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“For me, the printing is the most important part. I’m a printer, not a photographer,” Browning said firmly.
Browning, who lives in Lebanon, is an expert in dye-transfer printing, a photographic printing process, popularized by Kodak after World War II, that Browning likens to cinematic Technicolor, except it’s done on high-quality paper rather than film stock.
Although Kodak didn’t invent the method, Browning said, it made it commercially viable by making and standardizing all its components: the matrix film, dyes and chemicals. (Browning doesn’t know the origin of the term “matrix film” but he speculated that it may allude to the matrix of places where dye is stored on the film.)
The colors in dye-transfer printing have the rich glow of stained glass, and even with very large prints, a microscopic level of detail is possible, almost as if you were looking at a finely cross-hatched etching.
The process is particularly known, Browning said, for its ability to pick up subtle gradations of color in the darkest blues, browns and blacks which might blur to a uniform darkness in standard photographic prints.
The printing is done by hand, using chemical baths and three dyes — yellow, magenta and cyan, which is a deep bluish-green.
There’s nothing digital involved, which is why Browning prefers it. “There’s something very magical about making something handmade,” he said.
Browning’s show at AVA features landscapes shot at Acadia and Zion National Parks, the Adirondacks, California, Newfoundland and the Upper Valley. They’re notable for the intensity of the colors: a Zion Canyon tree whose foliage is an explosion of yellow, the rust-colored grain of rocks at Acadia, and the brilliant emerald of lily pads on Lake Sunapee.
The idea, said Browning, is to make the images look as he would prefer to see them, not to hew to “reality.”
“It’s how I’d like the world to look in my mind’s eye,” he said.
He first learned about the process from an uncle and aunt who had a photo lab on Long Island and did dye-transfer printing for the famous Canadian portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh, who is perhaps best known for the Life magazine cover he shot of a glowering Winston Churchill, one hand on hip, in the early years of World War II.
Browning, 61, grew up in Hanover, graduated from Dartmouth College and had an early interest in both computers and photography, shooting Ansel Adams-inspired black and white photographs as a kid.
After graduation, he headed to northern California to work as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, which was then in its infancy. But he moved back home in 1990, tired of the pace and interested in pursuing work he deemed more creative.
Photography, and photographic printing, called. And color: “I was always into color,” he said.
Now semi-retired, Browning made for many years large-scale prints of advertisements for such clients as Movado watches, and the fashion designers Vera Wang and Calvin Klein.
On the artistic side, he has printed for Irving Penn, the innovative Vogue photographer; the estate of Ernst Haas, a Life and Vogue photographer who was one of the earliest members of Magnum, the photo cooperative; and Dan Budnik, who is well known for both his documentation of the Civil Rights movement and his portraits of some of the most famous American artists of the 1950s and1960s.
Browning is more than a printer; he’s also a preservationist, using techniques, supplies and equipment that, after the development of digital photography, are rarely used.
When Kodak began to phase out dye-transfer printing in the mid-1990s, Browning rushed to buy up as much film, dye and paper as he could, but he also devised a template for making his own matrix film.
He then found a Soviet-era manufacturer in Croatia that could take his template and produce film in quantity. A minimum run, Browning said, was three miles of film, so that’s what he got.
From his uncle and aunt in Long Island he also inherited supplies and equipment, an enlarger among them, which he keeps in three rooms in the basement of the home that he shares with his parents.
On a recent Monday he showed how he makes a print.
First Browning dipped a piece of matrix film into the cyan bath, timed its immersion and then transferred it to a highly diluted acetic acid, which imprints the dye in the matrix film. From there he pressed the film onto photographic paper and after five minutes rolled out a print.
He followed the same method for the magenta and yellow dyes, and then peeled off the last film, revealing a final print of a photographic study of seaweed and rocks at Acadia.
Browning is dubious whether Kodak, or another film manufacturer, will ever bring back dye-transfer printing, although Kodak is reintroducing Ektachrome film stock for both motion pictures and still photography.
Including himself, Browning estimated, there are fewer than 10 people in the U.S., Europe and Australia who regularly make dye-transfer prints.
“I’d hate to see a time where people just didn’t care at all about the craft of the print,” Browning said.
It’s difficult, and perhaps pointless, to pinpoint what influences someone to go into the arts.
But in passing, Browning mentions being a kid and watching the old Captain Kangaroo show, which starred Bob Keeshan (who lived in the Upper Valley for many years prior to his death in 2004). He recalled a scene in which Captain Kangaroo and his sidekick Mr. Green Jeans came out with a paint brush and a blank canvas.
Through the magic of Chroma key, or green screen, the blank white canvas was slowly erased and the Mona Lisa appeared.
“I always thought that was really cool,” Browning said.
Browning will give a gallery talk today at AVA at 5:30 p.m. The show continues through Feb. 3.
Also on view at AVA Gallery through Feb. 3 is a show of collages by Margaret Lampe Kannenstine, of Woodstock, mosaics by Lebanon artist Carrie Fradkin and wooden sculpture by Burlington artist Clark Derbes.
