of the print. Darren from CPL observes that he has a lot of photographers and students come in and say, “I don’t want it to be like that,” but then they can’t explain what they do want it to be like or how they can get there. They have no vocabulary of printing or how to get the “feel” that they want from the print. I believe this is where training in the analogue darkroom can stand digital photographers in good stead.

What photographers need to understand is the syntax of an image, “the system of organization used in putting lines together to form pictures that can stand as representations of particular objects,”1 where they is a clear association between the structure of photographic prints and the linguistic structure that makes verbal communication possible. Photographers are the Keepers of Light and photography broke the boundaries of the visual field that had been delimited by etchings and prints, to allow human beings to see far beyond the physical field of view, to have photographic power over space and time which fundamentally changed the scope of human consciousness.2 Photography makes drawing unnecessary in the physical sense, but through previsualisation photography is predicated on mental drawing (with light) and through the physical form of the photograph, the print, photography has a syntactical basis – which comes from the languages of the photographer inherent in human consciousness and the chemical, optical and mechanical relationships that make photography possible. Both feeling and technology.

I believe that these two things go hand in hand and when photographers have no language, no vocabulary to describe what they want from a photographic print, then they are basically coming up against the limitations of their feelings, technologies and the machine. “Genius is constantly frustrated – and tempered – by the machine.”3 As William Crawford observes, “You simply cannot look at photographs as if they were ends without means. Each is the culmination of a process in which the photographer makes his decisions and discoveries within a technological framework.”4 “Each step in the photographic process plays a syntactical role to the degree that it affects the way the information, the sentiment, the surprises, and the frozen moments found in photographs actually meet the eye.”5 In the case of the photographic print, this means understanding the emotional linguistic vocabulary of printing through the syntax of the image.

With these thoughts in mind, the two standouts in this delightful group exhibition are Claudia Terstappen and Ponch Hawkes. Terstappen’s Brazilian rainforest photographs are as well seen and exquisitely printed as ever but this time they are slightly let down by the nearness of the frame and the colour of the moulding, both of which seen to limit the breathe of the image. Hawkes’ photographs are sublime (especially the two reproduced below), the best silver gelatin photographs that I have seen by an Australian artist in since Terstappen’s last solo exhibition In the Shadow of Change at Monash Gallery of Art. They have wonderful tonality and presence, and a quietness that really lets you contemplate the image through the beauty of the print – and a snip at only $800 each framed!

Other artists in the exhibition have singular images that are interesting (pictured below), but the major disappointment are the prints of Jane Brown. When I first saw the images of Brown’s Australian Gothic at Edmund Pearce Gallery in 2012 I said that they were, “small, darkly hewn, traditionally printed silver gelatin photographs… surrealist tinged, film noir-ish mise-en-scènes, the ones that emphasise the metaphorical darkness of the elements gathered upon the stage. Photographs such as Big Trout, The Female Factory, Adelong, New South Wales and Captain’s Flat Hotel, New South Wales really invoke a feeling of unhomely (or unheimlich), where nature is out of kilter. These images unsettle our idea of Oztraliana, our perceived sense of Self and our place in the world. They disrupt normal transmission; they transmutate the seen environment, transforming appearance, nature and form.”6 This was again the feeling that I got when I saw the series at a later exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography.

Not this time. The prints shown here are much darker and have become almost ungrammatical; where the syntax of the image has broken down so that the linguistic structure of the image makes communication nearly impossible. It is not enough just to make prints darker and darker, hoping for some mystery to magically appear in the image because it won’t. This is a case of overprinting the negative, forcing the vocabulary of the image through a wish to impart something emphatic, some condition of being from the negative that has been imperfectly understood. Is this because this is Edition 2 out of 7, a different printer and a different size? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but Brown really needs to go back to the negatives and reassess the results, especially as these nearly incomprehensible prints are selling for an overinflated $2,000 each framed.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Footnotes

