berlin balcony

Photographic printing is a matter of craft and sensibility, deep intuition of colour and contrast, and infinite patience. Danny Pope was for me the best colour printer in the world. Moreover, he is one of the few who has been able to translate the skills of traditional wet printing to the digital domain. This has not been achieved without considerable pain for a man being able to produce an immaculate Cibachrome or C-Type in a matter of minutes simply by using a magicians hand movements between the enlarger and paper. The clumsiness and inelegance of computers is difficult to come to terms with for one used to stroking density and shade out of thin air, it seems like trying to dance in a suit of armour, or perform surgery with a scalpel tied to the end of a broom handle. Sensuality is replaced by mathematics. Left and right brain have to swap places.

I must bear some of the blame for this suffering, having spent years insisting that digital is just another medium, one impossible to ignore. Eventually, with extreme reluctance, he began to experiment, and for the next five years pronounced all things digital worthless. After a great of swearing, cursing, condemnation and berating finally a print was produced that he pronounced himself satisfied with.The quality of large format prints he is now making speak for themselves. Clearly, they take digital printing to a new level, The application of a master photographic printer’s eye to producing a digital print. Digital alchemy. Most give up, but Danny pushed through the pain barrier.

The results are not achieved by software, tricks or profiles, but through care, patience, attention to detail, application to craft and a profound understanding of colour and content an quality. Anyone who thinks they can plug in an Epson and produce great prints with the right profile is fooling themselves. Great printing takes years of dedication and painstaking refinement of a way of seeing.

Danny Pope loves photography. He is a good photographer himself, but has no pretensions as an artist. He sees his work as strictly artisan, but I disagree with this. I see him as more akin to a musician who can take the work of a composer and transform it either into something dull or lifeless, or into a vibrant and inspiring interpretation that adds dimension and feeling to the work. A bad print destroys a great photograph – whilst a good print is like a great performance that lifts it to a new level.

There is no way to define the difference between a great performance and a mediocre one. The instruments, the room, even the performer can be the same, and yet one performance can be transcending and another tedious. The brain has more than five times as much space dedicated to vision as it does to sound. The complexity of visual perception and interpretation is incalculable. What makes a great print has far greater subtlety and indefinable magic than great music. It requires a deep feeling, experience, and endless patience. It is neither logical nor calculated, and it can never be pre-programmed.

Printing is a quiet art-one that is not filled with congratulation and applause. But when one talks of great music, both the performer and the composer are described as artists. In photography, the printer must share this mantle, since he can ruin or reveal the picture. Hew must work with impeccable skill and a sure confidence; sensitivity to the to the character and vision of the photographer whose work he brings to life.

John Ruskin wrote

” The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what he saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all as one”

The photographer and the printer collaborate to fulfil this principle in the purest way imaginable.

Andrew Catlin 2005

‘Berlin Balcony’  Andrew Catlin

Ink on Hahnemuhle paper

1m x 2.5m

Andrew Catlin – Sinéad

three rolls of film.

 

The immigration official stared at me with a cold, dumb, baleful expression. He had decided he wasn’t going to let me enter the US, but couldn’t quite articulate why. It wasn’t clear whether it was because he had decided I was a film crew and needed a permit, or because I’d travelled 50,000 miles in the last month and looked like death, or because he just didn’t like the cut of my jib. Whatever; I was stuck at an immigration desk at Vancouver airport, trying to get on a flight to LA where my ticket back to the UK was waiting, having already left Canada. I was due in California the next day to photograph Sinéad O’Connor.

Calls to consulates, lawyers, editors, friends and anyone else I could think of got nowhere. In the end it was at the final whim of the man on the desk with the monosyllabic vocabulary, and he really didn’t give a shit who called. It was my right to appeal if I so wished – and was willing to wait for 8 months. After a few hours in no mans land getting nowhere, I had to buy a $3000 one-way flight back to London and get some sleep.

Quite a lot of sleep, actually.

A couple of weeks later the phone rang, and a woman from the press office at Sinéad’s record company wanted to know if I could photograph Sinéad in London next Thursday as she would be back in England. I said I’d be happy to.

Then thing’s got a little surreal…

“Sinéad wants to know if you would mind doing the pictures at her flat?”

“Yes”, I said, “that would be fine.”

“Great. Can you be there at 2 o’clock?”

“OK, what’s the address?”

“….I can’t give out an artist’s address!”

