Handcrafted Photography can be so much more that either it's devotees or detractors generally believe. As beautifully demonstrated in this work "Incognito" by Lith Printer Susan de Witt. 2012, All Rights Reserved

practitioner of handcrafted photography you will find much to delight the eye and fascinate the mind.

fotosavant is going dormant as of February 1, 2013. The website archive will remain for the time being. The mailbox will be checked. You may contact fotosavant here;

editor@fotosavant.com

All text is copyright 2010 -2013.  All photographs are the exclusive domain of the named artist.  No reproduction may be done in any form without the written permission of the author/artist.

“Le Noir” by Jean-Claude Mougin

In his quest for absolute black – “Le Noir”, the French photographer and platinum printer will lead us, through a selection of his work to rediscover black and white photography.

Jean-Claude Mougin at Tilt Gallery - All Rights Reserved

Jean-Claude Mougin explains : “Black is the absence of all colors but it is also the presence of all. Black is at once, the vacuum and the full. It is  the, arché, the stump  of all which is. Before the imperceptible and ethereal light, before  “the light is”, the deep Night was already there, black more black than black wrapping with the thickness of her shadow beings to be born, beings which, in living will give birth to dreams and images, before death again takes them. “

For 30 years, Jean-Claude Mougin has taught not only philosophy but also how to read and analyze images and the philosophy of photography at the Nicephore Niepce museum in Chalon-sur Saône. After reading the German philosopher Walter Benjamin and discovering the Niepce museum treasures, including “The Pencil of Nature” by Fox Talbot and many great french calotypists from the 19th century, he became interested in the idea of “aura” and alternative techniques in photography. In 1980, he saw for the very first time a platinum print by Paul Strand at the Zabriskie gallery in Paris. It was a true revelation. From the Pizzighelli and Hübl books, he decided to reproduce this process and since then, he has been working and perfecting this technique. He quickly became one of the best platinum/palladium printers in France and has been offering numerous workshops in France and abroad (at the Luxun University of Art in Shenyang, China). His work has been exhibited in Tunisia, France, Denmark, Great-Britain including an exhibition at the Nicephore Niepce museum and at the Fox Talbot museum of Lacock Abbey. His prints can be found in the collections of several institutions such as the Niepce museum, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne and the Luxun University of Art in China.

• Opening Reception: Thursday, January 31, 7-9pm

More information may be found at www.tiltgallery.com

For those who prefer a less snarky (Yes Christopher James we are talking about you.)guide to “alternative” processes, Anderson provides an up-to-the-minute overview of Gum Printing in addition to many other contact printing processes.  This volume comprises the fruit of months of research into the history of the processes in the stacks of the George Eastman House as well as (literally) years of aggressive and creative hands-on experimentation.  It is liberally illustrated with the work of over 100 contemporary hand-process printers varying from students to the long-established, including many names familiar to readers of fotosavant.  In terms of accessibility, it slots very well as a 200-level course text.  Which is to say the curious novice will not find it intimidating, nor will the experienced UV print-maker find it overly obvious.

For those who think these processes have ossified into the photographic equivalent of Civil-War re-enactments, Anderson makes it clear that in terms of aesthetics, materials and methods, in Contact Printing change is the constant.  For this moment, at the start of 2013, Anderson’s book captures the state of the art and puts it in a digestible form.  Doubtless it will become a “must-have” for the UV exposure set.

We have seen (literally) thousands and thousands of examples by the renowned as well as the unsung practitioners of handcrafted photography.  ChemoToxic is singularly successful in spelling out (for doubter and devotee alike) how process can play an essential role in advancing the artist’s objective.  For those who would like to understand the difference between image-making and photography we can only hope they have the opportunity to experience these glass plates in person. - fs

ChemoToxic 1, 2010 - Willie Osterman

The creator of ChemoToxic, RIT Professor Willie Osterman writes in the Artist’s Statement; “In February of 2010, just six days after returning from Croatia I drove my wife Michele to the Emergency Room due to stomach pains.  A CAT scan revealed a grapefruit-size tumor on her left ovary.”  In a matter of hours Osterman found himself in the midst of his wife’s struggle, not only with a life-threatening disease but with a nearly equally life-threatening course of treatment.

