INSPIRATIONS & INTERPRETATIONS
A Bold Experiment in Photographic Printing
September 13 - October 18, 2003

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Image by Ken Rosenthal, Print by Hiroshi Watanabe		Image and Print by Ken Rosenthal

As Ansel Adams famously postulated, a negative is like a musical score, and the photographic print like the performance of a piece of music. Each photographer brings their own skills and sensitivity and imagination when they step into the darkroom, struggling to extract a vibrant, luminous print from the image imbedded in that little piece of film. Adams knew that the "performance" of each negative could vary widely, while still retaining the essential concept envisioned when the picture was first exposed. In a bold and original experiment, White Room Gallery has invited fourteen photographers to test this hypothesis by exchanging negatives and printing one another's work. For the first time, perhaps ever, it is possible to see an entire show devoted to this exciting concept. Seven pairs of photographers, with widely diverse styles and techniques, have traded negatives--with fascinating results. When Hiroshi Watanabe prints Ken Rosenthal's dreamlike image of a masked woman, in his own style, the picture is completely transformed into a mysterious, haunting portrait. Or Dan Burkholder's exquisite pigment over platinum print, reinterpreted by digital photographer Ed Freeman, gives us a clear understanding of the critical decisions resolved by a fine art photographer when a negative, or digital file, is transformed into a print. Some of the participating photographers have been seen recently in the White Room Gallery. James W. Pitts trades negatives with Joni Sternbach. Both work in the difficult platinum/palladium process, but with amazingly different results. Tamotsu Fujii and Taishi Hirokawa each interpreted a delicate seascape, with subtle gradations of toning distinguishing their work. Two photographers working with historical alternative processes have paired up--Zoe Zimmerman with her delicate Albumen prints, is matched with France Scully Osterman, who works with the related and older Salt print process, which result in a sensuous photograph with an antique aura. Then there is Ion Zupcu's sumptuous still life, reprinted, uniquely, by Larry Wiese. And donft miss the beautiful prints by Rolfe Horn and Jack Spencer, who traded negatives and produced very different interpretations of each other's "musical score." Please join the White Room Gallery for this exciting exhibit.