Gary Schneider

Introduction--Penley Knipe, Gary Schneider

Conservation Issues and Technical Specifications--Schneider assesses the current condition of his work, Meditations (panel 4), 1993, and discusses his opinions and practices with regard to toning photographic works.

Concept/Nature of Work and Technical Specifications--Schneider describes what influenced him to create, as well as the processes by which he created, his series of "hand prints," including Meditations.

Concept/Nature of Work and Exhibition--Schneider discusses his practices regarding framing, printing, and editioning of his works.

Subject(s):

Edges (object portions);

Editions;

Frames (ornament areas);

Mats (framing and mounting equipment);

Tone (color effect);

Toning (photography);

Conservation Issues--Schneider and Knipe discuss preventive conservation measures taken by Harvard to protect his works.

Subject(s):

Alkaline paper;

Cold storage;

Color shift;

Gelatin silver prints;

Preventive conservation;

Process of Creation and Concept/Nature of Work--Schneider further describes the process by which he created his series of "hand prints," focusing on the origins of a soft, fibrous border around the edge of Meditations. He also discusses his practice of donating artist's proofs, including those he gave to Harvard.

Subject(s):

Edges (object portions);

Mats (framing and mounting equipment);

Negatives (photographic);

Printing (process);

Proofs (prints by function);

Technical Specifications and Conservation Issues--Schneider discusses his practices regarding printing and spot-toning (retouching) of prints. In doing so, he discusses several conservation issues related to photographic papers, printing, and toning.

Technical Specifications and Historical Anecdote--Schneider discusses the materials and techniques that he employed in the creation of Shirley, 1991, as well as his practices with regard to printing and retouching. He also discusses his former photographic printing business, Schneider-Erdman.

Conservation Issues--Schneider discusses his practices with regard to preservation of his negatives. He also describes using digital means to conserve photography.

Conservation Issues and Historical Anecdote--Schneider discusses how his framing practices protect his works from damage or deterioration. He describes one particular instance of damage, in which he conserved the print.

Subject(s):

Adhesive tape;

Denglas®;

Counterlining;

Damage;

Frames (furnishings);

Framing (processes);

Glazing (glass);

J-LAR® Tape;

Mats (framing and mounting equipment);

Off-gassing;

Rabbets;

Restoration (process);

Sealing;

Bark;

Frameworks;

Conservation Issues and Historical Anecdote--Schneider describes his shift away from using fugitive darkroom processes and materials and toward use of pigmented ink. He details a discussion that he had with Henry and Carol Brower Wilhelm about anticipating stable materials for color prints.

Historical Anecdote--Schneider describes his experience of working with pigmented ink as opposed to more traditional darkroom processes and materials. He also reflects on the experience of working with another person acting as his printer.

Conservation Issues--Schneider discusses his concerns regarding preservation of his color prints and offers a general assessment of the overall condition of his works. In doing so, he expresses his preferences with regard to long-term care of his works, especially contrasting the care of his works in institutional and private collections and offering his opinions regarding lending his works for exhibition.

Conservation Issues and Historical Anecdote--Schneider expresses his preferences with regard to framing and mounting of his works for conservation purposes. He describes working with John McElhone at the National Gallery of Canada to make decisions regarding conservation of his work.

Technical Specifications--Schneider discusses the materials and techniques that he employed in the creation of different sets of platinum and gelatin silver prints of John in Sixteen Parts, 1996/1997. He and Knipe discuss the differences between the two types of prints and how they were influenced by Schneider's printing methods.

Concept/Nature of Work--Schneider discusses his practices with regard to time-based media, including Salters Cottages, a 16mm film owned by the Fogg Museum.

Subject(s):

16mm;

Digital cameras;

Time-based works;

Video recordings;

Concept/Nature of Work and Conservation Issues--Schneider reflects on his transition to digital photography from more traditional darkroom methods, including new issues and materials that he has encountered.Epson (Firm)Wilhelm Imaging Research

Subject(s):

Coating (material);

Digital imaging;

Digital prints;

Ink;

Manufacturers;

Paper (fiber product);

Supports (artists' materials);

Technical Specifications--Schneider discusses the range of materials available to photographers in the digital era. He reflects on the relationship between supply and demand in artists' materials.

Historical Anecdote--Schneider reflects on some of the artists whose photographs form the Schneider-Erdman printer's proof collection.  His comments include the early history of his relationships as well as details about the specific works he printed.

Historical Anecdote/Process of Creation--Schneider describes Nan Goldin's slide shows and discusses working with her to create a set of exhibition prints from her slides.  He also touches on Peter Hujar's printing processes.

Process of Creation--Schneider discusses creating the photographic prints for Matthew Barney's film installations.

Process of Creation--Schneider discusses how his artistic training informed his process when creating prints for other photographers, allowing him to channel each artist's esthetic rather than imposing his own printing style on the works.

Process of Creation--Schneider discusses the creation of his printer's proof collections and some of the business aspects of running a lab.  He also reflects on how printing for other artists influenced his own work.

Technical Specification--Schneider discusses creating Light Valve Technology (LVT) Recordings and copy prints for Bob Gober.

Process of Creation/Technical Specifications--Schneider describes his process of creating final prints for photographers' series, and discusses the difference in process and quality between printing from negatives versus digital files.

Conservation Issues--Schneider and Knipe discuss the cockling of the prints in the printer's proof collection, specifically referencing works of Matthew Barney.

Process of Creation/Technical Specifications--Schneider recommends how to trim James Casebere's works that had been printed on a roll of paper.  He also relates some of the process history of the prints and explains the presence of certain artifacts.

Historical Anecdote--Schneider reflects on his relationship with Peter Hujar and discusses his entry into printing.  He also discusses printing for Hujar, including a series for a posthumous exhibition.

Technical Specifications--Schneider describes the characteristics of Baryta paper that allowed him to print in Hujar's style. He also discusses advances in Epson's technology that will narrow the visual difference between silver prints and ink.

Conservation Issues--Schneider expresses his desire for the creation of a control collection against which damage or shifting of images could be measured.

Subject(s):

Color shift;

Laminate;

Penley Knipe: Today is June 28th, 2012 and we're at CTSMA, the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, and I'm here with photographer Gary Schneider.  We are going to have sort of a broad, philosophical interview and talk about materials and techniques.  Welcome, Gary.
Gary Schneider: Thank you very much, Penley.

PK: And I thought we might start with this print behind us, Meditations [1993].  And I was wondering what you thought—how you think it looks now, does it look any different to you, did you see any change or anything?
Gary Schneider: No.
PK: I would say your prints generally have held up really well. Would you, is that something…
Gary Schneider: Well, I've been really studying that lately, especially with silver prints.  And as far as I can tell, if they are stored adequately, and if they're toned adequately they don't shift. They shouldn't shift.
PK: Right.  And are you selenium toning all your silver prints?
Gary Schneider: I do various tonings.  So this one is a combination of a slight poly-toner, a very dilute poly-toner, which is a sulfide toner, and then selenium toning.
PK: That follows.  Is there a reason for that order?  Is there a chemical reason for that order?
Gary Schneider: Yes.  Because in order to get the split tonings and the highlights go their sort of warm color and the shadows become—the sort of deeper tones—become more cool or more cyan.  You need to do that split toning first.  The sort of sulfiding.  I call it "sulfiding."  And then, to stabilize the deeper tones, I then put it through a selenium, which sort of shifts the split toning slightly, but at least it stabilizes the—or it plates—the...
PK: The silver.
Gary Schneider: The silver of the deeper tones, yeah.
PK: So those tonings are actually what causes some of that brown, warm color to come out.
Gary Schneider: That is all split toning.  That's all controlled, yeah.
PK: Yeah, and that's very important to you?
Gary Schneider: The split toning?
PK: The brown, warm tone.
Gary Schneider: Well, I use it. You know? I notice you have various prints here, right?  You have all different processes really.  That's what you pulled out.
PK: Yes.
Gary Schneider: So that's curious.  And with these, this whole series of work, these handprints from that period, was all about using process—or darkroom process—to make meaning or to tell story.  So the color is critical, yeah.
PK: And you're not seeing any change in that.
Gary Schneider: No, no, no.  There shouldn't be any.  It sort of went directly from me into the exhibition at Howard Yezerski ["Gary Schneider: 1993"] and bought by the Fogg.  So it's been stored correctly.
PK: Yeah.  All of our prints that we have by you have come rather directly.  And so they're actually...
Gary Schneider: And they went—like all of the prints have gone—oh, we're going to get into that.  But all of the prints that you now have from me, many of them weren't exhibited, so they weren't even exposed to UV ever, yeah.

PK: And Gary, I wanted to ask you just generally about the process related to Meditations, because I think that's something people have a question about.  Can you walk us through how you make these handprints?  And I'm curious about the fibrous edges and the sort of double exposure.  
Gary Schneider: Yes, yes.
PK: Can you talk us through that process?
Gary Schneider: Well, it's not really a double exposure.  So in '93 I wanted to make a self-portrait sort of based on—and we can go through the whole thing.  It's like it comes from Lascaux, at that time, it was before the new cave was discovered.  Which is sort of earlier.  And the handprint as a—or rather the hand—as an icon of like as identity, as the first image of identity.  And then it covers all of my interests.  So it's imprint, the Shroud of Turin, it's negative, the Shroud of Turin, through Jasper Johns's studies for skin [Study for "Skin" series], which is that imprint that he made sort of greasing up his face and his hands.  And then blowing carbon over the surface of the paper.  Through people like Yves Klein's body prints [1960] and Marcel Duchamp's Female Fig Leaf [1950], which is a negative as well.  So I first made these two handprints.  And you have one version of it here.  And actually you have a second version of it [Glove, 1995] next to it.  And those are the two negatives that I made in '93.  And then excessively processed those in the darkroom, like played with them in the printing.
PK: Tell us about that, yeah.
Gary Schneider: So the two negatives were made.  This is a dry imprint of my hand, the one on the left.  Which is After Mirriam.
PK: Right, I'm just going to grab it, yeah.
Gary Schneider: Okay.
PK: Let's go back to—I was asking you about the process and you were talking about...
Gary Schneider: Let's talk about—it's interesting.  I didn't even know you had this one, right?  And this was a huge edition.  And so I made these two negatives.  There's what I call the wet handprint negative and then dry.
PK: Your hand's literally wet on the negative.
Gary Schneider: I literally like wet my hand and slapped it down.  And so what you see, as spots, are actually spots of water on the film.
PK: And drips too, right?
Gary Schneider: And drips running off.  And I was working in total darkness, because at that point I was working with ortho—you want all this stuff, right?
PK: Mm. Everything.
Gary Schneider: Orthochromatic film rather than—I really get confused, sorry.  Panchromatic film which is normal film, rather than graphic arts film, which is orthochromatic.  And so I was working in total darkness.  Like on my own.  And so the negative for this one took like an hour of investing the film and emulsion with sweat and heat.
PK: So just keeping your hand on that negative for an hour.
Gary Schneider: For like an hour.
PK: In the dark.
Gary Schneider: And I kept testing.  It took weeks to make these two negatives.
PK: Right, I can imagine.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, it was really slow, really, really slow going.