“She began Chemotherapy on March 30.  I spent the Spring of 2010, the second half of my sabbatical, caretaking Michele and making images.  I was learning how to use this complicated and sometimes frustrating photochemical process (Wet Plate Collodion) as she underwent her own “chemical process”.  Chemo Toxic is the term used to describe the impact of chemotherapy on the body, specifically 48-72 hours after getting dosed.”

The term “Chemo Toxic” became reduced to a single word in his mind “ChemoToxic” and attached itself to the work that was taking shape as Osterman engaged in a mixture of work-therapy and documentation.

fs:  Was there a vision of the arc or the purpose of the project from the beginning?

WO:  “When I start a visual project I never know what will emerge.  If I did it would become too mechanical and that is a bore.  In this case I needed a diversion and was wondering how my camera and this process would see what was going on and how that would resonate with my emotions about what Michele was going through.  Photography is a tool that shows you what is there in front of you.  But I am not just interested in what is there, I’m interested in what else is there.

“As I began to see the results of the photochemical process we began to see the effects of the chemo process (on Michele).  Together they both started to work and the healing began for both of us.  My artwork was my therapy.  I make it for myself and then look at it to see what it has to teach me.”

fs:  Was there ever a point in shooting the series that Michele said “Just let me be sick and give the camera a rest.”?

WO:  “No.  However before the sessions I did check in with her to see about her energy level. Often I would make several plates at each sitting, which could take several hours.  We would only do one sitting per day and at most 2-3 per week.  In the period immediately following her Chemo treatments we wouldn’t do any.”

fs:  You seemed very clear in making the battle against disease one in which you were a participant, not merely a spectator. The evidence of Michele’s battle is in the plates.  How does your battle manifest itself in ChemoToxic?

ChemoToxic 8, 2010 - Willie Osterman

WO:  “My battle manifested itself in the making of the plates.  Michele’s battle is seen in the plates and would not be there (emotionally and beyond the chemical action) if it were not for my passion for her and for making images and for her patience by being willing to sit still for 60 or so seconds for each exposure.  When I asked her if she would be willing to sit for these prtraits, she felt compelled because she was curious to see how the camera would record her during this evolution in our relationship.”

fs:  Have Cancer patients or their families had a particular reaction on viewing ChemoToxic?

WO:  “Yes, quite a few.  Yesterday I received a call from a woman who has Breast Cancer and is using photography to document her journey.  Just from one exhibition I have networked with several artists who are dealing with Cancer and are doing the same in their own artistic mediums.  At some point in the future I would like to curate a major exhibition that deals with these issues, so more could benefit.”

fs:  Does the physicality of the glass plates figure into the presentation (or the viewers experience) of this series?

WO:  “The Internet is pretty good for showing a facsimile of the object, but it is not the real thing.  The images in this series (as exhibited) are all in-camera originals.  I specifically wanted (in this world of digital reproduction) to have only one original.  I love that idea!  They are not for sale.  I am not interested in that.  For me there is something much more immediate about the original one-of-a-kind that shows the marks made by the hands of the artist that you don’t quite get looking at it online.”

fs:  Any plans for further exhibition or publication of ChemoToxic?

WO:  ”There is a major exhibition planned for this Spring at the Visual Studies Workshop www.vsw.org in Rochester, opening on May 3 and there have bee expressions of interest in various publication projects..”   (The exhibition is also scheduled to include an associated, large-scale Ambrotype installation of approximately 50 11″x14″ plates floated on wires to create a succession of ever-changing views.)

fs:  We would be remiss if this ended without your telling us how Michele is doing today.

