Photographs printed by 31 Studio using the Platinum Process

Photographs printed by 31 Studio using the Platinum Process

http://www.31-studio.com/photographs.html

Paul Caffell Photographer

Point-Horizon-Structure: Photography and Experience
Jyll Bradley, Paul Caffell, Terry Smith
15 March - 28 April 

Paul Caffell's abstract paintings belong to the modernist tradition: they explore the process of mark making, the very language of painting, at the same time as they invoke a sense of intense concentration and stillness. Caffell's work has been inspired by avant-garde music since he began painting in the early 1960s, and belongs to the long search within modernism for an equivalent rhetoric of abstraction for painting. The paintings are at once profoundly gestural and understated, with the marks within an almost monochromic field often being the product of chance, but nonetheless often being delicate, sensitive and demanding careful work by the spectator to distinguish them. Caffell's work, then, is as much about time as it is about the mark: both the time of the painter, the meditated process of production, and the time of the spectator who, in their attention, is displaced from the everyday impacts of modernity on consciousness into their own wrapt, internal, world of experience with the artwork. Looking at a Caffell painting is much like listening to a chamber work by Kurtág, Henze or Nono, both painter and composer demand intense attention and reward it with a radically different form of consciousness.

Since the 1970s Caffell has also developed a photographic practice. His 'envelopes' - made with the unique platinum printing process - explore the almost abstract, sculptural properties of simple, easily discarded objects, actually containers for photographic film and printing paper - through their tonal range. In this sense these photographs are profoundly modernist, in their self-reference to the process of the production of the image, and beautiful, abstract works far removed from the 'realism' of photography. As near-monochromes there is also a clear articulation between the photographs and Caffell's paintings: both demand the same attention to subtle shifts of abstracted form and tone.

Paul Caffell has been painting since the early 1960s, when as an emerging young artist he was mentored by the leading British modernist critic, collector and painter, Roland Penrose. After exhibiting internationally during the decade, with work being purchased by several important collections, he withdrew to paint privately and developed his photographic practice. Mummery + Schnelle first showed Caffell's work in the group show 'To Become Like Music' in 2008, emphasising the influences and affinities of the paintings in the relationship between music and modernist painting and performance in the post-war avant-garde.

Platinum, le migliori fotografie del 31 Studio. Portando avanti la sua tradizionale attività di promozione artistica, Ersel ha esposto a gennaio 2011 una selezione di fotografie del prestigioso 31 Studio di Londra
Fondato da Paul Caffell nel 1988, il 31 Studio è il primo atelier inglese specializzato nella stampa al platino. La storia è costellata da fotografi di fama, che attraverso questo particolare processo di stampa hanno espresso non soltanto la loro esperienza di fotografi, ma in alcuni casi anche le qualità di pittori, scultori e storici del processo fotografico.

Tra gli scatti esposti spiccano firme come Bryan Adams, Bill Brandt, Alvin Langdon Coburn, William England, John Haynes, Barry Lategan, Linda McCartney, Lewis Morley, Terry O'Neill (foto a lato: Brigitte Bardot), Eugene Robert Richee, Jerry Schatzberg ed Angela Williams, oltre ad alcune immagini dell'Hulton Archive in collaborazione con Getty Images.

Attraverso la tecnica della stampa al platino i molteplici soggetti rappresentati danno vita ad immagini uniche e immutabili, in grado di esprimere una morbidezza ed una profondità che non ha eguali. Le stampe al platino, non deteriorabili per via della differente reazione alla luce, offrono all'occhio dello spettatore una particolare variazione di toni, in cui non esistono i bianchi e i neri assoluti ma finissimi toni di grigio. Questa tecnica, molto impiegata tra la fine del XIX e gli inizi del XX secolo, sta riscoprendo molti estimatori, soprattutto nei musei che conservano negativi storici.

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Paintings

Paul Caffell's abstract paintings belong to the modernist tradition: they explore the process of mark making, the very language of painting, at the same time as they invoke a sense of intense concentration and stillness. Paul Caffell's work has been inspired by avant-garde music since he began painting in the early 1960s, and belongs to the long search within modernism for an equivalent rhetoric of abstraction for painting. The paintings are at once profoundly gestural and understated, with the marks within an almost monochromic field often being the product of chance, but nonetheless often being delicate, sensitive and demanding careful work by the spectator to distinguish them. Caffell's work, then, is as much about time as it is about the mark: both the time of the painter, the meditated process of production, and the time of the spectator who, in their attention, is displaced from the everyday impacts of modernity on consciousness into their own wrapt, internal, world of experience with the artwork. Looking at a Paul Caffell painting is much like listening to a chamber work by Kurtág, Henze or Nono, both painter and composer demand intense attention and reward it with a radically different form of consciousness.

Chris Townsend

Paul Caffell Photographer

When Paul Caffell photographer established 31 Studio in 1988 it was the first dedicated platinum print workshop to be set up in England. Caffell recovered a photographic process that had been hugely important at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, but which had gone into decline and seemingly been forgotten by the 1920's.

31 Studio has become the foremost specialist in hand-crafted Platinum - Palladium prints, earning a worldwide reputation. The studio performs an important role for the history of photography, restoring to our attention some of it's greatest images, and working with the greatest skill and delicacy on precious and sometimes damaged negatives.

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http://www.31-studio.com/