On Sunday, July 14, 2002 at 20:38, Eric Goldstein <koml@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote re "[KOML] Re: If a tree fell on KOMl . . ." saying:
> "Eve Girard" wrote:
>
> > I just noticed on another list that the great Karsch has passed away
> > today. I hope our fellow list-member and former Karsch employee, Tom,
> > might be able to offer a word or two about the man.
Well, he was a great craftsman/artist and socialite, focused and
timid/gentle all at once. He had a strong sense of what was proper,
even to the point of taking Churchill's cigar from him (but after a
shot or two beforehand with the cigar, just to be sure) because he
thought the cigar "undignified."
He was sure not timid with me in the studio - was exactly clear what he
wanted me (age ~22) to do. He preferred all his staff to know what he
wanted before he knew it. His staff stayed with him for years. Ignas
Gabalis, his darkroom person, worked for him for 38 years. He treated
them all with respect. He saved his impatience for me and the rest of
the outside world when he was in the studio. I was lucky to last a
year. I was too curious and too careless for him.
In 1968 when I worked for him, he charged local Ottawans $300 for a
sitting with prints, other canadians $400, and americans $500 because
he felt a loyalty to his home. Notables, of course, got their sitting
free, though magazines sometimes paid for a string of sittings, like
Fortune, Life, ... He charged $15 for hand-printed 8x10's then. For me
it would have been 1/4 of my weekly salary. He got to shoot Churchill
because he had made friends with the Ottawa social élite, and
especially the prime minister, Mackenzie King.
Small prints were made on paper one size bigger and lines were embossed
around them to frame them. Most portraits were printed on a beigy
stock. Only exhibition prints were on pure black and white paper,
Dupont Velour, if I recall correctly.
We always made more prints that were called for in orders, partly to
compensate for accidents, and also to have a choice. If he were in
town, he would usually make the final selection of the prints to be
shipped. If not, Helga Graber and/or Ignas would choose, and the rest
of the prints either stored for future orders or destroyed. All colour
was handled outside - I seldom saw them. Most negatives and proofs were
stored in big wall cabinets, but the most precious were in a safety
deposit box.
Most negatives were 8x10. 4x5 were small format. Ignas or I would
develop them in a small darkroom by shuffling them in trays. We'd put
on a dim green light half-way through development to judge when each
was done - not by looking through it, but by examining the reflection
for shadow detail. Most of what I did was shuffling prints through
solutions - hypo, hypo eliminator, gold toning for permanence, washing.
I also proofed negatives on POP paper in frames near fluorescents --
now there is a way to get a long tonal range -- and was a general dog's
body.
...
> I've had the chance to see several showing of Karsh master prints,
> the last a couple of years ago at Boston's MFA and I must tell you,
> no amount of photoshop work and no digital process available for the
> near-term could produce what this man did... His light and his
> methods and his ways with his subjects all combined to produce
> images of scale and strength that startles you into believing that
> the essence each subject somehow found itself illuminated in the
> print...
Well, I think photoshop could be probably be used to match his prints,
if you could stuff a hi-res scan of an 8x10 in. It would just take
detailed work. But I understand that current digital printers have a
hard time with black and white and keeping a good contrast range.
> Reproductions do not do this man's work justice.
Some of the books are pretty good. The earlier "Portraits of
Greatness", not printed on glossy paper, seemed the best to me - the
blacks were "inky." He went to a lot of trouble with that book.
But the original prints do glow, especially in the larger sizes. The
Chateau Laurier still displays some of his prints, I believe.
So what did I learn? I learned mostly from the print judgings, of final
prints and test prints. What was good, what was bad - in small details.
I also learned about the details - taking care of things, the business
of a studio.
tOM Trottier
------- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur -----------------
,__@ Tom A. Trottier +1 613 860-6633 fax:231-6115
_-\_<, 758 Albert St.,Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8
(*)/'(*) ICQ:57647974 N45.412 W75.714
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Laws are the spider's webs which,
if anything small falls into them they ensnare it,
but large things break through and escape.
--Solon, statesman (c.638-c558 BCE)
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