WO:  “Michele will be 3 years out (as they say) next month on February 14.
Every 4 months we have a terrifying meeting with the oncologist that is preceded
with blood tests that show how her numbers are doing. For the week before we
live on edge as all could change depending on the numbers. So far all the
numbers have been great and she continues to improve. Chemo is a funny drug as
it gets into your system and, as I say, sort of kills you, or kills the quickly
reproducing cells such as cancer, hair, stomach lining and others. As a result
she will never be quite the same as before the chemo and while the changes are
relatively small it is still a change. Different people are affected differently
by it and fortunately here changes are small. So, we continue to be hopeful and
enjoy our happy, healthy time together.”

ChemoToxic will be on exhibit at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY starting May 3, 2013.  For further information please visit their website at www.vsw.org.  You may view the ChemoToxic Series by clicking on Willie Osterman in the Galleries Section on the right.

The opening of ChemoToxic at VSW will also be a fundraiser for the Pluta Center www.plutacancercenter.org and VSW. In Osterman’s words, “Pluta Center is where Michele received her treatment.  The staff at Pluta Center shows so much compassion for the patients, we really want to give back and support their efforts.  One of the events will be Shave Your Head For Cancer.  I will be making Ambrotypes of the participants for my next project.  Additional fund-raising activities will include comissioned portraits and print sales.”

ChemoToxic 8, 2010 - Willie Osterman

Next week fotosavant will be featuring ChemoToxic by photographer and RIT Fine Art Professor, Willie Osterman.  The project chronicles his wife Michele’s cancer diagnosis and their subsequent journey through treatment and recovery.

Both monumental and intimate, the work is an experience you may hesitate to share, but shouldn’t miss.  Aside from its powerful human interest, it also stands as an exemplar of the power of the handcrafted image.

John Dugdale

“I owe that show everything. It was the beginning of ‘the decade’ as I think of it now.”

So photographer John Dugdale sums up his first Cyanotype show at Wessel & O’Connor and the years that followed. The decade included highlights such as a spread in The New York Times, multiple gallery and museum shows spanning five continents, three books and solid gallery sales. He also became a much sought-after lecturer on a variety of subjects.

“Eventually the phones stopped ringing. Gallerists were carrying (but not promoting) my photography and I was starting to sense a lack of direction in my work.” A trusted friend gave him a well-timed perspective on his new situation. “They said to me ‘Look. You are like an actor who had a hit sitcom with a long run. But that’s over. What you need is a new pilot.”

During the following summer at his farm, the advice percolated as he pondered his next move. “One morning I woke up and there was a clear realization that I had an opportunity to do something unique, to create a school right here on the farm.” That idea in itself, is hardly novel as the long existence of many rural-based photography schools will attest. However the question quickly arose “What does a photographer with only 20% vision, who does not focus his own camera or make his own prints have to offer as an educator?”

Dugdale laughs when he recounts, “It was never going to be a money-making proposition.” yet he never doubted that he had a contribution to make as an educator. “It is about understanding the difference between sight and vision. Many photographers with perfect sight do not know what they are taking pictures of.” “Most photographers take photos from the outside in. I wanted to teach students how to communicate a vision from the inside out.”

Just as twenty years earlier he had built a new creative identity from the ravages of life-threatening illness through the combined efforts of dedicated friends and proceeds from his own print sales , the improbably-named John Dugdale School of 19th Century

Under Construction - 2010

Photography and Aesthetics (JDS for short) began to rise in rural Ulster County New York.

The fruit of their efforts opened its door to the first students in 2010. Upon arrival a student finds a building that could easily be mistaken for a mid-19th Century utilitarian structure. The main classroom/studio is a spare, classic but not fussy room, with an abundance of natural light playing off wooden floors and a full-size, rolling view camera.

Students are asked to leave the accoutrements of the 21st Century at home.  No worrying about whether a phone will buzz or a text message arrive.  No concerns about fully-charged batteries or sufficient memory cards.  Photography is stripped to its essentials; light, a sensitized surface and the mind of the photographer.  To most new arrivals the equipment is intimidating in its simplicity, as is the fragility of the glass that will become ambrotypes.  But even more of a challenge is the process of simply sitting still and believing that stillness produces its own creative fruit.