PK: When we look here, this is one negative. And this other one is—or is it just...
Gary Schneider: Well, actually that is a—I was sort of thinking frame. And so the external frame is a flashed tone that was then toned in the print to make that color.
PK: So we should actually pull that mat window out to...
Gary Schneider: To exhibit the frame.
PK: Past the gray, so you actually it as a frame, not just a tone.
Gary Schneider: Well, generally I frame my things like we see behind us on Helen [2000] where there's no mat.  I don't use a mat.  All the framed pieces, you'll notice they actually have a frame that is a frame on a frame—on the handprints, on these memorial handprints.  So this one is After Mirriam [1993] that I then made a very large version of in four parts.  After this, each part is that size, 36 by 29.  So this one I made as a very large edition.  Like influenced a little bit like from Cindy Sherman who used to, for each show, she would make a very large edition that was sort of inexpensive.  I had this fantasy that—but I made very few of these.
PK: So there's not very many prints of this.
Gary Schneider: No, there are not that many prints of it actually, yeah.  
PK: That's great.

Gary Schneider: So I'm curious.  Why nonbuffered?
PK: Well, so.  There is this theory that nonbuffered board is better for colored.  But sometimes I think people get confused and forget and think it's just for photography.  Some colors will shift with buffering.  It's not an issue with this kind of silver gelatin toned print.  
Gary Schneider: Well, that's interesting.
PK: I don't know why that's in nonbuffered.
Gary Schneider: I don't think it makes any difference.  I mean, you're so environmentally controlled here.  I mean, the weird, awful part about silver prints is everybody feels like they're safe.  But you can have a silver print, even if it's toned correctly, in a room and paint the walls around it.
PK: Get those fumes.
Gary Schneider: Literally overnight the highlights will change, right?  They're actually orange.
PK: Even with selenium toning, yeah.
Gary Schneider: It kind of empties the silver, doesn't it?
PK: Yeah.  We're very careful obviously about painting and that kind of thing.  And I should bring you into cold storage today so you could see where your prints are living.  Cool and cold storage.
Gary Schneider: So then at what point did even silver go into cold storage?  Because that's new, isn't it?
PK: Yeah.  And you don't have to do it.  It's great for the prints.  But we did it because our cool storage is so big, we can afford to do it for now.  And if we needed to we could pull out the black-and-white processes.
Gary Schneider: Will it happen once you move back?
PK: We are just bringing things when we go back for the study centers.  And so, we probably won't be storing gelatin in cool.  We'll probably just be storing color in cool over there.  Much smaller unit there.  Anyway.
Gary Schneider: It's fun to see this.  I haven't seen this in a long time.

PK: So I wanted to go back to how is this so fibrous around the edge?  We actually see little black lines coming up.  So what makes that soft border like that?
Gary Schneider: So because—it's so funny, because I have to like recollect.
PK: Yeah, it's a while ago, right?
Gary Schneider: (laughs) It's a long time ago! So, because I was working in total darkness, I sort of cut the cardboard frame and placed that.  It had some sort of like envelope, I think, that I placed the eight-by-ten-inch film inside of.  So I could feel where to place my hand down.
PK: Oh, perfect.  So that's the frame.
Gary Schneider: Because—yes that's the frame.
PK: To get you sort of...
Gary Schneider: On top of the negative, which is eight-by-ten mat, yeah, yeah.
PK: I understand, I understand.
Gary Schneider: I mean, it's awkward on some level, because no one seems to—it's these two negatives, right? I didn't know how to locate them in space, because it was in total darkness.  It was sort of under an enlarger because the outline is a photogram and all the rest of it—all the rest of the information that you see is wet there.  Or imprint, yeah.  Like sweat and heat.  The acids of the sweat damaging the film emulsion itself.
PK: Okay. Now this print and I think the other ones too.  I mean, obviously you're a master printer.
Gary Schneider: Does it give a...
PK: A date?
Gary Schneider: I know it should actually be—there's no...
PK: There might be.
Gary Schneider: Oh I signed them.  Yeah exactly.  It's AP.
PK: Artist's proof.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, 12.  I think I was giving these away.
PK: You did give this one to us.
Gary Schneider: Oh I did.  Okay yeah, yeah, yeah, I gave the artist's—I gave a lot of artist's—I really love that print.  So that's life size.
PK: That's just...
Gary Schneider: Yeah it's life size.

PK: When I look at your prints in raking light, I don't see any spot toning.  You're obviously a meticulous printer.
Gary Schneider: Well, it's on Ilford matte paper.  A vintage collection of Ilford matte paper that I had.
PK: That you stocked up, yeah.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  In other words one that had already expired.  And the matteness of this paper doesn't show.  You wouldn't be able to find a spot-tone.  Like on glossy prints…
PK: Yes, you can see it much more.
Gary Schneider: You can find it.  Right, because of the shift in viscosity.
PK: Do you spot-tone a lot?
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  Oh yeah.
PK: And do you do that yourself?
Gary Schneider: Yes.  I did do it myself.  I don't think I could really do it any longer.
PK: Really?  Is it your eyesight?
Gary Schneider: You know, I'd wear those kind of—yeah, my eyesight, look, I have to wear glasses now.
PK: Don't we all?
Gary Schneider: Yeah I know.  But I have one of those jeweler's...
PK: Like an optivisor? Yes.
Gary Schneider: ...thing.  Yeah a jeweler's—a magnifier, like at six times. I don't know what it is—like a three times, four—it makes it possible for me to spot, if I need to.  Yeah.
PK: And when we talked on the phone you mentioned that there was always this issue of the papers that you love—maybe the Ilford paper—not being produced anymore.  Is that…
Gary Schneider: Oh yeah.
PK: Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Gary Schneider: Well…
PK: Or chasing your favorite papers and…
Gary Schneider: Yes, yes, yes.  So the best toning papers were chlorobroms.  And in the '80s, various times in the '80s, actually it happened much later in Eastern Europe, and that's—this is '93 and that's on I think—I'd have to look it up in my records.  But that is on a paper called—but it was actually a chlorobrom that did this kind of split toning.
PK: Okay. That was perfect for that.
Gary Schneider: So [Agfa] Portriga-Rapid.  That died in '86.  It stopped being produced because in order to make the paper it sort of needed a huge amount of cadmium.  And cadmium became an EPA nightmare.  And of course painters were terrified, because without cadmium...
PK: Oh yeah, very upset.
Gary Schneider: ...you'd—and it hasn't changed.  I think it's because within the production of Portriga-Rapid, which is an Agfa paper, there was a huge amount of cadmium released into the environment.
PK: Environment, yeah, so they stopped making it.
Gary Schneider: So they stopped making it.
PK: So that wasn't so much...
Gary Schneider: And who knows if it was really that or Agfa not wanting to spend money. 
PK: A commercial...
Gary Schneider: These things are all about demand.  But it changed a huge number of artists.  And I could go through this litany of all the photographers who then had major breakdowns.
PK: Yeah, I can imagine if you...
Gary Schneider: Because a chlorobrom—the amazing thing about a chlorobrom is you could print a gray tone.  It's like all of Arbus's is Portriga-Rapid, all of Peter Hujar, all of Sally Mann, the early Sally Mann, that was her paper.  It goes on and on and on and on.  It was the paper of choice.  And what was amazing about it is you could print a midtone like very gray and it was full of light.  It had a real presence.  And so once you could—if you look at—if you think of Arbus, put that in your hand, it's all about the midtone.  Same thing with Sally Mann.  It's all the stuff going on.  There's all this light going on in the midtone.  So but it also toned in this very dramatic fashion.  So like all of Emmet Gowin.  All of his great prints are Portriga-Rapid prints.
PK: That was a major major problem for a lot of people.
Gary Schneider: It was a shock.  It was a shock.  Because without it, you know, it was a real mess.  Just the same as, I think—and I should look up this date.  I should have really done some back...
PK: We can put that in.
Gary Schneider: …back memory.  But at a certain point, I think it was in the '70s, the price of silver went through the roof.  And the silver grain, which had been really large, so like all of those early silver prints that you have are pretty stable, even though they're not toned.  But all of a sudden the paper got reengineered and it had to be toned.  The silver had to be replaced or at least plated.  Like plated with selenium or replaced with sepia or like replacement toners in order for them to be more stable.  So an untoned silver print, a contemporary one, is a really dangerous thing I think.
PK: That's a really good point.  Yes absolutely, yeah.
Gary Schneider: It's true, right?
PK: Yeah I think that is true.
Gary Schneider: So I tone everything. I did anyway. I no longer print silver.
PK: Right.  We'll get to that.
Gary Schneider: Oh we will? (laughs)
PK: I hope so.

