Photographer
Finding this NYTimes article featuring the custom black and white lab my husband and his father had in Manhattan, reminds me once upon time there was such a profession: “photographer”. I didn’t just imagine it.
CAMERA
By John Durniak
Originally published at www.nytimes.com on June 19, 1991.
Today, getting a roll of standard black and white film processed is a chore because most laboratories are set up for color only. Now the Ilford Company has come to the rescue with a novel idea: a black and white film that can be processed in a one-hour photo lab, right along with everybody’s color rolls.
Ilford has created a film for these times: XP-2.
But is XP-2 a gimmick or is a viable choice for serious black and white work? I asked Bill Pierce and his son, W. Eugene Pierce, both master printers in lower Manhattan, to shoot this film, print it and give their insights.
Bill Pierce is an award-winning photographer for the Sygma agency who has shot for Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and Life. He was trained in printing by the fabled W. Eugene Smith, who shot photographic essays for Life, and his son is named after Mr. Smith. Eugene Pierce specializes in photographing rock musicians when he is not working in the darkroom.
The Pierces work by appointment and prefer projects of substance — picture exhibits, picture books, photographic essays — rather than single prints. “We like to work with people who make very good pictures,” Bill Pierce said. “There isn’t anything more boring than sitting in your darkroom printing bad pictures.”
Recently he and his son made prints for the photographer Arthur Grace for his new book, “Comedians” (Eastman Kodak, Thomasson-Grant), and for a picture essay from it that appeared in Life.
“Processing film is not something we do to make money,” the elder Mr. Pierce said. “Sometimes a photographer spends three or four months of his life and effort on a story. I’m scared to death when I stand there holding in my hands an incredidble chunk of this man’s life.”
In shooting the new Ilford XP-2, the younger Mr. Pierce chose a West Coast rock band, Beatnik Pop, as his subject; his father shot candids, both in sunlight and indoors with available light.
The XP-2 is basically a chromogenic film made up of dye instead of silver. Images are formed of dye clouds rather than grains of silver, just as they are when using color negative films. Although the normal recommendation is to shoot the film at E.I. 400, XP-2 has great flexibility; when exposed at a speed of 50, it produces virtually grainless results, Bill Pierce said. But at E.I. 200, it has “good grain and sharpness,” he added, and at 800 there would be a slight increase in grain and loss of shadow detail, but the results would be acceptable.
“Serious black-and-white users can look at this film because it is in the same quality league as other modern films,” he said, “and it has an interesting tonal rendition that is all its own.
“Would you be a fool to shoot Ilford when you have all these other films around? No. It is one of our good modern films. Is it a great film? No, because there is no such thing as a great film. It is a good film with a lot of latitude — lots of latitude.”
Mr. Pierce also observed that XP-2 was probably better than standard silver films when burning-in on a print. Negatives from XP-2 don’t block up, and the film holds tones at a variety of exposures.
My own observations from looking at Eugene Pierce’s proof prints, which were of better quality than most photographers’ prime prints: good contrast, and sharp. Bill Pierce’s exhibition-quality prints were a rich black, full toned, with no blocking in the highlights, honest, luminous and packed with detail.
XP-2 serves a real purpose in photography today. It is a serious black and white film that can be processed in the standard C-41 color chemicals available at any good custom lab or one-hour lab worldwide. It can be printed on color papers or standard black and white papers. As Bill Pierce put it, “It’s a good film with built-in good processing.”
In a time when there are fewer black and white labs, this film is helping keep alive a photographic tradition that sometimes yields images more powerful than color.
Eugene Pierce is a photographer located in Princeton, NJ. And his father Bill Pierce lives in California.