Dugdale acknowledges the magnitude of the challenge, “In this culture we are so

Dugdale Self Portrait - Used by permission

innundated with sensory stimulation, having ideas and imagery forced on us, it is only through an act of will, by our own effort and decision that we can create silence inside and around us.”  and he concedes,”People struggle with that, at first.  You can hear it when they get behind a camera.  I can hear someone struggling from across the room.”

Even in spending a short amount of time with him, it is clear that silence and inactivity do not come naturally to John Dugdale.  ”Were it not for the isolation imposed on me by illness I would not have created the type of art I have since 1993.”  The intention of the school is to assist students in creating the environment of stillness in themselves without it being externally imposed on them by circumstances.   For himself, “The only time the world goes still is when I am behind the camera.”  He goes on, “That stillness will create a different result in every artist.”

Though the language employed in describing the school and the experience of it, can be quasi-religious, doctrine and theology of any sort are not on the menu at the school, “Contemplation and inner discipline cut across all religious boundaries.  If individual students place it in a spiritual context and that works for them… great.”

fotosavant asked him what he had learned in the first two years of the school’s operation. “The first year we had too many students (six per class) and they were kept very busy.  I learned that the students wanted more one-on-one time.  In year two, I reduced the number of students per class (to four) and cut down on the scheduled activities.”  he concludes “I think it worked better for both the students and myself.”

As for his own creative future Dugdale relates, “In my mind I am working out installation pieces that not only present photography, but a context in which to view it.  But it is still in the preliminary planning stages.”

The Cyanotype work for which he became so well-known and the philosophy of the school are all of a piece.  The results can appear very placid and peaceful, but that is only on one level.  ”When you break up the routine, or when life breaks it up for you the results can be surprising.”

Registration for the 2013 season at the John Dugdale School will begin in March.  For more information please visit: www.thejohndugdaleschool.com.  fotosavant would like to extend sincere thanks to John Dugdale for being so generous with his time and for making his collected works available for this profile.

Anthropy Arts created a promotional video on The John Dugdale School for 19th Century Photography and Aesthetics. Beautifully conceived and shot, it provides a great insight into the man and philosophy behind this unique institution. It may be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3eyDiIgcVQ

With the perspective of nearly twenty years, John Dugdale refers to it as “the Event”. In reality “the Event” was a serious of medical crises unfolding over a period of months, culminating in a series of strokes which left him with no sight in one eye, diminishing sight in the other and temporarily paralyzed on one side.

While recovering in a hospital bed at St. Vincent’s he received an offer via his agent for a big-ticket wedding dress ad shoot which needed to be delivered in days. His agent, conscious of the potentially career-ending ramifications of a refusal, asked him what he wanted her to say. Dugdale recalls the moment clearly when he told her to have him call back in an hour. “I knew I was at a crossroads in life and that my answer would be a commitment to something that wasn’t clear yet.”

by John Dugdale - All Rights Reserved, by permission of the artist

In the course of the next hour, several priorities became clear in his own mind. First, was that he wanted to return to photography. Second that he wanted to use photography to communicate his journey from one state of being (commercially defined success, health, security) to his current condition (experiencing isolation and loss on many levels, yet remaining actively and creatively alive) He also pragmatically realized that he was not capable of producing work that would satisfy the rigid demands of his clients and compare favorably to his previous editorial work. He instructed his agent to decline the offer.

Thanks to a determined personality, the timely arrival of a successful course of treatment, a supportive family and loyal friends a slow recovery commenced. Improbably, Dugdale returned to the NYC studio he had already called home for over a decade with an intention to live, rather than simply waiting for the next opportunistic infection to kill him.

“I began to explore the Cyanotype process. It’s primary appeal honestly, was that it was a non-toxic process I could mange within the confines of my new existence. I also had the good fortune to be have Judy Siegel (“Post-Factory Photography”) nearby. Siegel, a photographer and printmaker of historic significance in the re-emergence of handcrafted photography, literally lived next-door.