1/ Crawford, William. “Photographic Syntax,” in Crawford, William. The Keepers of Light: A History and Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes. Morgan and Morgan, 1979, p. 2

2/ Ibid., p. 5

3/ Ibid., p. 6

4/ Ibid., p. 6

5/ Ibid., p. 7

6/ Bunyan, Marcus. Review: Jane Brown / Australian Gothic at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne, 6th May 2012 [Online] Cited 21st April 2014

Many thankx to Strange Neighbour for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Emmet Gowin (American, b. 1941)
The Hint That Is a Garden: Siena, Italy
Dedicated to Frederick Sommer, 1975
Gelatin silver print
19.5 x 24.5cm (7 11/16 x 9 5/8 in.)
Gift of Mrs Saul Reinfeld

William Crawford. “Photographic Syntax,” in William Crawford. The Keepers of Light: A History and Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes. Morgan and Morgan, 1979, p. 6.

Claudia Terstappen (Australian born Germany, b. 1959)
Jungle I (Brazil)
1991
From the series Ghosts at the Jucurucu
Silver gelatin print
46 x 68cm

Lloyd Stubber (Australian)
Untitled
2012
Fibre-based silver gelatin print
11 x 14 inches

David Tatnall (Australian, b. 1955)
Clifton Springs Jetty
2012
From the series Coastal Pinholes
Silver gelatin contact print
20 x 25cm

Ruth Maddison (Australian, b. 1945)
Bellambi, NSW
1989
Hand coloured gelatin silver print
19.6 x 49cm
Vintage print, unique state

Ruth Maddison (Australian, b. 1945)
Self-portrait #2
2004
From the series Light touches
Sun print on black and white photographic paper
Vintage print, unique state

“The process of analogue photography is created through darkness and light. To celebrate the launch of the Strange Neighbour Darkroom this exhibition brings together a group of artists who pursue and extend the practice of analogue and darkroom photography. These artists work across many of the countless possibilities of the medium: 35mm, medium format and large format photography, and their diverse processes include pinhole photography, photograms, sun prints, fibre printing and hand colouring. Contemporary photographers are driving the current resurgence in analogue photography and Strange Neighbour is excited to be able to facilitate this irreplaceable art form. Darkroom practice is unique and magickal, alive and well.”

Press release from the Strange Neighbour website

Khem; a possible derivative of the word alchemy, the native name of Egypt, is thought to mean black. Some scholars maintain that Khem is derived from a root meaning wise.1

Alchemy is described as chemistry endowed with magic, and alchemists as those who work with metals and keep these operations secret.2 Apart from the obvious associations of working with metals (silver) and chemistry, there are more subtle and intimate parallels between the art and science of alchemy and darkroom practice.

It is common among darkroom practitioners to consider the process as ‘magic’. When most people encounter printing their first photograph in the darkroom, the simple sight of an image appearing on the paper in the developer tray seems ‘magical’. Even experienced darkroom practitioners never lose this special feeling. Exhibiting artist, Siri Hayes notes, “Watching images come up in developing tray is as mysterious and exciting as any magic show. Perhaps more so as there are no tricks except that the photographic product is the grandest of illusions.”

Distinct from many other forms of photography, darkroom based practice is now specialised, with few people having access to the knowledge, equipment and skills associated with the medium. Like a secret esoteric order, few share this wisdom, and even those willing to teach it may keep special recipes, techniques and discoveries to themselves or within a select dedicated group. Some of this information, although scientific, is not completely understood in rational terms of facts or calculations, but is more related to intuition and perception. It is technical and it is intuitive.

The complex rituals associated with the process allow practitioners to get into a headspace that is conducive to contemplation, bringing forth intuition, allowing space for chance and universal cause and effect. In this art and science there are so many variables with endless possibilities. Ruth Maddison‘s Sun prints are made without camera, film, enlarger or developer. She states, “the tonal range depends on variables like paper stock, length of time in sun or shade, whether the objects are wet or dry … and an unpredictable magic that happens when light sensitive paper is touched by light.”

