Mercredi 04 Février 2015 11:25:27 par actuphoto dans Expositions

David Scheinbaum's contribution to this exhibition is a body of work entitled KALÓS. He describes it as follows :

"Calotypes," from the Greek "Kalós + type," meaning "beautiful picture," are also known as "talbotypes," named for their inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot, who announced the invention in 1840 and later secured a patent in England on February 8, 1841. Calotype refers to the paper negative exposed in the camera obscura (Latin for "dark chamber") and to later developing out the latent image on paper.

© David Scheinbaum - Homage to AW II, 2014

This body of work is made using modern chemistry and equipment. David's paper negative images in this exhibition are unique and one-of-a-kind. He exposes the one image onto paper using his 8x10 camera. Thereafter, the paper is chemically developed. He then tones the paper for both permanence and effect. The larger prints in the exhibition are archivally made from digital scans of these negatives. The larger prints are in limited editions of three.

David continues :
My photography has always been an attempt to produce works that are a marriage between technique and visualization. Photographing in a time where the photographic process and equipment have gotten more complex and focused on technical capabilities, I have been striving for simplicity in image making. Without ignoring the advances of digital technologies, it has been artistically freeing for me to return to my 8x10 camera and explore one of the earliest and basic photographic inventions.

David's technique and visualization make for interesting juxtapositions. Two of his images, Ángel and Campbell's Soup, merit closer looks. The angel is perfectly symmetrical ; its left side is exactly identical (mirror images) to its right side. However, the lines and curves down the very center of the angel's apron are not. The figurative work on the apron as seen with the naked eye is the reverse of that seen on this printed negative, David's calotype. Now look at the negative image of the Campbell's Soup can: the writing is completely reversed. It takes a minute for the brain, the mind's eye, to adjust and read the label on the can.

© David Scheinbaum - Tulips in Vase, 2014

Similarly, examine the negative image entitled Doll. Study the details, the blacks and the whites; then, in the mind's eye, reverse the blacks and the whites, as the doll would be seen to the naked eye. Now try doing the same with David's image entitled Globe.

Taken together, these calotype images have a certain compelling quality about them. The black background, negative space in photographic terms, is a vortex that invites and entices the spectator to examine the subject matter of the print more closely. Once there, the observer is again challenged to make sense of and understand the content at first by a familiar and recognizable form or shape, and then by reading the reversed writing on the object.

In the darkroom, a photographer sees the negative projection on to the easel, as seen in David's negative calotypes. The accomplished photographer learns to see, in the mind's eye, the reversal so as to manipulate the light through the negative onto the photographic paper to produce an image to the artist's eye. Look at the image called Flowers, and in your mind's eye see them as a photographer would see them in the darkroom.


David Scheinbaum is former director/chairman of the Photography Department at the Marion Center for Photographic Arts at the Santa Fe University of Art & Design and professor emeritus of the former College of Santa Fe. His photographs of New Mexico's Bisti Badlands can be found in his book Bisti, published by the University of New Mexico Press, 1987. In 1990 Florida International University Press published Miami Beach: Photographs of an American Dream. In 2006, the Museum of New Mexico Press published Stone: A Substantial Witness.

David and his spouse, Janet Russek, have collaborated on two projects : Ghost Ranch: Land of Light, Photographs by David Scheinbaum and Janet Russek, published by Balcony Press, 1997; and Images in the Heavens, Patterns on the Earth : The I Ching, published by the Museum of New Mexico Press, 2005.

© David Scheinbaum - Polaroid 800 Land Camera, 2014

His most recent publication, Hip Hop: Portraits of an Urban Hymn, was released in November 2013 by Damiani Editore. This work was featured at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in February 2008.
David worked with the preeminent photo historian Beaumont Newhall from 1978 until Newhall's death in 1993. Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd. of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is owned and operated by David and Janet. The firm's owners are private fine art photography dealers and consultants. Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd. is the exclusive representative of the estates of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, as well as the estate of Eliot Porter.