'The Untold Story of One of the Greatest Printers in Photography' at T.O.P.

Amin

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The Untold Story of One of the Greatest Printers in Photography

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Waukesha, Wisconsin, USA, and Paris, France — You've probably seen his work.

But for many years, he remained in the shadows, a mysterious figure few people in photography knew much about. One heard rumors, murmurs...“Henri Cartier-Bresson has a darkroom guy in Paris who makes all his prints....” “Josef Koudelka is finally selling prints—they're being made by the same custom printer in Paris who a lot of the Magnum guys use.”

Today, Mike Johnston's The Online Photographer (TOP), a photography news and discussion website for photographers, has published a significant original article. It's a profile of Voja Mitrovic (“Voja” is pronounced “Voya”), the darkroom master who printed for Cartier-Bresson, Koudelka, Sebastiao Salgado, Werner Bischof, René Burri, Marc Riboud, Robert Doisneau, Edouard Boubat, Man Ray, Helmut Newton, Raymond Depardon, Bruno Barbey, Jean Gaumy, Frederic Brenner, Max Vadukul, and Peter Lindbergh to name a few.

The two-part post was written by the renowned photojournalist Peter Turnley. Peter and his twin brother David have been featured on CBS's “60 Minutes,” and Peter has 42 NEWSWEEK covers on his long list of publication credits. Peter is a dear and longtime friend of Voja Mitrovic, who has been his own printer for many years. Peter traveled to Paris specifically to interview Voja for this article.

A number of photographs are included, several never before seen.

Here is the permalink to Part I (Part II is linked at the bottom of Part I): The Online Photographer: Voja Mitrovic, Printer to the Greats (Part I)
 
I remember reading that Cartier-Bresson did not do his own darkroom worked and was a bit surprised, whereas Ansel Adams DID do ALL his processing AND printing, for me this put him on a new level for me.

Indeed so much so that I bought all his books and studied the Zone system and bought a second hand WESTON master V light meter (still have it)

While the Zone system was meant for sheet film it would work for a roll of film but only for similar scenes and lighting.

Paper (Silver HAlide) and film too was Highly coveted bay famous Photographers, to that end I shot with Kodak TRI-X or mostly Ilford 50/100/400 ASA films printing was always (for me) Ilford IlfoBROM considered the best for its rich luminous tones.

Of course it was all B&W then and when Visiting galleries I was always struck by the beautiful toned B&W prints on display the printing side was AN ART.
 
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