In this unpredictable environment often mistakes lead to new ideas and create new methodologies. One of the charms of analogue processes is the discovery of beauty through error. Ponch Hawkes recalls this as disasters and wonderful happenstance. Claudia Terstappen remarks it is the number of variables in the darkroom that leaves the creative process wide open and it is often these inaccuracies caused by chemical reactions that lead to a new meaning. This is what makes analogue processes so valuable and irreplaceable. There are many effects in the analogue process that one can recreate with digital technologies, but not invent.

Imperfections caused by these variables or ‘mistakes’ may imbue the image with a ‘spirit’ and otherworldliness, as if the energy of a place or person has been captured. Black and white photography too has the ability to transcend time, memory and death. Jane Brown says, “I examine this a lot in my work – landscapes seem to have vestiges or traces of past life and memorials become otherworldly.” Claudia Terstappen’s work, “is motivated by the stories, beliefs and histories of the people who live there. Here people spoke about the forest spirits that one should be aware of. B+W images suggest a kind of silence.” At a symbolic level, silence is part of most sacred traditions3, and it is part of darkroom practice.

Using analogue processes and working in the darkroom can be aligned to the slow movement, of valuing quality over quantity and returning to a feeling of connectedness. For the images in this exhibition David Tatnall has used an 8 x 10 inch pinhole camera and made contact prints. He expresses of this technology, “my reasons for using this slow, cumbersome and fickle means to make photographs is because I feel it conveys the interaction of the sky and water, the presence of wind and the pulse of nature. I am particularly interested in how the long exposures and lack of sharpness make these features merge into something else… (The) simplicity: no lens, shutter or batteries, no need to upgrade, no click or buzz, no flashing lights or mega pixels no viewfinder and no distortion.” For Ruth Maddision, “she says of working with hand colouring, the pleasure of it – I love working on the real object again, and away from the screen.”

Clearly there is belief and an element of trust in the medium. Lloyd Stubber‘s images in this exhibition are taken from a one-month round the world trip. On return he processed the 15 rolls of film in his laundry. Perhaps the potential fear of loss is overwhelmed by the sense of anticipation, surprise and the flood of memories that return on seeing the work at a later date, as compared to digital, which is immediate and holds none of the mystery.

Another important distinction of darkroom and analogue practice from other forms of photography is the presence of artist’s hand throughout the entire progression of creation to final outcome. In each step of the process, significant choices are made from the many possibilities, from exposing light sensitive film in the camera, developing the film, to printing and finishing the art object. The artist’s mark is therefore not only discernible but also inherently valuable. To Ponch Hawkes, being the maker is of significance. For Terstappen, The physicality of arriving at the ‘perfect’ Gelatin Silver print – with its deep tonal ranges – is something that I highly value.

Contemporary artists are driving the current resurgence in analogue photography. This is a treasured, magickal4 and irreplaceable art form. It is with great pleasure that I declare the Strange Neighbour Darkroom open, and may it provide the space and opportunity for the love of darkroom practice to be enjoyed, shared and fostered.”

Linsey Gosper, curator, darkroom lover, 2014

1/ Francis Melville. The Book of Alchemy. Quarto Publishing plc, 2002, p. 6
2/ Kurt Seligman. Magic, Supernaturalism and Religion. Pantheon Books, 1948, p. 84
3/ Ami Ronnberg (ed.,). The Book of Symbols. Taschen, 2010, p. 676
4/ Magick, in the context of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema, is a term used to differentiate the occult from stage magic and is defined as the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will, including both mundane acts of will as well as ritual magic

Jane Brown (Australian, b. 1967)
Decommissioned Art History Library, University of Melbourne
2012-2013
Fibre-based gelatin silver print
44 x 49.5cm
Edition 2 of 7