Photographs are Objects

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I've been thinking recently about the gulf that seems to exist between viewing images online, on screen and what I consider to be the true test of an image's strength - as a physical object. I recently was reminded of how big that gulf can be when I first looked at the work of Lis Bailley's work New Horizons on the Luz Gallery website. The images when viewed on the web didn't seem to have much substance to me, so I was very pleasantly surprised at how powerful those same images were when I encountered them as prints on the gallery walls. They had a richness and pull that was completely absent when viewed on screen. 

A couple of years ago, I made a decision to stop scanning black and white film after I developed it, and return to traditional printing of the images. I was craving the opportunity to work in the darkroom, and to hold finished prints in my hands. Over time, I find I'm evolving an odd hybrid workflow for black and white - shoot film, process and print in darkroom, scan print and then post on blog/flickr etc. There's a certain rhythm that's developed in this workflow that really resonates with me. At the moment, I'm laying out a zine of Holga images I took on a trip to San Francisco back in October. All of the images were first printed in the darkroom, then scanned and now printed out with a laser printer. I'm in the process of culling and sequencing the images, and will produce a low-tech zine with the laser printer. It will be the first publication of my newest venture Studio Centralé Press, which marries my long-standing love of books with my conviction that my photographic work (and that of others) is best viewed as physical objects.

The website is currently under construction, but if you are interested in learning more, I am starting a blog for Studio Centralé which I will update with news of progress and publications.