As far as I can tell,
I was the third person in the United States to begin to reintroduce
platinum printing. In those days it was a wide-open field. The old
formulas no longer worked and basically everything had to be reinvented.
Just as I had begun to understand the process I decided to move to
California. I landed in Carmel in 1973. I had read about this wonderful
village in a book about Edward Weston, and I thought it was a fishing
village. I was shocked to discover on my first day that it was a tourist
destination.
The years from 1974 to
1984 were difficult. Ansel Adams lived and reigned in Carmel. He hated
platinum prints, considering them old fashioned and pictorial. He
felt that making platinum prints meant stepping backward in photographic
evolution, and his opinions were closely followed. So I spent years
outside the photographic community, refining my techniques and my
vision, and teaching occasionally. Later, towards the end of his life,
Ansel came to like my work, although he never admitted it in public,
and we had many good times together.
In 1978 I moved to Carmel
Valley. It was there I made the first of several large bodies of work.
The Carmel Valley Series is a group of
platinum/palladium prints made in my front yard and the interior of
my house. I also did a small group of portraits and figure studies.
Most of these prints are now scattered in museums and private collections
throughout the United States. They were all made with an 8x10 Deardorff
and all the photographs were shaped as circles or portions of circles.
| |
|
|