Gary Schneider: Well, Shirley [1991] is a—she's printed on a Boston paper.  So she's— (looking at label on mat) I love that.  It's like, that's interesting.
PK: The East London, South Africa?
Gary Schneider: No.  That I was—you had birth date, right, you have birthplace.
PK: Birthplace.
Gary Schneider: Oh, Okay, that's interesting.  So yeah, she's on a paper called Palladio, which was made by this company out of Boston.  And yeah and so are your John in Sixteen Parts [1996] prints.  Those are all Palladio.
PK: Palladio papers.  But they're platinum prints, not palladium prints.
Gary Schneider: I think it's a combination.
PK: I was going to ask you about that.  
Gary Schneider: Yeah, it's a combination.
PK: So often you're using platinum and palladium.
Gary Schneider: I'm not any longer.
PK: Well, when you were.
Gary Schneider: I only used it because it was commercially available.  You know, me and Stieglitz.  He didn't make his own.  They were all commercial.  It was like rolls of—he had rolls of like platinum paper.
PK: It's exquisite.
Gary Schneider: Apparently.
PK: So I wanted to ask you, because this print is called a study print.  And you wrote on the back that it's only for study, not for exhibition.  So could you...
Gary Schneider: Oh, I did?
PK: Yeah, you want to see that?
Gary Schneider: You're kidding me.  Oh, I'm so annoyed.
PK: So it says (reading from print's verso), "This print of Shirley is for study purposes and not for exhibition."
Gary Schneider: I don't know why.
PK: I was going to ask you.  It's exquisite.
Gary Schneider: Oh, you know why?
PK: Yeah, why?
Gary Schneider: It's a sold-out edition.
PK: Okay.
Gary Schneider: And so I could give it.  Right?  I could.  It becomes.  Because actually for...
PK: Because you gave it to us.
Gary Schneider: Yes and because I think in your acquisitions thing—I don't know why it says that.  But it's out of edition, right?  It's not editioned.
PK: I mean, it's exquisitely beautiful, the surface looks just wonderful.
Gary Schneider: I don't know about this paper.  So of course I processed it the way they recommended.  But who knows if it might shift.  Right?
PK: Platinum and palladium are supposed to be very stable.  
Gary Schneider: Mmmmmm…
PK: Not so much?  Different experience?
Gary Schneider: I don't know.
PK: They're reputed to be much more stable.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, they are, they are.
PK: And do you do any postprocessing on this?  Do you do any—it doesn't look coated or anything.
Gary Schneider: No, no, I don't, I don't, I don't.
PK: You just leave it.
Gary Schneider: I don't wax or anything.
PK: And do you have to spot your platinum prints?
Gary Schneider: Well, I might have.  I might have.
PK: Maybe a little. Oh I see it.
Gary Schneider: But the old Spotone was carbon.  So I think it's really stable.  Is that a real problem, spotting, yeah?
PK: Sometimes.  So you know what we'll see sometimes is the liquid Spotone shifts a little bit differently than the gelatin silver print.  And it'll...
Gary Schneider: Yes. It'll darken.
PK: Or it'll stand out a little bit more.
Gary Schneider: Oh, rather it'll stay the same and the silver gelatin has faded.
PK: One or the other or both.  Shifting in different ways and so you could see it.  Yeah, but anyway I just wanted to ask.
Gary Schneider But I do very subtle spotting.  It's not like I have chunks of dirt on my negatives.
PK: Right.  You just—you're a pretty pristine printer.
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  I try to be as clean as possible, and you know, it's sort of dust-free.  Yeah.
PK: Do you work with assistants?  Like, before you went digital, were you working with assistants?
Gary Schneider: Not in my work, ever.
PK: Just you.
Gary Schneider: Even now.  I have a real problem with that.  But we did have a photo lab.  Like Schneider-Erdman was a photo lab.  And we had, like at one point, we had eight—I think it was eight people working with us. Yeah.
PK: The printer proofs?  That kind of thing?  Or is that all you?
Gary Schneider: Oh that's all me.
PK: That's all you.  Okay, that's separate, then you also had a photo lab.
Gary Schneider: Yes, yes, yes, yes, I can reserve those for me.
PK: Well, they need you, right?
Gary Schneider: (laughs) More fun.  And then certain—like well we can talk about it later.  But most of our money was made on some of those Magnum Photographers also doing corporate annual reports.  So there was huge quantities of film and huge quantities of prints.  And then I had people printing those under my supervision.

PK: So when you're done with an edition like Shirley, what happens to that negative?  Do you do anything to it?
Gary Schneider: It's in its paper sleeve in a box.
PK: Is it in cold?
Gary Schneider: I don't believe in destroying negatives actually, because actually then I can now scan it and put it on my website or make a reproduction from it.  It's silly to destroy negatives. I don't really believe it that, really.
PK: I don't think—most photographers don't do that, do they?
Gary Schneider: Some people. I mean, I've heard of photographers doing that.  I just don't get it, you know.  Yeah.
PK: Do you notice any changes in your negatives?  Are they all...
Gary Schneider: I don't know how to notice a change in a negative.
PK: Well, like a cockling or waviness or anything.
Gary Schneider: Quite honestly—oh, oh.
PK: They're probably all polyester, good negatives, good quality negatives.
Gary Schneider: Yeah exactly.  They really are.  But I didn't do—I know there's archival processing.  Or processing for storage of negatives.  And I didn't do double fixing baths on negatives.
PK: But you washed them.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, they're perfectly well washed.
PK: Perfectly.  Yeah they're probably fine.
Gary Schneider: And quite honestly when I just did this—I did a project for Peter Hujar of—it only existed in these Kodak slides.  And I think it was Ektacolor, which was really bad, right?
PK: I think so, yeah.
Gary Schneider: And they'd all really faded.
PK: Right, shifted a lot.
Gary Schneider: And of course, you can now recover them.  Photoshop is this magic…
PK: Digital, yeah.
Gary Schneider: It's extraordinary, right?
PK: Yeah, absolutely.
Gary Schneider: You can easily recover them.  And even build the grain back up.  The grain fades.  So—I mean, the silver fades.  Like really badly on those.  So we actually built—I built silver back in.  Or rather, built grain back in.
PK: Built grain back in with Photoshop.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, it's easy.  I mean, there's no such thing as easy.  Everybody thinks digital is so easy.  It's way more difficult than silver.
PK: It's a lot more work for us in conservation documentation photography.
Gary Schneider: Conservation.  I would love to talk about it, but maybe not here.  Oh, and documentation, but you now have that form.  Do you do the form as well?
PK: We do.  We try to.
Gary Schneider: I just filled that out for Eastman House on a project, yeah.
PK: Excellent.  

PK: Gary, have you had works that have been damaged?  And can you talk to us about that?  Like surface seems very important to you.  Have you had works where the surface has been damaged?  What do you do about that?  These experiences.
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  What's very interesting is, from the beginning, my prints were—my artist's frame has been Denglas.  And Bark Frameworks came up with a design that I don't show—if you look at the print, I don't have a big mat.  The mat is this tiny fillet, which is hidden behind the rabbet of the frame.  But the glazing is attached to the backboard via J-Lar, which is nonoff[gassing], apparently, is it?
PK: I mean, there's no perfect tape out there.
Gary Schneider: No, I know.  So it's non-offgassing, we think.
PK: Your prints are doing well.
Gary Schneider: They're doing fine, right?  Well, but they're not that old, really.  And they're not 1,000 years old.  Okay, so.  So, okay, not to get into a whole description of the frame, which you can, if you like.
PK: Please, yeah, go for it.
Gary Schneider: Okay, so what they designed was—they're almost fully sealed.  So—except for the corners.
PK: The corners, right.
Gary Schneider: So the attachment, which is tape basically, J-Lar is tape.
PK: Right.  That wraps around.
Gary Schneider: It wraps around—because the glue does come off.  So separating that from where the print might be—right—on its mat.  There's a strip of paper.
PK: Right.  We do that too.  Yes.
Gary Schneider: You attach the strip of paper, so there's no glue transfer.
PK: There's no adhesive sort of seeping.
Gary Schneider: There's no adhesive seepage, right?  Okay, but what it means is the glazing is attached on four sides to a backboard.  Okay, so this gets to the damage thing.  So I get a hysterical call from—actually a collector in Boston—who said, "Oh I was leaning one of your prints against the wall and it fell on its face and the glass broke."  And actually, it was very interesting because the glass breaks out if it's attached on four sides.  I thought it was quite brilliant to come up with that design.
PK: So it just went, "Boom," away from the print.
Gary Schneider: Away from the print.  Okay and so he sent me the print.  It was very carefully unframed.  And then I got sent the print and there were very subtle slivers of glass embedded in the emulsion.  Now what's weird about that print is it was a Portriga-Rapid print, and it couldn't be remade.  Of course those things can't be.  And he didn't want to [word inaudible].  So I just went over the surface really carefully and removed.
PK: So you did the conservation.  You pulled out the glass.
Gary Schneider: Yes, yes, yes, and wherever it had actually done subtle tears—and they were really subtle.  I really had to look.  I mean, I had to look really hard.  I spotted those in, so actually…
PK: And this was a gelatin silver print.
Gary Schneider: It was a gelatin silver—very early print from like ‘80—from '90, yeah.

PK: What would have happened if that had been a chromogenic print?  Would you just have reprinted it?
Gary Schneider: Should we have that conversation?
PK: Sure.  Yeah.
Gary Schneider: Because that comes up all the time.  Especially with all these Diasec® things, right?  I don't do that.
PK: Has this come up for you?
Gary Schneider: Well, actually, okay, we should get into the chromogenic thing.  
PK: Sure.
Gary Schneider: Because when I started making color, or shooting in color, right, and I used something called [Fujifilm] 64 Tungsten [Color Reverse Film], it was a Fuji eight-by-ten transparency film, it's like slide film.  Which no longer exists and no longer can be processed.
PK: Of course. (laughs)
Gary Schneider: Okay.  But I started doing that because—oh, God, I'm blocking her name now. I'm so bad with names.
PK: It's okay.
Gary Schneider: Henry Wilhelm's wife [Carol Brower Wilhelm].
PK: I don't know Henry's wife's name.[Transcriber's note: Henry and Carol Brower Wilhelm are Co-founders, Wilhelm Imaging Research]
Gary Schneider: Okay, and she used to make mats.  She used to make mats for us.  She was an incredibly careful—is a better word to use—mat maker.  She would choose exactly the right boards.  She was amazing.  Oh.  Carol Brower. PK: Okay.
Gary Schneider: Okay.  She brought Henry before he was—as he was beginning—as they were beginning to write the book on conservation.  It was also going to be conservation of black-and-white at that point.  And so she brought him into the lab, and we sat down and had a full day's conversation.  They were amazing.  They're amazing, those two.  And he promised me—because I wasn't going to print anything giclee or iris.  It just wasn't going to happen.  It's too fugitive.
PK: You weren't going to go there.
Gary Schneider: And I didn't really like how they looked.  There was something really like overly—well, they're beautiful, it's true, they really are, but they're very fugitive.
PK: And they're very different than a chromogenic.
Gary Schneider: They're very different from a chromogenic.  But I'm going to get to this chromogenic issue.  Because chromogenic is beautiful, it's true.  Anyway, but he promised me pigment.  He promised me pigmented ink.  And he said once pigmented ink comes in—that's stable enough.
PK: So he was saying wait for the pigmented inks.
Gary Schneider: Wait for the—it's inevitable.  This is going back.  I don't know.  We could like trace it, right? 
PK: Sure.
Gary Schneider: This goes back decades.  This is '80s.
PK: This is a while ago.
Gary Schneider: It's maybe even like late '80s, early '90s.  It's got to be.  Because I started shooting color in—oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, what am I thinking?  In late '90s.  What date is this?  This is...
PK: Helen.
Gary Schneider: Helen is like—oh thank you.  You are organized.  This is great...
PK: Helen is 2000.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, 2000.  So like maybe this was '98, '97 that they came in.  

