(I encourage people to actually to to an exhibit and look at the prints of photographs that you regard as great, and to do so as closely as you possibly can. You’ll virtually always find that they don’t have the “pin sharp at any size” qualty that folks imagine they’ll have. I recall seeing this years ago in Ansel Adams prints. I really recall “getting it” at a SFMoMA exhibit of the gigantic prints of Jeff Wall — they are stunning when viewed as we normally do, but if you get nose-length close… Same with the famous Avedon “American West” portraits, which I’ve seen in person a couple of times — utterly stunning, huge prints…)
Sharpness was just as important for those photographers, contemporaneously, as it is for us today.
As I'm sure you know, Ansel Adam's prints were enlarged into mural size using sophisticated (and often completely novel) enlargement techniques designed specifically to optimize sharpness. These processes involved hand-washing prints 10-12 times, specially designed enlargement darkrooms, etc. Not to mention artistic instinct regarding what chemicals to use and how long to expose the mural paper to the projection of the enlarged print. Adams was also a master of using four-axis tilt shift on his cameras to achieve essentially infinite focus at f/64 (equivalent to about f/9 on a full frame camera).
So for the time period in which they were made (for Adams, the 1950s-70s, relying on prints from circa 1940), the sharpness and tone of these images was unparalleled.
So yes, Adams did expect that his prints would be appreciated at the proper viewing distance, but let's not revise history to make it seem as if sharpness did not matter very much to him and those other photographers. It's just that what could be achieved by the technology was inherently more limited than, in theory, what the best lens, camera, enlargement, and printing of today are collectively able to achieve. At the same time, to one of your other points, Adams was known to reject his own rules when the artistic vision required it.
(I encourage people to actually to to an exhibit and look at the prints of photographs that you regard as great, and to do so as closely as you possibly can. You’ll virtually always find that they don’t have the “pin sharp at any size” qualty that folks imagine they’ll have. I recall seeing this years ago in Ansel Adams prints. I really recall “getting it” at a SFMoMA exhibit of the gigantic prints of Jeff Wall — they are stunning when viewed as we normally do, but if you get nose-length close… Same with the famous Avedon “American West” portraits, which I’ve seen in person a couple of times — utterly stunning, huge prints…)
Sharpness was just as important for those photographers, contemporaneously, as it is for us today.
As I'm sure you know, Ansel Adam's prints were enlarged into mural size using sophisticated (and often completely novel) enlargement techniques designed specifically to optimize sharpness. These processes involved hand-washing prints 10-12 times, specially designed enlargement darkrooms, etc. Not to mention artistic instinct regarding what chemicals to use and how long to expose the mural paper to the projection of the enlarged print. Adams was also a master of using four-axis tilt shift on his cameras to achieve essentially infinite focus at f/64 (equivalent to about f/9 on a full frame camera).
So for the time period in which they were made (for Adams, the 1950s-70s, relying on prints from circa 1940), the sharpness and tone of these images was unparalleled.
So yes, Adams did expect that his prints would be appreciated at the proper viewing distance, but let's not revise history to make it seem as if sharpness did not matter very much to him and those other photographers. It's just that what could be achieved by the technology was inherently more limited than, in theory, what the best lens, camera, enlargement, and printing processes of today is able to achieve. At the same time, to one of your other points, Adams was known to reject his own rules when the artistic vision required it.
