Since this picture was taken in 1972, long before digital photography, I assume the original photograph was taken with traditional photographic film, Tri X would be a good guess. The regularity (and linearity) of the blobs in the second row left does not seem consistent with how the silver halides (silver bromide, silver chloride and silver iodide)would react in a photographic emulsion. I assume, then, that this is a
wire photos. (Interestingly enough, when Googling “wire photos” one gets multiple references to the television series “The Wire”). Wirephotos were the mainstay of newspaper photography for a long time, I guess until Fax machines. I assume both technologies have linear scanners and this might account for the order in the image just referenced.
I guess what I am driving at is that the series of pictures would be much more powerful if one zeroed in on the silver blobs of a true photograph with all its chaos and a sense of one-to-one capture rather than the artifical nature of a wirephoto. Am I quibbling?
I think those are half-tone dots. Take a magnifier and look at your newspaper.
The trouble with trying for the sense of an image emerging from pure black/white abstraction as Wood has done — by using a negative is that the grains overlap. You can take it down to where the texture of the grains is visible, but it never goes to true abstraction becuase there is gradation in tone/density and there isn’t clear separation of each grain from the next.
Since this picture was taken in 1972, long before digital photography, I assume the original photograph was taken with traditional photographic film, Tri X would be a good guess. The regularity (and linearity) of the blobs in the second row left does not seem consistent with how the silver halides (silver bromide, silver chloride and silver iodide)would react in a photographic emulsion. I assume, then, that this is a
wire photos. (Interestingly enough, when Googling “wire photos” one gets multiple references to the television series “The Wire”). Wirephotos were the mainstay of newspaper photography for a long time, I guess until Fax machines. I assume both technologies have linear scanners and this might account for the order in the image just referenced.
I guess what I am driving at is that the series of pictures would be much more powerful if one zeroed in on the silver blobs of a true photograph with all its chaos and a sense of one-to-one capture rather than the artifical nature of a wirephoto. Am I quibbling?
Comment by Dr. C. — November 15, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
I think those are half-tone dots. Take a magnifier and look at your newspaper.
The trouble with trying for the sense of an image emerging from pure black/white abstraction as Wood has done — by using a negative is that the grains overlap. You can take it down to where the texture of the grains is visible, but it never goes to true abstraction becuase there is gradation in tone/density and there isn’t clear separation of each grain from the next.
Comment by unrealnature — November 15, 2009 @ 3:43 pm