Gary Schneider: So I started shooting color.  Assuming I'd be able to print them pigmented ink.
PK: Oh, okay, that was the plan.
Gary Schneider: Or at least pigment.  That was the plan.  Because I wanted to control it.  And by the time I had to begin to print them, it wasn't sophisticated enough.  Because I tried everything.  There were—Epson wasn't making printers yet, right?  
PK: Right.
Gary Schneider: So I had a print made, and it was just awful.  And so I had to make—I tried to make a Cibachrome.  And they were...
PK: You didn't like that.
Gary Schneider: Well, I had to work with printers.
PK: Right.  And you were used to doing it yourself and controlling that whole thing, yeah.
Gary Schneider: Well, I didn't know how.  I'm too controlling maybe.  I don't know.  So I finally realized I had to do LightJet, because that meant there was going to be a file, and we could tweak the file and then print this thing.  So I went to Laumont [Studio, NY] and they all but threw me out.  I was just impossible.  I was just impossible.  So...
PK: What you wanted, what you were looking for, just wasn't possible yet.
Gary Schneider: No, no, no.  Because I had to work with a printer.
PK: You just were...
Gary Schneider: You know, to make a chromogenic.
PK: They couldn't deal with you.
Gary Schneider: They couldn't.  (laughter)
PK: Okay.
Gary Schneider: But we did.  And we got these prints out.  And they are really beautiful.
PK: So who printed these with you?
Gary Schneider: His name is [Esteban] Mauchi.  Actually in your...
PK: Perfect.
Gary Schneider: When it was shown at the Sackler recently ["Gary Schneider: Portraits," Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard Art Museums, February 28-June 13, 2004] his credit was there.  It was kind of interesting.  I thought my God, how did they find all this information.
PK: Yeah, what did you think about that, having the printer on there?
Gary Schneider: It was kind of surprising, and at the same time I thought "Well, you know, I have my printer's proof collection.  I printed all of those.  So there's a sort of karmic balance to the whole thing."
PK: Absolutely.
Gary Schneider: Right?  It's kind of interesting for me.  Except that I now really prefer Epson prints.  So like as soon as Epson came in with their [Epson Stylus® Pro] 9600, I began printing.
PK: As soon as they could do—as soon as you could do it digitally.
Gary Schneider: As soon as that show was done in 2003.  With this exhibition at Julie Saul's.  I began to print myself.  

Gary Schneider: So in fact all the extant prints of these I'm trying to now—I don't think should—although there are some in private hands.  But it's terrifying for me.
PK: All the chromogenic prints that are out there?
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  I'm scared of them.  Because even though they're "Fuji Crystal Archive," what the hell does that mean?  I don't really know.
PK: Have you had anyone tell you that they've seen color shifts?  Or have you experienced any?
Gary Schneider: How would they know?
PK: Well, they might.  If it had been drastic enough, they might notice.
Gary Schneider: I think the Fuji Crystal.  I love that they call it "Archive."  Because what the hell does that mean?
PK: I know.  I know, but if you put it in there, it helps people feel better.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I had a collector in Europe saying she couldn't find where the signature was.  So she opened the frame and...
PK: They were on the back, right?  You have usually a little window.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, yeah.  And I thought—yeah within a window.  And I thought, "Oh my God, you mean you unsealed them."
PK: You took the J-Lar package apart!(laughter)
Gary Schneider: And they're huge, right?  They're 48 by 60.
PK: So you're worried about your chromogenic.  But you actually haven't had any problems yet.
Gary Schneider: I've had nothing come back to me.  But most of them...
PK: Nothing you've seen.
Gary Schneider: Actually, quite honestly, very few are in private hands.  Most of them are in institutional collections.
PK: Sure.  So they're not out full-time.
Gary Schneider: Which means they're being looked after, and they're not having—especially with you guys [Harvard Art Museums], it's interesting.  Like you control the lumens.  That's why I wanted the printers' proofs here.  Because it's like one control set actually forever, actually.
PK: Forever.
Gary Schneider: So that set of silver prints is now in a situation where you know that they're not going to shift.
PK: Right.  You know that they're as protected as they can be.
Gary Schneider: I know that they couldn't be protected more, yeah, than they are.  And that was sort of part of my desire for them.  
PK: Right, to come here.
Gary Schneider: I never wanted to exhibit them.  I very seldom lent pieces for exhibition.  Under incredible duress.  I mean, I do live with some.  But...
PK: Some of them were framed as if they'd been in your house.
Gary Schneider: They were.  They were.  What we used to do is we would frame—before we understood really about conservation, we would frame some pieces to have examples up at the lab of what…
PK: Sure, of course.
Gary Schneider: We had a little show up.  We had a little show up.
PK: Of what we do.
Gary Schneider: Of what we do.  Yeah.  And then we liked to live with certain pieces.
PK: Yeah of course.  You want to enjoy them.
Gary Schneider: We enjoy them.
PK: And have any of the ones in your house that you've had up for a while, have you noticed any...
Gary Schneider: No.
PK: Yeah, see, I feel like they're pretty solid.
Gary Schneider: No.  I'm a bit worried about that because of course it's a lot of exposure maybe, right?  But what's interesting is like Genetic Self-Portrait [1997-1998] traveled.  I mean, if you look at my bio, right, I have in the Genetic Self-Portrait folder the—I made a specific CV for Genetic Self-Portrait, because it traveled so extensively.  But of course it's a nightmare for you… 
PK: Right.  But they've done well.
Gary Schneider: …because it traveled so extensively.  And I've seen no shift.
PK: Yeah.
Gary Schneider: Even in the Palladio prints.
PK: Okay.  I really do think that those are stable.
Gary Schneider: They must be.
PK: I really do think they are.
Gary Schneider: Do you know the material?
PK: Yeah.
Gary Schneider: You do.  So you've seen prints over the years? 

Gary Schneider: Yeah, it's certainly like the material I don't know about that I get worried about.  And the Fuji Crystal...
PK: Is another, yeah.
Gary Schneider: ...I get worried about.  But, you know, I never did any kind of face mounting.  They're mounted on aluminum.  So I tried to do my best with even the chromogenic.
PK: Well, everything seems to be holding up very well.
Gary Schneider: I think it's really good, and now they're behind UV protection.  
PK: Right.
Gary Schneider: (Sighs) Which is great.
PK: So Gary, the mounting of the big chromogenic.  Is that a size thing?  Or is it that your exhibition prints, once they go into frames, you want them super flat?
Gary Schneider: Yeah it's about super flat.
PK: It's about super flat more than anything.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
PK: And how do you feel about your smaller prints not being...
Gary Schneider: I don't mount those.  You mean like these small, like the eight-by-tens (sounds like)?
PK: Yeah, so that…
Gary Schneider: Well they really—you know, for conservation purposes it's easier for you, right?  
PK: Absolutely, yeah.
Gary Schneider: And so all the way along, I was able to consult with John McElhone [Chief Conservator, National Gallery of Canada].  Do you know him?
PK: Yes.
Gary Schneider: He's kind of—I had this relationship with the National Gallery.  And he was kind of, you know—from the beginning—and this goes back to—I mean, they collected me in—like they're the first institution to buy my work.
PK: Is that right?
Gary Schneider: Yes.
PK: That's wonderful.
Gary Schneider: I know.  It's fabulous.  So it goes really far back.  It really goes far back.  And he…
PK: You had been talking to him.
Gary Schneider: …I was put in touch with him. And I don't know why he made himself accessible.  But I just bombarded him with questions whenever I needed to.  And he—at one point—my gallery insisted on dry-mounting, and he gave me the arguments like pro and con.  It's just a handling thing.  They're easier to handle if they're mounted.  It's just a dangerous thing for you, if you ever need to do conservation on them.
PK: Right.  Then things become really tricky.
Gary Schneider: Then it becomes a nightmare.
PK: Yeah, things become very tricky.  And when you say dry-mounted, is that to aluminum or...
Gary Schneider: No, no, no, in these cases it's to...
PK: Just to the boards.
Gary Schneider: ...museum board.
PK: Museum board, right.
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  In the silver prints they're to museum board.  Yeah.

