The photographs now on display in the RAPC Gallery are by three Club members with a particular commitment to print-making: Amy Dawn Rose, Jerry Lam & John Healey. Their photographic practice includes working with silver-based film and paper to produce physical prints and they are all active members of the Club’s Darkroom Group. I asked them to share some of their work with the rest of the Club as a gallery show which I am sure you will enjoy taking a look at.
While this sort of print-making is only one of many contemporary options for making photographs the production of a physical object – the print – can lead the maker to a great depth of engagement with their images. The American photographer Charles Pratt (1926–1976) wrote this about print-making:
I spend a good deal of time printing, because to me a photograph is only a photograph when it’s a photograph – not when it’s an unrealized potential in a badly printed negative, nor when it’s a reproduction. Printing is an essential part of the process of transforming the experience into a photographic image. This involves fiddling with tonality, not for the sake of richness as it applies to pieces of silver on paper, but as it applies to the memory of the surface of what was in front of me, and as it applies to the unity of the image within the rectangle. The whole chain of effort starts with the experience of actuality at the moment of exposure, and this experience must be held all along the way if it is to be held at the end – as for me it must be.
Amy writes:
My preferred subject matter is portraiture, but I have included only 1 portrait in my selection. The portrait of Ignacio was taken in an alley a block from where I live, and where I like to walk my dog. I noticed one of the garages had a really interesting mottled surface and great light in the early evening in summer, and thought it would make a great backdrop for portraits. The other three images were all taken in my neighbourhood, Mechanicsville. The KFC bucket was shot on Wellington. The KFC closed down last summer, and I wanted to take a picture of the bucket before it was removed. I went to middle school a few blocks away, and would often spend my allowance money there on my lunch hours. I guess you could say I like to take pictures close to home – I tend to spend a lot of time looking closely at my neighbourhood as I walk my dog. It’s full if interesting characters and is very lively!
You can see more of Amy’s work here.
John writes:
During some of the best moments through the summer and fall of 2011 I found myself holding the cable release of a Holga pinhole wide 120 plastic film camera. Educational moments came while developing each image here in the club’s darkroom. This work is an attempt to create the dark images that came to mind over those short months.
Amy, Jerry and myself put the show up on Saturday morning guided by RAPC Gallery Assistant Izabel Dabrowski:
—Dave Elden.
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