Andre Kertez vs Ansel Adams

Now here is a real curve ball. Is an Andre Kertez 35mm negative any less valuable or precious then an Ansel Adams 8x10 negative? Or is a 35mm negative of W. Gene Smith any less important then an Edward Weston 8x10?

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The images these great photographers have produced have brought great joy, exhilaration, sorrow, tears to the viewing auidience for years and will continue to do so in the future. Yet their approach is essentially opposite. Though AA used 35mm many times, and in his later years, used Hasselblad exclusively.

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Questions have been bantered about over what format to use, bigger smaller. Well, this is just more fuel to the fire.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how this adds fuel to any fire I've seen

discussed.

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While it seems kind of silly to base your format choices on how much

money certain master's negatives are worth, one COULD do that. In this

case 8x10 would win by an overwhelming margin. The prints of Ansel

Adams - made from big negs shot in his earlier years - have outearned

all other fine art photos by far.

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At one point in the 1980's, half the money spent on fine art

photographs in America was for prints by Ansel Adams, and most of the

money spent on Adams was on images from a handful of large format

negatives.

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Andre Kertez did not share Adam's access to well heeled tourists

willing to pay hard cash for prints - and even so, how many visitors

to Paris in the fifties would have bought one of his prints to hang on

their wall?

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Kertez worked at a time when few people imagined (especially in

Europe!) that fine prints made under the artist's supervision could be

a major generator of capital. He did what a smart guy in Paris at the

time would do - make photography in a form that would appeal to the

markets and earn himself a decent living. To him, the idea of gallery

sales would have been farfetched indeed.

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I think that very few people choose a format because of the income

generating potential it had for somebody else fifty, sixty, or seventy

years ago, but if you were to do so, Adams won by a huge margin.

Hi Rob

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Where is the fuel and where the fire?

There is for any situation a different need of a camera. So every

system has his pros. and cons.

I had a teacher he told me go as big as possible, because it could be

that you need it not for the first time very large but it could be

later they want make a wall poster out of it!

And then you are the winner with a MF or LF neg. or pos.

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No fuel no fire;-))))

No difference, not by reason of the format size alone. There's only

one negative of Moonrise and only one negative of dear old Andre's

picture of the skyscraper with the little cloud to the left (can't

think of the title, if there is one). If the Moonrise negative is

worth more, and I suppose it is, it's because the image is more

famous or Adams is more famous or something similar, not because of

the difference in format. -jb

It's all in the eye of the beholder and what you are willing to pay.

Personally, I think Kertesz is by far one of the greatest

photographers of the 20th Century and I would much rather buy (and

would be willing to may more) for Kertesz's Chez Mondrian, Underwater

Swimmer or Satiric Dancer than I would for any Adams photgraph. Same

for Walker Evans. In my opinion (and that's all it is) I think they

are more interesting photographers. I I was sat in A Christies

auction, I'd be willing to pay for those. And I don't think anyone

collecting in that way really cares what format the negatives are,

they are buying they are buying the artistic image (unless they are

just snobs with too much money) - it could be an Evans SX70 polaroid.

Negative size has nothing to do with it.

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tim a

Negative size doesn't mean anything.

IT'S WHAT IS ON IT WHICH IS FUNDAMENTAL .

If one equates the worth of any image with the size camera used to

take the photograph then you might as well be collecting black velvet

paintings of Elvis. You are missing the point entirely.

We use the gear we feel will give us the best chance to get an image

we are happy with. 35mm, minox or 20x24 pihole cardboard box, it

doesnt matter. People don't purchase photographs based on what camera

you use (except a few nutcases... "If it wasn't taken with a Leica I

am not interested" types maybe).

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The image you see is the thing, not the camera you used to take it.

If you go that route you might as well get snooty about how it was

printed, contact or enlargement, and then go further... "are photos

enlarged with an Apo Rodagon worth more than those enlarged with an

El-Nikkor"?

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There is no fire, you are making up fuel from thin air. We don't need

that. Here in Utah we already have cold fusion & polygamy, no further

foolishness is wanted.

I've got an 11x14 neg (well, I guess technically they're called

"Xrays") that measures about 150 square inches. I'll swap it for 100

HCB 35mm negs (each of which measures 1.5 square inches), if anyone's

trading.

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The value of any artwork isn't determined by square inches.

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.

