Smith's Contribution to Pictorialism

[John R Smith]

Hmmmm

All this lith print stuff started me thinking about my own efforts at pictorialism. Years and years ago, I did mess around a bit with some night shots which were then printed from paper negatives. They were quite nice, in a hippy art-school kind of way. As you know, most of my recent stuff is definitely in the Weston/Adams camp, with a bit of Bill Brandt thrown in. However, there is this one. It is a shot of the Gonamena Tramway near Liskeard, taken in about 1985 with my Rollei on Ilford HP5. Something went wrong with my developing - I don't know what, temperature, agitation, duff developer, something - and as a result the negative was heavily vignetted and with a really strange looking sky with seriously heavy grain. So this was a case of totally unintentional pictorialism which I have always rather liked.

See what you think 

John

[shutterpup]

Very foreboding. I like the mood it conveys.

[WalterEG]

Wonderful.  Take what is on offer.  The last thing that our craft needs is dogma — especially from dudes who've been dead 30 years or more.

[Rob C]

Great atmosphere; don't underplay creative developing - next best thing to serendipity and/or hippy art schools!

Best of all, nobody at the time suggested you clone away that pole on the right, so I mention it here to forestall them from doing so now.

Like it very much. Ah film!

Rob C

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Fine, moody shot, John.
And if you cloned away that pole on the ... Oops! 

[stamper]

Wonderful.  Take what is on offer.  The last thing that our craft needs is dogma — especially from dudes who've been dead 30 years or more.

It has just struck me that I don't have any "heroes" in photography. I have lots of books by different authors but I don't pay "homage" to any of them. Some will probably say that I am probably lacking in my photographic "education". With respect to to the image it has an old world feel to it and nicely processed. A likeable image. As to the pole then it would have been a victim of my crop button in PS.

[32BT]

See what you think 

I concur with the previous posters about the mood, but I do have a slight itch with the rather dominantly sharp grass in the foreground. Seems to take away from the impressionistic qualities, and tends to draw attention where imo is not the center of interest at all.

This effect btw reminds me of the trick with putting tights over the enlarger.

[John R Smith]

Thank you for all of your comments, and taking the trouble to reply. As to the pole . . . well, it didn't bother me at  the time so we'll let it be. This is an industrial landscape, in fact, so it is not out of place. This was at one time the centre of the most important copper mining area in Cornwall. Those stones in the foreground are the supporting granite "setts" for the rails of a horse-drawn tramway which carried the copper ore to the sea, so for my purpose (which at the time was a magazine article on early railways) they were the subject.

When I pulled the film out of the spiral I could see straight away that I had done something horribly wrong. There was a light under-developed strip all the way down both sides of the negatives, and I very nearly just binned them there and then as I could easily re-shoot the subjects. But I stayed my hand, and this frame turned out quite well in an Edgar Allen Poe sort of way. Never did get that article published, though . . .

John