Artist’s Statement of Technique
Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes it visible.
Paul Klee
I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it.
Dziga Vertov
For most of us, nothing is so easy as seeing, and yet we do it so infrequently. We tend to go about our daily business blindered like draft horses by our thoughts, concerns, hopes and fears, rarely really seeing the world around us. Photography can remove those blinders, helping us to see with fresh eyes, like children seeing the world for the first time.
In today’s digital world, George Eastman’s slogan, “You push the button, we do the rest”, is more true than ever. The very ease of it all lulls us into a complacency that hinders true seeing. That high-technology engendered complacency imposes yet another set of blinders.
These pictures are not digital images; they are analog photographs - the photographic version of "slow food". I find that making photography more difficult makes seeing easier. Using primarily cameras from the first quarter or third of the twentieth century*, along with darkroom procedures of the same vintage, makes me (or so I passionately like to think) more alive to hidden geometries, the curve of a shadow, the intensity of light. Even my "extinction" exposure meter, manufactured in 1931, demands that I fully engage myself in the process; it uses my eye to measure the light, not a photocell. Thus I become part of my equipment, and my equipment becomes part of me.
And so, I perhaps become more personally responsible for my pictures - perhaps more responsible than I would wish to be. My successes are more mine, but my failures are more mine, also.
Most of my pictures are archivally processed gelatin silver prints, developed in home brewed developers. A few of the pictures are palladiotypes; these are made by contact printing negatives onto 100% cotton-rag paper that has been hand coated by the photographer with a palladium emulsion. Palladiotypes, like platinum prints, are widely considered to be the most permanent images made by man.
All are matted in 100% all-cotton-rag mat board and framed in custom-cut Nielsen aluminum sectional frames. Aesthetics being equal, metal frames are archivally superior to wood; wood exudes destructive lignins over time.
* including a 1930 Leica, a 1932 Rolleiflex), a 1909 5x7" Royal Ruby field camera, and a 1935 8x10" Deardorff
Inquiries regarding purchase of prints should be directed to dumac@verizon.net.