PK: I wanted to talk about John in Sixteen Parts [1996/1997], which we own in gelatin silver and in platinum.  And I wanted to ask you about that and about what you were—why the two processes.  Is the one in platinum really the final product?  And what do you see as the differences, visually?  
Gary Schneider: Yes.
PK: And maybe we could get up and take a look?
Gary Schneider: We don't have a copy of the catalogue, do we, of John in Sixteen Parts [New York: P.P.O.W., Boston: Howard Yezerski Gallery, Chicago: Stephen Daiter Gallery, 1997]?
PK: I don't—we do somewhere in the lab but...
Gary Schneider: What a pity.  Because the set of prints that I gave to the Fogg are the small prints, that was to—it's my first publication.
PK: These here, right?  The small prints or...
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  Yeah.  And they were printed on Ilford matte because I thought matte reproduction would be the most beautiful.
PK: So you did that.
Gary Schneider: And so I was trying to seduce my galleries into spending the money to do really, really good reproduction.  So they're not the prints that were used for reproduction.  Because in those days you made a glossy print so that the DMaxs would be able to be scanned correctly.  Because with these matte prints the DMaxs would be scattered by the laser beam in those days—like laser-scanned.  They did laser scan. (laughs)
PK: Sure. Do you want to say a little bit about...
Gary Schneider: The platinum set.
PK: The platinum set or—yeah vis-à-vis the—I mean compared to the gelatin print or...
Gary Schneider: Well, in order for me—I print platinum really strangely.  I mean, maybe not for Shirley, which was sort of printed grain flat.  But for the John in Sixteen Parts, I made—because you have to make internegatives, right… 
PK: Right.
Gary Schneider: …to make a platinum print.  And so I printed them quite graphic for platinum.
PK: Right, right.
Gary Schneider: Aren't they?  It's interesting, right?
PK: You almost walk up to those and say "platinum," and those and say "gelatin."
Gary Schneider: Yes, yes.  So I tend to...
PK: Right. Until you get really close.
Gary Schneider: I must say, in all of my printing, I will often work against—what my eye is doing often is craving a certain kind of tonality.  And so with those, I thought well, I made them so that they actually are very dramatic.
PK: Right, right.  Which they are.
Gary Schneider: They're not what you think platinum should be.  Which is—yeah, and there's a set of—which I have in my collection of 36-29 versions of those.  It's the big set.  Which are so dark and so gray, they're almost impossible to light.
PK: Wow.  Are they up?  Do you have them up?
Gary Schneider: No, no, no, no, no.
PK: They're way too big.
Gary Schneider: They go into like survey shows and some like little shows.  But it becomes a nightmare for installation.  Because anything opposite is going to be reflected in them.
PK: Right, they're hard to see and light properly.
Gary Schneider: They're really tough to see.
PK: They're like daguerreotypes almost.  They're hard to light and make it so you can...
Gary Schneider: Daguerreotypes, I think, are quite easy to light.
PK: Do you?
Gary Schneider: You just have to have the [words inaudible] at an angle.
PK: Just have it in a right angle, and you have to be wearing black.
Gary Schneider: You have to be wearing—exactly—everybody has to be in kabuki changing gear.
PK: Exactly.  (laughter)

PK: We have one work by you that's time-based media—the Salter[s] Cottages [1981].  Do you do a lot of time-based media?
Gary Schneider: No.  I just bought myself a [Canon EOS] 5D [DSLR camera].  Well not just—but I bought myself a 5D thinking—you know, the Canon 5D which is also really professional video.  Not as professional as this.  But it's a still camera that also is used professionally.  Thinking I might go back to video.  So I do miss it.
PK: You did it early on.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, when I made 16-millimeter film.  Like Salters Cottages was 16-millimeter—it was my last one.  And it's silent, and it's 15 and a half minutes.  It's not long.  I never got to make a feature length film.  I just couldn't raise the money.  In those days, it was really expensive.  And of course now, I could.  It's somewhere shelved.
PK: Right.  You're ready.  You're thinking about it.
Gary Schneider: I'm not ready.  I don't think I'm ready.  Otherwise I would have begun something, right?  But I do have several projects that I sort of—in a way—I process—virtually, shall we say—like, in my head, and then they just never seem to get made.
PK: At some point you'll get to it.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, at some point, maybe.  Yeah it's interesting.  Yeah because I'm happy with that one film.  But that's really the only one that was, I thought, successful at all.
PK: We might have more capacity to show those kinds of things in the new building.  So that would be really fun if we could do that kind of work and bring video—you know, let students see video.  It'd be really really wonderful with that.
Gary Schneider: I think my newest work that I'm working on right now feels like it wants me to include some aspect of video.  Some aspect of it, yeah.
PK: Great, look forward to that.
Gary Schneider: Well me too.  Maybe.

PK: And I guess before we switch over to the printer's proof collection, can we talk a little bit about you're shooting digitally now and you're printing.  You said you're printing on Epson.
Gary Schneider: Well, I'm only beginning to shoot digitally now.  Yeah.
PK: Okay…
Gary Schneider: Yeah.
PK: What's the camera you...
Gary Schneider: Well, it's the 5D 
PK: Okay.
Gary Schneider: And I have a very very shallow learning curve (laughs) on any technology anyway, right?
PK: Right.  You don't consider yourself a techie.  You're not deeply into that.
Gary Schneider: I suppose I must be, but I always think that I'm not.  It's weird because I teach it.  But yeah, I just find young people pick up these new technologies much faster than I can.  
PK: Right, right.
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  But I'm having fun learning.  And all along the way all the kind of mistakes are interesting to me, and I can kind of use some of them.  I'm not shy.  You'll kind of notice this in my work.  I'm really not shy of what's called a sort of digital artifact.  I like it.
PK: Okay.  What sort of appears, and you didn't intend for it, but you work with it.
Gary Schneider: Well, there's a certain digital artifact that seems a little too tricky and I don't like any of that.
PK: Any sort of trickery.
Gary Schneider: Well yeah but yeah I'm really working in color.  And the color is incredibly saturated, and working with complementaries, and yeah.
PK: And so, what other digital artifacts have popped up that you have enjoyed or...
Gary Schneider: Well, this often, like if you really push the curves, right, you get a kind of plateauing or you'll get a sort of slight posterizing…
PK: Sure.
Gary Schneider: And that, if it feels right to me, if I can somehow embrace it within the meaning of the image, I'm good with it. You know, I'm really fine with it.  I want to talk to you sometime about conservation of these ink prints—like how— because I think it's making conservators really nervous.
PK: It does, yeah, it does.  That's absolutely right.
Gary Schneider: Because apparently, the ink can literally fall off of the support.
PK: Yeah depending on what kind of paper you're using and that kind of thing.
Gary Schneider: Yes.  So I'm very careful about those.  I'm choosing ones that either Wilhelm has tested or are—I'm not printing on toilet paper.  Do you know what I mean?
PK: Right.  You're printing on papers that are compatible with that printer… 
Gary Schneider: Yes.
PK: …and that Wilhelm has tested and recommended.
Gary Schneider: Well, you know, a lot of manufacturers now won't go through the expense of testing.  And they do their own.  But you can generally—I think it's becoming more and more and more sophisticated, the supports, right?  And the coatings have become really sophisticated.
PK: The coatings, I think, are sometimes the issues, yeah.  That those...
Gary Schneider: Yes.  They've become really sophisticated now.  
PK: Absolutely.

Gary Schneider: And it means that the palette has become vast, right?  It's become really vast, because…
PK: And you're loving those colors.
Gary Schneider: I'm just loving—no.  By palette I mean, like, the numbers of surfaces.  Like I just brought here.  And I'm going to give to Debbie.  I have a collection of silver papers that was—it was a manufacturer before the war.  Before the Second World War.  That a German manufacturer that was bought out by Agfa and then closed down.  And it's a collection of like—I don't know.  Actually I should have counted them.  Like 36 different papers…
PK: Oh fantastic.
Gary Schneider: …silver papers that they made.  I mean, they're ugly images on them.  But they were amazing.
PK: That's fantastic.  Yeah.
Gary Schneider: You know, they were these amazing—there was an amazing selection.
PK: There was a huge array, right.
Gary Schneider: Like, you know, getting back to Stieglitz.  He would never have thought of making his own platinum paper.  You could buy it.
PK: Right.  You could buy it, and it was great, and why not buy it?
Gary Schneider: And it was great.
PK: Yeah, it was beautiful.
Gary Schneider: So I think that's how the digital media has become.  It's just becoming more—there's such a demand.  So all of a sudden Canson has come out with a range of papers that is extraordinary.  And there's a kozo paper that's really beautiful.  These beautiful papers.
PK: Is that a kozo platinum paper or just a gelatin?
Gary Schneider: No, no, no, a kozo paper to print ink on.
PK: Oh, that sounds wonderful.
Gary Schneider: I know.  And it's gorgeous.  I just tested it.
PK: It sounds wonderful.
Gary Schneider: It's beautiful, because it's translucent and it's like it's mulberry.  It's mulberry, kozo, right? 
PK: Yeah, right.
Gary Schneider: And it's really tough and it's...
PK: Super strong, long-fibered, soft, makes your prints really soft, right?  The ink...
Gary Schneider: It doesn't actually.  It's resolving really—this is getting really technical.  It resolves—I've just done a few tests.
PK: And what do you mean by resolves, Gary?
Gary Schneider: The kind of how the tones bump into each other is like very defined.  
PK: Oh, okay.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really gorgeous.
PK: Lovely, that sounds wonderful.  

PK: Okay.  So Gary, I wanted to turn the conversation now to the Schneider-Erdman printer's proof collection.  And I wanted—so hoping that you could talk to us a little bit about working with all of these artists.  So here we have Gober.  We have Nan Goldin.  We have Matthew Barney and we have James Casebere.  And there's a lot of other artists represented in the collection.  A lot of very important artists.  And could you talk to us about how those relationships go and how printing for these artists works for you?  And you can use names or not as you feel comfortable but...
Gary Schneider: Sure, sure.  I printed for them for a really long time.  For example James came to me directly out of the Whitney program.  He was sent to me by Yvonne Rainer.  And so he made his small prints and I made all the big prints for him.  And so some of these relationships, they're all very different kinds of relationships.  Matthew Barney came to me during his first exhibition at—he had had one show in California with Barbara Gladstone's son.  And then he was having the show here.  And he came to us to make a set of prints.  So like really early relationships.  The relationship with Nan is curious because she was very close to Peter Hujar and I was—she was having a show I think of all the AIDS, those cycles at Peter MacGill.  And she came up to me at the opening and said I have these really early photos that I made in undergraduate school and I'm going to be having a show in Paris.  Oh no, no, no, no.  And she said would you want to make 16-20s of those.  And then it became her first French show at agnes b. in Paris.  So and each one has a little—like what's really interesting about—and then Bob Gober started.  Also came to me quite early through Paula Cooper who knew my partner John really well.  She knew me somewhat well.  And sent him to us.  So it's interesting how it's a little art world and how that works.  And that's—it became a kind of community.  So Nan basically came to me because of Peter.  And we knew each other.  We knew each other from around.  So like to start with  the Nan story.  So she comes to me with a set of negatives that she's already had taped together to photograph...
PK: A bunch of them.

Gary Schneider: To make slides.  To rephotograph to make slides because she used to do slide shows.  She did like The Ballad was a slide show originally.  The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.  And so some of them were really damaged and so on.  And then I said well since I only knew her color work.  I said how do you want me to print these.  She said well, for my thesis show I made these small prints, and you may have some.  Do you have any in the collection?
PK: Small color?
Gary Schneider: No.  The small black-and-white (inaudible).
PK: I'm not positive.  I don't think so.
Gary Schneider: Really small.  They're like 11 by 14.
PK: I have to look.