“Um…. OK what do you suggest?”

There was a long pause, followed by “I’m going to have to call you back…” A couple of hours later she called back.

“OK, we’re going to send a car to collect you and take you there.”

Duh.

“What’s your address for me to send the car to.”

“4 Northwick House….. Maida Vale….. London NW8 8RD.”

“WHO GAVE YOU THAT ADDRESS??????”

“Eh?”

“WHO GAVE YOU THAT ADDRESS??????” “

…It’s my address!”

“No, the address you just gave me. Sinéad’s address!”

“That’s my address.”

“No, it’s Sinéad’s. WHO THE FUCK GAVE IT TO YOU???”

The conversation continued more or less through the same cycle for two or three more repeats, before it gradually became clear that Sinéad had just moved into one of the upstairs flats in the same building. This threw the press woman into a state of complete does-not-compute confusion and panic. She couldn’t work out how this could have happened or how to deal with it. Eventually I said “Why don’t you just ask Sinéad if she’d like to come down for a cup of tea on Thursday, and I can photograph her here and make it easy for her?”. Which was what happened.

I hadn’t met Sinéad before. Her face was lively and expressive, completely captivating, with an indefinable air that encompassed innocence, experience, intensity and something feral. We drank a cup of tea and talked for a while in the kitchen, and then moved to the bedroom where there was a huge bay window with perfect daylight. I had set up a backdrop and we sat either side of the table – a two inch thick slab of bullet-proof glass on trestles. I gradually shot four rolls of 120 film – 48 frames – with my Rolleiflex while we continued our conversation. It’s a gentle camera that is almost silent. It has an easy presence and doesn’t intimidate the sitter in the way many cameras do. It was perfect for the light, the moment, and the mood.

When I processed the film, I was struck by the energy and atmosphere in every picture. Each was dramatically different, and showed the openness that is the ideal for a portrait. I have returned to the contact sheets many times over many years, and continue to be fascinated by every frame. The National Portrait Gallery bought two of the pictures for their collection shortly after the shoot; highly unusual for such a young subject – Sinéad was around 22 at the time and they usually won’t acquire a picture unless it is of someone who has had a long and significant career.

My printer, Danny Pope, has spent a great deal of time over several years working with this set of pictures, and he too continues to be fascinated by them. After working on some very large prints, he suggested that the full set of pictures in sequence would make a great book – both as an insight into Sinéad at the start of her journey, and as an insight into photography; a way of seeing. A narrative of how a simple portrait can unfold and fold in on itself as you work through a progression of unique moments.

After some protracted discussions, arguments and relocations, the negatives were once again brought out and Danny prepared a careful set of high resolution scans for print. Reviewing the proofs has been both surprising and illuminating. Putting them into this format for the first time has given a whole new perspective on the pictures.

AC

Cartier-Bresson wrote:

“What is there more fugitive and transitory than the expression on a human face? The first impression given by a particular face is often the right one; but the photographer should try always to substantiate the first impression by “living” with the person concerned. The decisive moment and psychology, no less than the camera position, are the principle factors in the making of a good portrait.”

Thomas Carlyle noted that he

”…found a portrait superior in real instruction to half a dozen written biographies…

” I have found that the portrait was a small lighted candle, by which the biographies could for the first time be read.”  Thomas Carlyle.

” I have found that the portrait was a small lighted candle, by which the biographies could for the first time be read.”  Thomas Carlyle.

My words are long, and they always will be… perhaps appearing to be talking to just one ear… and even these few paragraphs give birth to many more stories I have, if only this was truly conversational…and I am placing here alongside mine even longer words, by another story teller and mentor to my eye for colour. And here to be read and heard – important words – Within the womb of it all is the message, and what cradles that womb is always ‘a story’.

After twenty years or so after seeing the print of Sinead hanging in his home, I printed the image I had always wanted to print, and if it had not been for his revolutionary adaptation of a tumble dryer or a washing machine… I remember not which.. to dry his film perfectly  – without any drying stain or dried in dust –  adorned within solemn yet perfectly beautiful concrete frames.. the stories over tea and toast, the unique and serene energy of Northwick house, polaroids and eclectic furniture adapted to house film and prints and cameras..his long friendship..and obstinate desire for the protection of his film and the image that is within it… the files in this form would never have been created, and in my view the perfect edition that digital enables.. but that is another volatile and important story.

