Page 24 - Expanded Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 24/146
There is no definitive explanation of exactly how Rejlander produced his most famous composite image, but there are at least two possible explanations: The first is that Rejlander made prints from all the individual ’studies’ he made of the various groups that would comprise the finished print, and that he ‘montaged’ or glued these in place on a large piece of card or board, then re-photographed this to create his final print. This is the most plausible technique. The issues here are how did he seamlessly marry the different prints together? How did he disguise the ‘edges’ of each separate im- age? How did he ensure a consistency of lighting, exposure and development over all his separate exposures - especially in creating the illusion of aerial perspective (mistiness) in the further re- cesses of his finished image? Rejlander had trained as a painter, and studied art in Rome, and any- one competent with oil-painting could I suppose have retouched the montage to disguise lighting disparities, cut edges etc. But you have to remember that Rejlander’s aim was to show that photo- graphy itself can be a medium for the creation of art (he is known as the ‘father of art photography’, so he would, I think, have been as rigorous as he could be in this composition and construction - ie with little or no ‘painting’ or retouching involved. Also you must consider the fact that most photo- graphic prints were 1:1 scale contact prints - the photographic enlarger was not available until after the widespread availability of electricity - although some photographers used a ’solar lens’ - like a slide projector using mirrors to focus sunlight through a negative-glass plate and project it onto sensitised paper of the size required. - But essentially, we have no contemporary account of exactly how Rejlander made this ground-breaking print.
Or secondly, he could have used the negatives of his studies, and exposed these onto his large sheet of selectively sensitised paper by carefully masking (or ‘matting’) the surround and exposing the negative to Sunlight when it was precisely in place. This is not really plausible, because of the difficulties of the Wet Collodion process he was using, which required extended preparation times for each exposure, in order just to make the negative - and which, when printing the positive, was difficult to ‘grade’ or ensure similar exposures, because using sunlight was not a precise or finely adjustable method. Imagine the difficulties of masking and cropping a glass-plate negative, position- ing this accurately (how?) for exposure, disguising the edges where two separate exposures butted together or overlapped. How did Rejlander manage this?
All we do know is that the final Two Ways of Life combines at least 30 individual photographic stud- ies (one is shown above right, previous page), and made a print huge by the standards of the time - 31 inches by 16 inches (78.74 x 40.64 cm).
The Art Journal reviewed Rejlanders work: “Late years have shown that more can be done than we at one time thought possible, and that results are obtainable from lens and camera, which are not merely imitations and copies from still nature, but productions of mind and thoughtful study, and which, when gazed on, raise emotions and feelings similar to those awakened at the sight of some noble sepia sketch, the handiwork of a good draughtsman. Of Mr. Rejlander’s pictures (for such we may justly call them) we have no hesitation in saying that they are full of beauty and full of mind.”
I like that line ‘but productions of mind and thoughtful study’ - a nod towards the principle of art- making that underpinned the work of the Photo-Secession and pictorialist photographers of the 20th century, and that seems directly relevant to the experimental compositional methodologies created by Braque and Picasso - especially in the papier colles period 1911-1912.