RE: [Leica] Walker Evans, or Bigger IS Better

[Guy Bennett <guybnt@idt.net>]

>It's interesting how we seem to have gotten really hung up on the size of
>photographic prints. I know I'm in a real minority, but I find that smaller
>prints with a fair amount of white space around them really draw me
>in...Large prints can be nice, but I simply don't find them
>necessary.....This has nothing to do, however, with whether the Evans show
>is or isn't any good...I haven't seen it yet but hope to...


b.d.,

i agree with you on the issue of size and white space with respect to
photographic prints. it's not that i don't like large prints, i just find
them harder to deal with as a viewer/spectator: as if it were more
difficult to take the whole thing in. it's nice to let the image breathe a
bit in the white space of the borders, and allow the proportions of the
photographic space to resonate with those of the paper.

when i print i tend to leave a fairly substantial border around the image -
foolish, perhaps, or wasteful, cause one can always add white space if one
has one's prints mounted; i don't. or at least, i haven't yet. i'll
generally print up to 4"x6" on an 8"x10" sheet, 7"x10 1/2" on an 11"x14".
for about the last year, i've been working on one set of images that i
print 2"x3" on 5"x7" sheets, and even they need that bit of white around
them.

more than just for reasons of white space, however, i find that certain
prints seem more appropriate at this or that size; in other words, the size
of the print may (perhaps even should) be motivated by the 'content' of the
image. rather than just print everything out at x size, that decision might
very well be dictated by other (esthetic, practical, or what-have-you)
reasons.

this kind of thing interests me because it basically means more than just
the 'subject matter' of the image is being used to communicate to the
viewer. and i'm not necessarily talking about 'presentation' (i.e.
mounting, framing, etc.), which is a whole other thing and essentially
external (and, in my opinion, ultimately unnecessary).

so, there may be very good reasons why those persian miniatures are
miniatures: perhaps they were meant to convey man's smallness in the world,
or maybe paper and colors were too expensive to squander in unnecessarily
huge images, who knows. the point, for me at any rate, can be summed up in
the following paradoxical clichés: regarding the photographic print, 'size
does matter' and 'small is beautiful.'

what ho!

guy