For in his words, which I reread recently…within the story, words and reflections and use of quotes embodied everything that I was in my mind and service, leaving me understanding with a tranquil affirmation all the words images and reflections.. even my stubborn resolve to protect the grain of film within scanning which in turn resolutely protected the choice of light before that grain grew. Simply put, living and breathing that lovely analogue world of being a printer in the photographic business.

And of course, owing it all to ‘that print’ and most pertinently to the author of that print, and illustrating that complexity of that never ending story I have engaged within.. he always signed the image and never the unexposed or un-inked paper of the print.

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connection-light and film-the portrait

Without any fear of feeling repetitive, this succinct passage eloquently translates that the portrait is born at that very moment. The serene synergy of the eye, choice of film, light and most importantly the connection between the author and the sitter, gives birth to that very particular alchemy of it nestling within the grain of the film. No technique is required to bring it all to light. It’s all there waiting to be printed with complete dedication to that very special connection to its author. That takes time, unlike the moment of time it is captured.

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I hadn’t met Sinéad before. Her face was lively and expressive, completely captivating, with an indefinable air that encompassed innocence, experience, intensity and something feral. We drank a cup of tea and talked for a while in the kitchen, and then moved to the bedroom where there was a huge bay window with perfect daylight. I had set up a backdrop and we sat either side of the table – a two inch thick slab of bullet-proof glass on trestles. I gradually shot four rolls of 120 film – 48 frames – with my Rolleiflex while we continued our conversation. It’s a gentle camera that is almost silent. It has an easy presence and doesn’t intimidate the sitter in the way many cameras do. It was perfect for the light, the moment, and the mood.

When I processed the film, I was struck by the energy and atmosphere in every picture. Each was dramatically different, and showed the openness that is the ideal for a portrait. I have returned to the contact sheets many times over many years, and continue to be fascinated by every frame. The National Portrait Gallery bought two of the pictures for their collection shortly after the shoot; highly unusual for such a young subject – Sinéad was around 22 at the time and they usually won’t acquire a picture unless it is of someone who has had a long and significant career.

While a good portrait can describe eloquently what the photographer saw in the person they photographed at that moment, it can also transmit a deeper level of understanding. Indeed you can also continue to learn from it for many years. You can revisit it, study it, reposition it in the context of a wider story. A portrait, in particular one shot on film, has a permanent connection to a precise moment in time. It can provide a window of clarity on a period that may have been coloured by years of subsequent history, editing and fiction.

AC

“What is there more fugitive and transitory than the expression on a human face? The first impression given by a particular face is often the right one; but the photographer should try always to substantiate the first impression by “living” with the person concerned. The decisive moment and psychology, no less than the camera position, are the principle factors in the making of a good portrait.”

Cartier-Bresson

Thomas Carlyle noted that he ”…found a portrait superior in real instruction to half a dozen written biographies…I have found that the portrait was a small lighted candle, by which the biographies could for the first time be read.”

Sinéad O’Connor by Andrew Catlin

the print

image – Andrew Catlin

‘I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.’

Anais Nin.

ink on hahnemuhle paper 2005

captured on film

Berlin balcony

matrix – Andrew Catlin

The picture was shot in Kreuzberg in Berlin.

The Appartment block was being renovated by developers, but one old lady insisted on staying in her home. The whole building was covered in plastic, but it meant they had to leave her balcony uncovered.

The balcony became like a stage draped with huge curtains.

Each day they would grind away at the building, covering her balcony with dirt, and each day she would sweep it clean with her orange gloves on.

Her movements show quiet resilience, determination and dignity.

People who see the picture spend a long time looking at it. A lot of them say that it reminds them of their own grandmother.

Usually they smile; occasionally they cry.

Perhaps this describes something of a quality that many old people have. They know they will die all too soon, and that they have nothing left to prove and little left to lose. It gives them a certain courage and grace and sadness, and a satisfaction in small things.

AC September 2016

” The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what he saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all as one”

John Ruskin.

an image revisited, from words of today after an inquiry for the provenance and story of the mono print that was bought for a collection.

the words illustrate that photography, documentary photography is never a matter of chance nor design.

the matrix editions, were and are hugely important. Andrew is the most important photographer of the eighties. His love, respect and understanding of all people, his desire to share his perception of them through portraiture has left us with some of the most gentle and powerful images through the photographic medium.

yet what the matrix show, and all of his work, is that portraiture is of the moment with the wisest of eyes.

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