Gary Schneider: Yeah.  And small on 11-14.  And I knew.  So she said I have some of those but they're like David Wojnarowicz had a bunch of them he'd inherited.  Someone else like—oh who else had—so she collected them all together.  And I said look.  She said well they're such terrible prints.  And I said actually what you don't realize is, and what I realize is that even though they're technically not good, what's in them is your desire in the manipulation.  And I could see her hand.  It was really transparent like how she'd burnt and dodged or where she played with the tone.
PK: Right.  How she worked very specifically.
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  Which I loved.  They're really great.  They're really wonderful, those prints.  So she said but they're not good.  I said they're incredibly useful to me.  Leave them with me.  Let me use them as the guides to make these.  And I had a set of—I had a collection of old Portriga.  We talked about Portriga-Rapid earlier, because these were printed I think '90.  Is it '90?
PK: These are printed 1990, '91, right.
Gary Schneider: Yes.  Exactly.  And then while we were printing.  And so I had a collection.  They're very important.  And because Peter had died in I think '87, there was a kind of attachment to these.  He really loved her.  He called her the poet of the East Village.  It was like a thing about Nan.  And those early slide shows were unbelievable.  With her and her partner like having a fight in the back.  And they were like changing slides and screaming at each other and being (inaudible) it was fabulous, it was really fabulous.  Anyway so I used those as a direct guide.
PK: As a guide.
Gary Schneider: Like to begin to understand like where the accent should be and how...
PK: So that accenting here.
Gary Schneider: ...open the figure should be, how pushed back.
PK: The background.
Gary Schneider: The background should be.  How important he is.  So there's a lot of manipulation going on here.  And of course because her prints were so—how she manipulated them was so transparent.
PK: You could really...
Gary Schneider: It was really easy actually to move it around and old Portriga like I said was this extraordinary paper and you could do anything with it.  You really could take it anywhere.  You could print flat or you could print contrast (inaudible).
PK: Sure.  So it worked with all this manipulation.  It worked really well.
Gary Schneider: Like Peter printed (inaudible) very harsh (inaudible) had very gray midtones.  So he had real black, real like often very close to a real paper white and then he had these very flat midtones.  And so he was able to do that.  His prints look really different from anybody else's.
PK: And even though he's printing on the same paper.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) same paper.
PK: Right, because it's just so able to be manipulated.
Gary Schneider: Yeah (inaudible) it was so easy to push it anywhere.  Anyway so yes, 30 images in that show and while we were printing it it became a show at agnes b.  So it became this very important.
PK: The first.
Gary Schneider: Actually for her I think really an important cycle.  Yeah it's nice the negatives were made in Boston.  I sort of love that.  Good that it's come back.
PK: Yes.  We feel very attached to Nan here.  Can you talk—like how did Nan feel when she saw the final result?  Was she really pleased (inaudible).
Gary Schneider: Like really happy.  If you look at the back, it's nicely signed and titled.  They're very happy.  It was a very happy set.  Each one is titled carefully.  She used the pen I recommended.  So it's really—it's a wonderful set of prints.
PK: And she's put the date of the negative on here.  1972.  But the date of the printing you've nicely noted so we have that.
Gary Schneider: It's all documented because it became that show.  And then also you can tell that it's all Portriga because there's an Agfa stamp on there.  And in '87 once they went to what they called Agfa classic there's no Agfa imprint on them at all like on the back.
PK: That changed.
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  So you can easily tell an old Portriga print.
PK: That's great.
Gary Schneider: It's great.
PK: Except for people like you who hoard the paper and then the paper is still being used later on after...
Gary Schneider: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.
PK: Yeah it's great.  A lot of photographers do that I think.
Gary Schneider: That becomes a real problem.  And of course there were—there's all of these histories of misdated prints.  Let's call it that.
PK: Let's just call it that.
Gary Schneider: Some real problematic histories there, right.

PK: What about Matthew Barney?  It's a very different kind of—when he comes to you to print you talk about like the graininess and all that kind of thing and...
Gary Schneider: Well, that's in the negative.
PK: It's in the negative anyway.
Gary Schneider: Right.  That's the negative.  And he worked with a photographer.  And so the photography for his.  It was part of the cycle of films.  So like all the black-and-white work we did for him.  And then he moved to color.  And so we lost him.  But the photographs were always made as part of the installation after the films.  For the exhibitions.  And we don't have—we didn't get all of them.  It's just one in sometimes. Because they were sometimes really tiny exhibitions.  Sometimes they were like cycles of prints.  Too many.  There were too many in one piece.  This is part of a cycle of three.
PK: Yes we have the three.
Gary Schneider: You have the three.
PK: And is it something like is he an artist or are any of these artists people who would really intensely work with you?  Maybe like the chromogenic thing.
Gary Schneider: Actually quite honestly the only one who intensely worked with me to like totally control every tone in the print was Richard Avedon.
PK: Oh really.
Gary Schneider: And actually what's fabulous is there's a show right now at Gagosian of the huge giant pieces from the late '60s.
PK: The really large Avedons.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  And they have like a lot of archival material around them.  And they have a few prints with his printing instructions.
PK: Oh wonderful.
Gary Schneider: They weren't prints I made for him because he went through different printers.  Yeah and it reminded me how like controlling he was...
PK: Intensely.
Gary Schneider: ...in the proofing process.  For the most part like with all of these people there was a simpatico and I always thought of myself rather than interpreting the work I'm kind of channeling the work and because I'm a trained artist, I went to undergraduate art school, graduate art school, I made performance, I did performance work, for me it was like me performing their esthetic, me understanding like the nature of the work.  Like what that print means.  So actually the pieces you pulled out are incredibly different from each other.
PK: Yeah exactly.
Gary Schneider: And don't have a printing style.
PK: Right.  That's what's wonderful about it.  You can really see them.
Gary Schneider: I know, I know, I know, and that's why we did the show.  That's why some of them are framed.  Because we did the show to show there's no printing style here.  The only printing style is...
PK: The style of the artist.
Gary Schneider: ...the artist's.
PK: And so is that mostly you're able to channel them because you know their work or...
Gary Schneider: Yes.
PK: ...you're having long conversations with them or. ..
Gary Schneider: Yes.
PK: ...a combination?
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) combinations.  Sometimes intensely.  Sometimes it became really automatic like with James.  Like really easy with Casebere.
PK: You just know how to do it.
Gary Schneider: With Gober I would show him proofs.  If I was concerned that there was like it could go this way or that way I would show the possibilities and he would select.  But it was never—I didn't really work for anyone where I didn't understand what they did.  If I didn't understand what they did, then that was easy to find out.  Because within a few projects, within one project, if what I understood by the work wasn't compatible with what the desire of the artist was, I would try, but I knew that it was going to end in like the relationship ending.
PK: Tears.
Gary Schneider: Well, not tears.  But it's like I'm sorry, I'm like look, I'm the wrong printer (inaudible).
PK: I'm not—yeah.  Is there a time when things have gone wrong?
Gary Schneider: Oh my God, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah (inaudible).
PK: Can you talk a little bit about that?  You don't have to name names.  Just what that process was like and...
Gary Schneider: Well, actually we're never really—the ones where it was—where I couldn't understand the work was because basically the artist wanted me to create the work.
PK: I see.
Gary Schneider: And I really wasn't—I was making my own work.
PK: Take these negatives and...
Gary Schneider: I wasn't interested in creating somebody else's work.  Not their negatives.  So Okay, so there's that kind of situation.  And then sometimes relationships ended because of psychological...
PK: Stuff.
Gary Schneider: It's funny because I brought a bunch of archival material with me today.  Like literally papers and things.  And I have a folder from one artist of like how that relationship ended over a survey show.  And I left it at home.  It's so sad.  It's so...
PK: Can see that.
Gary Schneider: ...abusive.  Like really abusive.  Because the artist...
PK: This is an intense relationship.

Gary Schneider: It's a very intense relationship.  You're really dealing with the work.  And I don't know.  Sometimes a person who is paranoid about whatever.  Yeah.  And then it just becomes too much.  And that's too much.
PK: Is it standard practice to always keep a printer's proof?  Is that standard practice for other people doing this kind of...
Gary Schneider: I don't know.  It comes out of printmaking.  And actually printmakers keep several.
PK: Sure.  Of course.  Yeah.
Gary Schneider: Like they keep the BAT.  They keep the—so it sort of came from that.
PK: That makes sense.
Gary Schneider: And then because I felt like I wasn't—I was spending too much time making the work I figured—and I was a collector, I had been a collector, and so this was my way to collect.  And so it's not one of every edition.  But like in the case of Casebere, there's so many prints there.  It becomes this real archive.  It becomes a real range of all the black-and-white work he did.  And in the case of Gober of course he works a lot in various media.  Whenever there was a large enough edition he just gave me a printer's proof.
PK: That's wonderful, yeah.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) incredibly generous actually.  Incredibly generous.  With James he was—sorry.  With Matthew.
PK: Matthew.
Gary Schneider: He became famous so fast as a really young—I wasn't going to take.  Like if he did a cycle of nine prints in an edition of four I wasn't going to take a set of nine prints.  I just didn't...
PK: It didn't make sense.
Gary Schneider: ...feel right somehow.
PK: Do you ever hold on to the negatives?  Or the negatives just come in for a project and go back out?
Gary Schneider: Actually one of the things brought in was our negative signout book.
PK: Oh great.  I'd love to see that.
Gary Schneider: I know, I know, it's fun.
PK: Because that's very important.  Keep track of...
Gary Schneider: We never wanted to hold negatives.  We couldn't afford the insurance.  At one point there was a court case way back of a photojournalist suing a lab because they lost one roll of film.  And each frame.  They were ruled in favor of the photographer.  Wasn't even a famous journalist.  It was like something like $1,500, at that time huge, $1,500 a frame.
PK: A frame.
Gary Schneider: Which is 36 frames.
PK: Right.  It's a lot of money.
Gary Schneider: And they don't use every frame.
PK: Of course not.
Gary Schneider: Not every frame is usable.
PK: But it's gone.  So...
Gary Schneider: So yeah on one roll of film.  One roll of 35.  So we freaked out and so we—whenever anyone—that was the other reason why relationships would end.  Because we couldn't afford insurance we never wanted to hold film at the lab.  So we never kept anything there.  And whenever a photographer seemed litigious in any way it was like over.  The relationship ended immediately.
PK: Yeah.  Who wants to deal with that?  Yeah.
Gary Schneider: If there was ever a mention of a litigious...
PK: You don't need that hassle.
Gary Schneider: Well, we couldn't afford that kind of stress.  Because you're processing a lot of film.  What if something gets damaged.
PK: Of course.
Gary Schneider: It's possible.  Thank God nothing ever got damaged.
PK: Really.
Gary Schneider: Which is weird.  In all those decades.
PK: It's kind of amazing.
Gary Schneider: It's sort of shocking, I know.  It's amazing, yeah.
PK: So you talked very much about when you're printing for other people you're just—you're printing in their style and that's pretty easy for you to do.  Do you think the reverse relationship?  Do you think any printing for some of these people has influenced the way you printed your own work?
Gary Schneider: It's a question that kept coming up actually.  It's interesting.  I don't know.
PK: Yeah.  You don't know.  It might be hard to know.
Gary Schneider: But if you look at—but if you compare my work to any of the people that I printed for...
PK: It's pretty different.
Gary Schneider: It's like really different.  I know.  Even when I printed from my collection of negatives or like appropriated stuff it's very different.
PK: That makes sense to me.  Sure.  Can we talk about Bob Gober?  So you print for him a couple different ways.
Gary Schneider: Well, most all of the work that I made from him was silver.  In fact the biggest piece that you have now which is that cycle of 22 somewhat large prints that was shown in the Whitney Biennial.  That was mostly printed from files that were used to make the catalog for his—he had the pavilion at the Venice Biennale.  And he made a set of two books.  The one was the cycle of prints.  And he wanted me to print from those files.  And so I had to have—I had Laumont.  I work with Laumont to do all my like scanning.  And then at that point they were making LVTs.  You know what that is?

