Topic: George Tice's Darkroom

[Francois]

In this series, I bring you today George Tice's darkroom.

His work is mainly about photographing American culture in rural areas.

I must admit falling in love with his 8x10 enlarger...
The dry side is kept very simple and clean.

Here is a link to his bio at the Getty Museum

As usual, I know the book it still copyrighted, though probably largely out of print. So if anybody doesn't feel OK with the content, just PM me and I'll remove the text and images...

One of the interesting photographs in George Tice's extensive collection is one taken of him as a very young boy by his father, who first got him interested in photography. When Tice started making his own prints, he was living in a trailer, and his equipment was far from what most beginners would accept today. He developed prints in ice cube trays and enlarged with a slide projector, which was less expensive than a regular enlarger.
After a tour in the Navy he became the printer for Edward Steichen and, later, a master of the platinum printing process. This process, first used in the nineteenth century, uses platinum rather than silver to form the photographic image. Platinum paper makes a print with an extremely long tonal range but was replaced by silver-based paper because of the exceptionally high cost and very slow emulsion speed. Tice makes classic full-scale, sharply focused "straight" prints and often uses an 8 x 10 view camera. He is flexible, however, and his latest book, Artie Van Blarcum, is illustrated with photographs taken with a 35mm camera.
His darkroom is in the lower level of his suburban New Jersey town-house, adjoining his workroom/office. The house and darkroom are like his prints, crisp and clean and in immaculate good taste. Because he often prints using platinum he has designed a contact printer to reduce the long exposure times required. He also uses an 8 x 10 en-larger to enlarge these large-format negatives. The enlarger is made of wood and is reputed to have belonged to Adolf Fassbender, a nineteenth-century pictorialist.

DeMaio, Joe, Curtin, Dennis, The darkroom handbook - A complete guide to the best design, construction and equipment. Curtin & London inc. Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1979

[Sorry, image deleted during forum software upgrade. Please re-upload if so inclined.]

[moominsean]

who the hell could use that many chemicals!

[Francois]

Hopefully he's got them labeled correctly and clearly

[Info Red]

I had the good fortune of taking a Master Class with George Tice in the late 80's.  We sat at the Master's feet, wanting to absorb all he had to impart.  Since his negatives were gorgeous, and his prints all glowed as if they were living creatures, we all wanted to know his chemistry choices, etc.   By that time, for most of his film?  Tri-X!  For most of his developers?  D76 for the film and Dektol for the papers!  He also did split developing with Selectol and Selectol Soft, but he was/is an absolute wizard when it comes to printing.  I still print my own, as well as teaching some of the techniques to my students.  It was an amazing week of learning from one of the best printers in the business!

And I love his images too!

Info Red

[Francois]

You can quickly see mastery when out of the ordinary is created using very simple tools (how common is D-76 and Dektol? )