Seems to me much of the preceding, with which I naturally agree,

really takes up the question of the relative worth of images by

photographers as disparate as Adams and Kertesz--who happened to work

in different formats--not the value of their negatives, which is

another story. These tend to be priceless, which often means they're

worth nothing at all, in economic terms. They can't be reprinted

without accusations of fraud cropping up (think of the scuffle the

reprinting of E.S. Curtis' gravure plates has generated in recent

years), so from a curator's stand-point, they're a perpetually

degrading resource, useful only for study purposes (for which, again,

they're invaluable). I once asked the curator of a prominent museum

photo collection what he did about negatives. "Avoid them like the

plague," was his reply. It might even be argued that the value of

prints of certain collected images increases in the absence of the

negative, as it does in the absence of the photographer. To my

knowledge, the Center for Creative Photography is the only museum

collection of fine art photography that actively acquires negatives

as well as prints--though there certainly are exceptions (MoMA's

Atget negatives come to mind). Adams is exceptional here too: I

believe he left his negs. to the Center with the stiplation they

remain available to students to print from, modestly suggesting, they

may as well learn from the best. At first I was stunned by this

generous invitation to allow other photographers to forge potentially

valuable prints from his negatives. Then I realized it was a dare--he

knew full well no one could make his prints, not even from his

negatives! The negatives alone are a score without a sound.

Hi folks,

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The medium is not the message. All that counts is the

perception by the market place of the worth of a particular work.

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That 'preceived value' is a delicate balance of a great many

factors which may or may not have any relation to the image, its

mode of capture, or its presentation.

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The mythical figure of 'Ansel Adams' was an engineered and

manipulated development of the real Ansel Adams. Hype, and

Will Turnage's marketing skills, took a formidable artist and

exalted him to the stellar status of being the 'Super Model' of

photographers. That is not to take anything away from the man's

vision and skills, but he was a length ahead of the rest of the

field by the time 'Art' photography became acceptable and

collectible in the 1970s/80s.

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The efforts of the 'A. A.' machine certainly generated a great

legacy for photographers and for the 'fine-art' photography

market. Ansel himself, I believe, saw photography as an

evolving entity: his acceptance of smaller formats in his later

years, his expressed fascination with the possibilities of what

would become digital capture and imaging. Salesman Ansel

might have argued the toss over formats but I somehow like to

feel that artist Ansel was less bogged down by such puerile

constraints. Had the Hasselblad and modern films been around

in the 1920s might he have opted for a lighter load on his treks?

Who knows? Who cares, what's more?

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To argue the merits of any photographer or his oeuvre based on

the real estate of the materials he worked with is blasphemous

and ridiculous. One of the greatest philosophers of all time

never left a written word of his own thought to posterity. In fact,

the only recorded instance of Jesus Christ ever writing is at the

stoning of the prostitute - and then he writes in the sand ... hardly

an enduring medium. Yet his thoughts have influenced the

course of Western history and thinking for two-thousand plus

years.

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If the choice of film format adds to the communication of a

message or idea well and good, but it should never dictate the

value of the message. The message in any communication is

all that matters.

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Walter Glover

That isn't a curve ball, just a bunch twine all balled up.<P>Even

as a philosophic rant it is lame beyond belief.

If Adams made the *same* image with a Hassy and an 8x10,

there is little doubt in my mind that the 8x10 would be more

valuable. Since you cannot really compare the value of two different

images, what format they were shot on is hardly relevant.

WOW! I got more then I bargained for! THANK YOU for the great

comments. Though one reminded me to work on my slider and maybe get a

cat to unwind my ball of twine.

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Stephen, your comment brought to mind a situation, maybe 20 years

ago, when someone at a local college showed me an AA 8x10 contact

print, that was signed by Adams. However, I asked whether it was

actually printed by him and the answer was no. It was printed by an

assistant, with his guidence, under that program he started to make

more affordable prints. It was around the time of his retropsetive at

MOMA and book, Yosemite and the Range of Light.

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The difference was obvious of Adam's prints, deeper richer blacks,

more contrast when compared to the assistants prints. Whether the

difference was intentional or different materials I do not know. Even

the MOMO show had hung the same photograph from the same negative but

printed at different times. His new book, celebrating 100 years

compares prints done close to when the negative was made vs decades

later. The differences are dramatic.

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The format in which an image is made is immaterial to the message,

thought, feeling, emotion that the photographer is trying to convey.

Actually, if an image makes you think more of how it was made, then

maybe the photographer did not accomplish what he set out to do.

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Again, thanks for the comments!

IMHO -

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A good print . . . is a good print.

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PERIOD!

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Even mine.

Not a surve ball. More like a slow pitch right down the middle of

home plate.<P>Noticethat each of these guys selected the tool

best suited to the job at hand: which was expressing their

creative vision.<P>By the way has anyone else noticed that

photons are not as good as they used to be?

Not a curve ball. More like a slow pitch right down the middle of

home plate.<P>Noticethat each of these guys selected the tool

best suited to the job at hand: which was expressing their

creative vision.<P>By the way has anyone else noticed that

photons are not as good as they used to be?