PK: Yes.  I forget what it stands for exactly but...
Gary Schneider: You do (inaudible).
PK: We have to deal with LVTs for another artist here.
Gary Schneider: It's making a negative from a file.  So it's like basically scanning onto film.
PK: Film.
Gary Schneider: To make a negative.  And that's probably the most difficult printing I've ever done.  It was really tough.  And in those cases I had to make like—so I got the negative from Laumont.  And they were really like—I worked really hard with them so that if the negative can't produce the tones I need we'd make another negative and so on.  It was...
PK: Back-and-forth.
Gary Schneider: ...really worth it.  It was a two-year project.  It was really long.  And then I would make masks.  So I could print.  Yeah and I became known like through the—I was known as the person who could do copy prints.
PK: That's pretty nice.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) so people like Francesco Scavullo.  It was extraordinary.  Is Francesco still around here now?
PK: I don't know actually.
Gary Schneider: Like he'd have a print made and then—oh.  Rather I'd make a print for him.  It would go to Bob Bishop.  And Bishop would paint it.  Like repaint it so that a breast would be vertical, etc., etc. like totally retouched portraits.  And I'd rephotograph it and make another print (inaudible).
PK: Fantastic.  Wow. 
Gary Schneider: So there was no evidence of the retouching.
PK: Of the retouching and the repainting and all that kind of thing.
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  And I did that for him, for Avedon, for the Kertesz estate.  Because the New York estate inherited the prints.  And France inherited the negatives from Kertesz.  Bob Gurbo came to me with prints.  And they also inherited—in New York they inherited the reproduction rights.  So instead of sending out vintage prints, which is really dangerous and silly, he came to me.  I would make copy prints.  And it was really fun.  It was really—I became really known for that.
PK: That's wonderful.
Gary Schneider: Yeah that's great.  So yeah so...
PK: So you moved him from silver to ink prints?
Gary Schneider: Okay, so you want to get to ink.
PK: Or what you did with him.
Gary Schneider: So this was the turning point in a way with Gober because he had an exhibition at Matthew Marks and the invitation for the show was this image of an ear.  We should show the orientation because we have to make sure that it is actually that's how it gets presented.  But it was a file.  It came to me as a file.  Because it was actually a digital camera.  So we went through several proofs.  I had LVT made.  I made a print from an LVT.  We sent the file.  I manipulated the file, like did all the corrections on the file, sent that to Laumont.  And they can now make a LightJet silver print.  And then I think there was another (inaudible) the three important ones were—so my print from the LVT from the digital negative.  The print directly from the file that was a LightJet print on silver.  And then as a last resort I thought well what the hell.  I made this print for him which is an ink print on an Epson printer.
PK: Epson yeah.
Gary Schneider: And then I laid them out, said to him this is this, this is this, this is this.  And he said well that's a no-brainer.
PK: He loved this.  Do you remember what the paper is here?
Gary Schneider: It's Hahnemuhle 308 yeah.
PK: Oh it is yeah, yeah.
Gary Schneider: Photo Rag 308.
PK: (inaudible).
Gary Schneider: And at that point that was really the only great great matte paper.
PK: It's fantastically beautiful.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) Hahnemuhle is like (inaudible).
PK: The cream of the crop.
Gary Schneider: Been around for centuries.  Anyway so then the next project was the small silver prints that he had that he needed scanned and printed.  And in the past of course we'd make silver prints from that.  And I said well do you mind if I show you these as—since we're making—since you like this Epson print let's make...
PK: Since you liked it so much.
Gary Schneider: ...another Epson print.  Yeah and so hence you have the whole set that I have.  It was actually—apparently it's a cycle.  Yeah.
PK: And he loved it again.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) he just loves them, yeah, yeah.
PK: So you think—is he converted?  Is this what—his main production or...

Gary Schneider: Well, I imagine if he has negatives that he's printing that he maybe would print them as a silver.
PK: As gelatin.
Gary Schneider: But—and it's interesting that—I didn't even think this when I did the work on the one, the cycle, the 22-print cycle.  Because if I printed them in ink it would have been a cinch.
PK: Made your life easier.
Gary Schneider: Well, it would have made it more—much more possible.  What I kept doing—and this I do a lot, and with any of these artists.  And I do this for this.  I made a set.  I would make a print because you have to print a whole edition.  So I'd make a print, live with it on my wall, see if there needs to be shifts.  Make some shifts, make some shifts until I have the final.
PK: Until you have what you think...
Gary Schneider: What I think is right.  And then I'd go into the darkroom and try and print an edition of that final.
PK: And are you making notes the whole time like so that you know you've tweaked it this way?
Gary Schneider: I never did.
PK: You did that.  You just remembered it.  Just knew how you got there.
Gary Schneider: No.  It's (inaudible) in a way getting back to the old Ansel Adams.  Like the performance.  Which is amazing that he said that.  Like each time it's a new performance.  So I would like have to then get back to that place.  Well, you do remember like it's what (inaudible) and all that kind of stuff.  Generally what the manipulation is on the print.  Like what gets darker, what gets lighter, what gets pulled forward, what gets pushed back.  And so—and what's amazing about a file is you can—you keep the history of that.
PK: That's true.
Gary Schneider: And the printer.  Not these earlier printers.  But the printers have become way more consistent now so that from one printing, if you keep it clean in their heads, to the next printing it's exactly the same print.  So that's more of a possibility now.  But with silver you'd have to get back to that performance and then enact it for an edition.
PK: Right.  So it's a lot of work.
Gary Schneider: Really rough.  It's really rough.  I know, I know.

PK: I wanted to ask you.  A number of the prints in the printer's proof collection have this cockling.  Do you think that that's an issue for something like this Matthew Barney?  Do you know or...
Gary Schneider: I think the cockling is going to like—because you probably have 50% relative humidity...
PK: We are...
Gary Schneider: I have a fantasy the cockling is going to disappear.
PK: Is going to go away.  Well so I think gelatin tends to remember where it's been and stay static.  And it's fine.  I just didn't know is Matthew Barney very particular about that.  Do you...
Gary Schneider: Well, you see with Matthew Barney what's so interesting—and this is one piece of information I don't know can be public—his—my set of prints are not framed (inaudible) his frame.  He's framed the prints unlaminated and put inside of his...
PK: So flat is very probably important.
Gary Schneider: ...plastic.  His like—his self-lubricating frame.  And so these are not laminated.  So in a way these are control.  They become a control for the laminated print, don't they?
PK: If they're a control is it an issue if we decide to flatten them a bit?  We're not going to laminate them.  But if we want to flatten them...
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) I'm sure any of the flattening you do is not going to do any damage.
PK: It's pretty gentle, right.
Gary Schneider: You probably humidify.
PK: Exactly.  We humidify and then keep it under weight for a few weeks just to try to...
Gary Schneider: I'm sure it'll (inaudible) actually I wish—there's some prints in my collection that I would love to bring in for flattening.
PK: For flattening.
Gary Schneider: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  Because silver does tend to—very seldom that it will lay.
PK: Exactly.
Gary Schneider: Especially with a lot of the Caseberes I noticed.  Because what I was—you must understand what I would do is I'd make a set of prints.  The photographer would collect his and sign one for me and stick it in a flat file in a Mylar thing and I wouldn't go back to look at it until Debbie came in to look at it.
PK: Right.  You hadn't really been through it, yeah.
Gary Schneider: So that's decades later.  I hadn't looked at them.
PK: Amazing.
Gary Schneider: So they're sitting there inert as far as I'm concerned.  Because this is pretty good storage.
PK: Yeah, no, it's perfect.  Perfect.
Gary Schneider: It's like really good.

