Eggleston & Kenro Izu: Prints vs Book

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Last week at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, I saw an Eggleston retrospective and bought the book published in conjunction with the exhibition. Always having admired Eggleston, but having seen his photographs only in boooks, I used to think that his pictures posed the question: "Why is this a photograph?" Perhaps that is so, but seeing the original prints at the retrospective, it is obvious that Eggleston has a profound sense of color. Only a minor part of this color sense, of the beauty of the colors, come through in the reproductions of the book. One really has to see the oroginal prints -- whether they are dye-transfer, C-prints or Iris prints -- to appreciate Egggleston fully.

While at the Cartier foundation, I also bought the new Kenro Izu book, _Sacred_Places_. Izu uses a 14x20 inch view camera and makes contact prints using the laboriou platinum/palladium process. The photographs are mainly of ancient monuments (Angkor, Borobudur, etc.) taken early morning or late afternoon when there is little light and exposure are very long. The photographs are of great beauty. Of course the original prints, some of which I saw at the recent Paris Photo Salon at the Louvre, are grainless and have subtle gradations. The prints in the book are also beautiful with the same warm tonal palette as the platinum/palladium prints, although with less dynamic range. However, the book prints show some "grain", visible particularly in the sky, from the printing press. Actually, I rather like the grain which makes me think that so many more people will see the book than will see the original prints. The same is true of the Eggleston book. But the the Izu book prints, while not as "good" bring out more of the feeling of the original prints than the Eggleston book does.

Now, while Eggleston uses a Leica, Izu carries 300 pounds of equipment and uses a printing process that takes three days to make a print. I can't help but to muse that a smaller format camera than Izu uses would be a lot more convenient to carry and use, and could result in the same quality as the book prints. But then a part of the attraction for buyers of the print could be the difficulty involved in making the photographs and printing them.

--Mitch Bangkok

-- Mitch Alland (malland@mac.com), November 27, 2001

Answers

Izu is exibiting at the Peabody Museum in Salem MA. till early Dec.Go soon....all platinum.

-- Emile de Leon (Knightpeople @msn.com), November 27, 2001.

I just bought Eggleston's Hasselblad Awards book last week and was scratching my head through most every page. Perhaps the negatives were already fading when the book was published. I would love to see the original prints just to satisfy my curiosity.

-- ray tai (razerx@netvigator.com), November 28, 2001.

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