Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/08/13

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: hero worship
From: Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 09:10:09 -0700
References: <200108131550.LAA04069@mcfeely.concentric.net>

> REVELATION. We can call some people "photographers" and others
> "photographers and print-makers" and still others "print-makers".
> I admire each and every one of these "labeled" folks if they make
> exceptional images in their respective spheres.

I'm a mediocre photographer but I am a very capable print maker. In my younger years I made dozens or maybe even hundreds of exhibition and commercial prints for photographers famous and unknown.  My guess is that I could make any B&W print for any photographer in the world who is shooting B&W and be able to give that person what they want. (You can't earn a decent living as a printmaker unless you are very lucky, so I did not make that my profession, and stopped doing it for other people in the middle 1970s). 

But my name has never appeared on the print. Most of the photographers whose work I have printed never even knew my name. Printmakers are anonymous. If they are known to anybody at all, they are known to the photographer and occasionally to the curator. Never to the public. 

I rather like it that way. I am most comfortable being invisible. 

And I sure do miss Agfa Indiatone. I used up my last 30-year-old supply of it a while ago, and there's nothing like it any more.

Replies: Reply from Bob Walkden <bob@web-options.com> (Re[2]: [Leica] Re: hero worship)
In reply to: Message from George Lottermoser <imagist@concentric.net> (Re: [Leica] Re: hero worship)