PK: Especially in flat files.  And the Caseberes we wanted to ask you about because they are on a roll of paper.
Gary Schneider: Yes.
PK: And so a lot of them are trimmed this way.  See at the top there's a little bit of another.
Gary Schneider: Oh yeah I know, we get rid of that.
PK: So we should get rid of that.  And we probably actually need that from you in writing.  But when you would do this for Casebere and get them...
Gary Schneider: Well he would.
PK: He would do it.  So you would just give him...
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  No, no, no.  You see that was the other thing.  I would cut them to a border.  So like a nice neat border.  And so...
PK: You would just—would you just bring them up to the black?
Gary Schneider: Oh no, never, never.  In fact if you look at the Gobers there's still a quarter-inch border of white.  Because like if you cut them to the black it can actually begin to shed.
PK: Yeah, you lose those (inaudible) edges.  You start to lose the images.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) begin to like move.
PK: So you would say it's Okay for us just to straighten this out.
Gary Schneider: Oh, just get rid of—or it depends.  You could put them in a big mat and then you don't have to bother.
PK: Yeah that's what we will end up doing.
Gary Schneider: Then you don't have to bother.
PK: That's what we will end up doing is putting them in one of our standard size mats.
Gary Schneider: Yeah exactly yeah.
PK: And framing up some because the surfaces are so incredible.  There's dust in there every once in while or something.
Gary Schneider: I know.  It's probably from me still.
PK: Gets stuck in the Mylar.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) gets very...
PK: Staticky.
Gary Schneider: It gets staticky.  It's a problem.  So yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't even have to trim them.  And (inaudible) way too much.
PK: Great.  I love that.
Gary Schneider: I know.  It's interesting because that means—what's interesting about it I think—and that's why I didn't want to trim them once they were coming to you is that it has the history of a cropping.  Because this is the width.  That is the width of my easel blade.  I had an easel, a 30-by-40 easel, a movable blade easel built.
PK: So what happened to the print above this?
Gary Schneider: (inaudible).
PK: What happened to the print above this that's lost a tiny bit of its bottom?  Do you know?
Gary Schneider: No, no, no, no, it's not.
PK: Oh it's not.
Gary Schneider: These are four-by-five.  So it's part of the same.
PK: It's just part of the...
Gary Schneider: It's part of the negative.
PK: Right.  Right, so it really is an artifact of the printing.
Gary Schneider: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
PK: So we'll just leave it in.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) cropping going on there.
PK: We'll leave it unless it makes the mat...
Gary Schneider: Unless the border is too—but you're probably going to use...
PK: It bumps (inaudible).
Gary Schneider: ...like a wider...
PK: Exactly.
Gary Schneider: It's never that wide, is it?
PK: No, no, no.
Gary Schneider: I didn't think so.
PK: Yeah, we have our standard sizes that it would slot into.  Are there other experiences you want to tell us about working with artists?  Is there anyone?  Like you said you want to talk a bit about Peter.

Gary Schneider: The Hujar.  So I knew Peter from—Peter had been a very close friend of John's when I met John, my partner.  They had known each other.  And then I kind of became Peter's assistant on—he loved to walk the city.  And so I was the back of his head when he was shooting in somewhat more dangerous places.  So I did that a lot with him.  And (inaudible) so we became really close and he was really my teacher.  He...
PK: (inaudible).
Gary Schneider: ...pushed me into the lab.  I was—he got me my job at Klaus Moser lab when I was in graduate school.  I needed money.  And that's really where I learned printing or I learned the commercial aspect of printing. Because it was sort of a fashion lab.  And that's where I started processing him and a couple of other people.  And then Peter suggested I leave there.  It was pretty unhealthy for me to work for anybody.  As you can imagine.  It was also—yeah I needed better ventilation.  He had terrible ventilation.  I was getting very sick actually.  I got very sick.
PK: That's no good.
Gary Schneider: And so I first worked out of my apartment and—but I started processing for Peter in like probably '79.  Yeah, yeah.  And so I did all of his film processing.  And then the year that he contracted HIV he basically went to bed and I started printing for him. 
PK: Printing for him.
Gary Schneider: Yeah.  So when I was approached by Stephen Koch to do posthumous prints and apparently Peter said we could do those, I did a test on silver and I couldn't match Portriga-Rapid.  I made one print.  It took me forever to do.
PK: And it just wasn't...
Gary Schneider: And it was fine.  It's fine for exhibition purposes.  It's actually tea-stained in order to control the highlights because of the color of the paper.  It's so dramatic.  So I found a paper.  It was like an Ilford warm tone paper.  It's a bit harsh but it meant I could play with the midtones the way Peter—like I could get the blacks.  I could get the whites.  But the midtones are really tough to do with him.  And then they wanted to get more serious about these posthumous prints and so I did a test on a new Baryta paper that HARMAN came out with.  And HARMAN is now under the Hahnemuhle umbrella and it's literally a gelatin paper on a Baryta that is made to accept ink.

PK: It's wonderful, yeah.
Gary Schneider: It's amazing.
PK: Yeah and it worked well for you.
Gary Schneider: So aren't you shocked at them?
PK: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
Gary Schneider: And what's interesting is I don't want to print out the editions because there is—like if you put it sideways. Because that way I could really control.  Because we should describe Baryta maybe here.  Because nobody probably is.  But Baryta.  Silver paper is and actually I assume chromogenic as well, right?  Are gelatin.  Are they gelatin?
PK: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gary Schneider: They are.  So Baryta is—so there's the support, which is really wood pulp, isn't it?  So it doesn't move too much on silver papers.  I think it's pretty inert.  I think it's like not going to become acid.  It's not going to revert.
PK: No (inaudible) right.
Gary Schneider: To acid.  So like on top of the wood, on top of the support, there's a clay layer.  And that's actually what makes the brightness of the print.  It's what reflects the light.
PK: Makes the prints (inaudible).
Gary Schneider: So on top of the clay layer is the silver layer.  Sorry.  There's the gelatin layer that the silver is sitting inside of.
PK: Inside, right, exactly.
Gary Schneider: So basically what you're seeing is the brightness of a print is like how much light is bouncing off the Baryta or off the clay layer.
PK: Back at you.
Gary Schneider: Back at you.  Through the veil of the tonalities of the print.
PK: That's a good way to describe it.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) black.  I don't know how else.  I'm very colloquial I suppose.
PK: No, that's a good way to describe it.
Gary Schneider: It make sense?
PK: Yeah absolutely.  And the Baryta is very bright and white.  It's a white layer.
Gary Schneider: It's a white layer.  Sometimes it has brighteners in it which fade through time anyway and sometimes not so many.
PK: Right, absolutely, it depends on the paper and the time when it was produced and that kind of thing.
Gary Schneider: Yeah the brighteners are the problem.  Yes, yes.  So that can shift.  That's why you asked me has anything shifted.  Yeah, where were we?  Oh so they came out with this.  I don't know why they did.
PK: Oh, right, they came out with that paper.
Gary Schneider: They came out with this Baryta paper that is extraordinarily beautiful.
PK: And that worked for those prints.
Gary Schneider: Well, I could make the kinds of grays...
PK: You got those midtones.
Gary Schneider: ...that Peter used to make.  I could just do it by controlling how much light moved through it.
PK: That's great.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) it's extraordinary.
PK: And was there anything else you wanted to talk about with printing with him—for him?
Gary Schneider: Oh the other thing is the reason why I didn't want to print out the editions in advance is that—and this is to Epson now.  They're apparently coming out with a printer that will also print a white.  And so what that means is the difference between how a silver print looks which is continuous tone in one layer and an ink print is that there's a gloss differential which means that where you see the paper there is a different kind of glossiness to where there's more ink like the black.
PK: (inaudible).
Gary Schneider: But if they make a white ink there's no gloss differential.
PK: Right, that's true, because it'd all be the same.
Gary Schneider: Because it'll fill in.  It'll be the same quantity of ink.
PK: And that's coming out.
Gary Schneider: I don't know.
PK: That's what you heard.
Gary Schneider: I've been hearing about it for a long time.  It's not out yet.  So I just think it would be extraordinary.  Except that with the Baryta papers I'd have to test it.
PK: Of course.  Yeah.
Gary Schneider: Because maybe with the Baryta papers you really want the light to be bouncing off the...
PK: Yes.  Because otherwise this white layer is going to be opaque.  Yeah.
Gary Schneider: Clay (inaudible) be masked by the white, yeah, we don't know.
PK: Have to wait and see what it looks like yeah.
Gary Schneider: We'll have to wait and see.  So it's an interesting—so the great thing about this medium is it's evolving and...
PK: Oh definitely yeah.
Gary Schneider: Growing.
PK: It's a great moment in a way.
Gary Schneider: And according to Henry Wilhelm these prints will outlast the pyramids and...
PK: I don't know about that but they're going to last a long time.
Gary Schneider: Well, apparently they're not going to shift.  Okay, so we have like you have the...
PK: Very permanent.
Gary Schneider: ...van Goghs (inaudible) van Goghs that you own.  If there was red in it it's now pink.  And if you have any (inaudible).
PK: Yeah.  No, these prints are supposed to be very solid.  Yeah and only the technology is only getting better as the manufacturers listen and...
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) yeah, yeah, yeah.
PK: ...make better...
Gary Schneider: Hopefully.  It's my fantasy.  But you always have a fantasy about these prints because if you—I don't know, the Benson book and show, the Richard Benson book.  Like he proves to us that every medium of reproduction so far is fugitive.
PK: What can you do?
Gary Schneider: What can you do?
PK: You can only go with the best materials.
Gary Schneider: It's (inaudible) your job (inaudible).
PK: You could give it to us and we'll worry about it.
Gary Schneider: Yes.  Well, or rather work out how to build in the optimal situation so that this is—can last as long as possible.
PK: I think you're right.  You put things in the right environment and that's a huge step forward.  And control the exposure.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible).
PK: And then you're really doing pretty well.

Gary Schneider: The exciting thing for me was when I heard.  I don't know how many years ago this was.  But at one point all the institutions brought their Stieglitzes together to compare them to each other.  I would have loved to have seen that.  To see how...
PK: Wonderful exercise.
Gary Schneider: ...they had shifted.
PK: To see which ones.
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) even me knowing my photograph.  Looking at this print in this light.  I don't know.
PK: Right.  Of course.  And if you had...
Gary Schneider: It could be really subtle.  It could be really subtle.
PK: You need to see a couple of them next to each other that have been...
Gary Schneider: You have to see exactly from the same vintage.  Like Okay so I printed—Okay, right, I printed an edition of Matthew Barney.  We'd have to bring one of those prints unlaminated and compare it directly to this print to see if the lamination has done anything to the print.
PK: So these are the controls.
Gary Schneider: So (inaudible) yeah that's why I think of this as a control collection.
PK: That makes sense.  Sure.
Gary Schneider: Yeah it does, yeah.
PK: Well, that's great, Gary.  I thank you so much for coming and talking with us.  And it's been really fun.  Thanks.
Gary Schneider: It's been really fun for me I have to say.
PK: Great.  We'll have to do it again (inaudible).
Gary Schneider: (inaudible) more questions.  We're done.
PK: I think so.  We're done for now.  Thanks.  Yeah I think so.