It would be Judy Siegel who would give Dugdale the first critical review of his initial work in Cyanotype. “I recalled the cucumber images I had seen years before and made some prints along those lines. Judy (Siegel) came up to take a look. I am on the fourth floor and so she stomps up the stairs in her clogs and stained work apron and looks and looks. Finally she says “You’re trying really hard to be a 19th Century Photographer. But you can’t. You are very much a 20th Century photographer.”

Believing he had found his medium but not his muse, he turned next to subject matter that was close at hand and near to heart. Throughout his illness and the early days of his re-entry into photography his family was supportive and nearby. He also became more acutely aware of the vulnerability that any artist feels when they exhibit work to the public. As many artists have said in the past “it’s like being naked in front of strangers.” As Dugdale himself puts it “Naked is a metaphor for being blind. ” The themes of family solidarity and vulnerability intertwine in the series of nudes which use the artist and his siblings as subject.

by John Dugdale - All Rights Reserved, by permission of the artist

As a growing number of friends in the industry saw examples of the “new” John Dugdale several began to encourage him to exhibit the Cyanotypes. John Wessel and Billy O’Connor made the idea of an exhibit a reality and his first show was scheduled for late 1993. Thinking it would be of interest only to his close circle and a few acquaintances, he expected a small turnout of the supportive and the curious at the opening. He tells the rest of the story himself;

“People just kept coming and coming. I couldn’t really see anyone but they were saying the nicest things. Then Billy and John (Wessel and O’Connor) started whispering to me about pieces selling. That show sold out.”

“Everything that has happened in my career since is due to that one show.”

The show provided Dugdale with validation and motivation to continue the new course his career had taken. Invitations for shows began to come in and the question arose of whether to set out to create themed portfolios to provide the illusion of exclusivity that gallerists prefer. “I don’t work in series or portfolios. My life’s work is one big portfolio. I just keep adding to it.”

The “everything” that entails his second career has included dozens of solo shows at galleries and museums around the world as well as three books; Lengthening Shadows Before Nightfall (1995), Life’s Evening Hour (2000) and New Suns Will Arise (2000) in addition to editorial projects of special interest such as the publicity stills for the 2010 Broadway revival of “The Miracle Worker”.

Several seemingly disparate threads began to weave more closely together to create the John Dugdale “look” that would predominate his work for the next decade. An extensive visual archive from his editorial work plus an ability to compose the elements of design (line, shadow, texture, etc.) mentally along with an affinity for Transcendentalist thought combine to become the artistic style now so closely associated with him. “Not that I ever articulate that process to myself. It’s just reflexive for me.” quickly adding ” Though I’m sure its there.”

by John Dugdale - All Rights Reserved, by permission of the artist

Transcendentalism (not to be confused with Transcendental Meditation or TM) was most famously articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Central to it is the belief in an invisible world that exists in tandem with the visible and that everyone has the innate capacity to comprehend it. Much of Dugdale’s work of the 1990′s gives visual expression to that concept.

It is no coincidence that evidence of the mid-19th Century permeates the settings and props of many of his images from this period. “Ever since I was a kid and I would fantasize about time travel, the age I always wished to land in was the early 19th Century.” He had already given expression to that wish in the choice of second home in Ulster County New York. The house has been painstakingly restored and decorated in pre-Civil War aesthetic. It serves as backdrop for many of his iconic Cyanotype images.

His keen eye for detail and appreciation for having the right thing in the right place is a trait common to many visual artists. It also happens to coincide with the need of sight-impaired people to have the right thing in the right place as a matter of smoothly conducting their day-to-day lives. The marriage of preference and need combine to create a world where Dugdale had both the physical and psychological safety and control required to create great art.

In his manner of living and creating as elsewhere in his life there is a duality as he splits his time

Dugdale Farm - Ulster County, NY, used by permission

In the third and final installment, fotosavant catches up with John Dugdale today and his innovative creation that he has termed “the most awkwardly named art school in the world.”