Kannenstine gives a gallery talk on Saturday at 3 p.m.; Fradkin speaks on Saturday, Jan. 28, at 3 p.m.; and Derbes will give a gallery talk on Friday, Feb. 3, at 5:30 p.m.
For more information on Browning and dye transfer printing go to www.dyetransfer.org.
Openings and Receptions
There will be a reception Friday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. for the Winter 2017 art exhibition at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, which has four rotating shows each year. Brief remarks by the artists are at 5:30 p.m., followed by a tour of the exhibited work.
This winter the hospital will exhibit stained glass by Kathleen Curwen; wildlife paintings by Bradley Jackson; watercolors by Kathleen Fiske; a selection of work from the Vermont Watercolor Society; photographs by Seth Goodwin; pen and ink drawings by David Cooper; and photographs by Ruth Connor, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Geisel School of Medicine, who spent time in Western Kenya documenting the work done by I-Kodi, a grassroots non-governmental organization dedicated to improving education and healthcare in the region.
The show runs through March.
The department of Studio Art at Dartmouth College has announced the opening of an installation in the Jaffe-Friede Gallery at the Hopkins Center by artist-in-residence Zilvinas Kempinas.
Kempinas, who is from Lithuania but now lives in New York City, has exhibited his installations at the Venice Biennale and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
He was awarded the Calder Prize in 2007, which goes to an artist in the early stages of his or her career who has demonstrated great promise and formal innovation. The exhibit runs through March 5.
Long River Gallery and Gifts in Lyme is showcasing two artists through March 5: Hanover fiber artist Shari Boraz, whose work has been seen in various galleries around the Upper Valley, and silversmith and jeweler Case Hathaway-Zepeda. There will be a reception on Thursday, Feb. 2 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Long River has extended its lease in White River Junction, where it is showing “As If — Weavings From Oz,” by Henniker, N.H., artist Doug Masury. An opening is scheduled for next Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m.
Of Note
There’s still time to register for the 41st Annual Elden Murray Photographic Exhibition and Competition, at the Howe Library in Hanover, which has been a great way for amateur photographers in the Upper Valley to show their work publicly. The absolute deadline for registration online (http://bit.ly/eldenmurray2017) is Monday. Registration will not be accepted any other way.
For assistance with the form, please contact eldenmurrayphoto@gmail.com or visit the library in person. The photographs themselves may be dropped off in the Murray Room at Howe Library next Thursday, from 5 to 7 p.m. and next Saturday, 11 a.m. to noon.
The exhibition will run from Feb. 5 through March 8.
Ongoing
Aging Resource Center, Lebanon. The Senior Art program exhibition is on view through mid-March. Hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Arabella, Windsor. The gallery exhibits works by local artists and artisans in a variety of media, including jewelry, oils, acrylics, photography, watercolors, pastels and textiles.
Baker-Berry Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover. “Tibetan and Himalayan Lifeworlds” surveys the history, politics and religion of the “Roof of the World.” The show continues through March 31.
BigTown Gallery, Rochester, Vt. “Figuration,” which features the works of Lucy Mink Covello, Mark Goodwin and Fulvio Testa, runs through Feb. 25.
Converse Free Library, Lyme. “Gillian Tyler: A Golden Anniversary Retrospective” is now on view in the Betty Grant Gallery through March 31.
Hood Downtown, Hanover. “Let the Garden Eram Flourish,” a show of painting, video and drawings by Iranian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Bahar Behbahani, continues through March 12. Hood Downtown hours are: Wednesday through Saturday: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday: 1-5 p.m. Closed on Monday and Tuesday.
Howe Library, Hanover. The annual Hanover High School Student Art Show, featuring drawings, photography, printmaking, collage, digital art, sculpture and jewelry, continues through Feb. 1.
Kilton Public Library, West Lebanon. An exhibition of work by Enfield painter Penny Koburger continues through January.
Osher at Dartmouth, Hanover. The photographs of Mary Gerakaris are exhibited in “Reality to Abstraction — A Photographic Journey of Perception” through Feb. 24 at the Osher office at 7 Lebanon St., in Hanover. Hours are: Monday through Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Fridays, 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Royalton Memorial Library, South Royalton. A show of work by 20th-century commercial artist Louis Chap is up through Feb. 18.
Scavenger Gallery, White River Junction. The gallery shows handmade wooden objects by Ria Blaas and jewelry by Stacy Hopkins.
SculptureFest, Woodstock. The annual celebration of three-dimensional art generally ends when foliage season does, but 80 percent of the show is still on view. “Grounding,” a show of site-specific work curated by sculptors Jay Mead and Edythe Wright, is on view at the King Farm. For more information, go to sculpturefest.org.
Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, White River Junction. The Holiday Print Show runs through Jan. 31.
Norman Williams Public Library, Woodstock. “In Living Color,” a show of work by painter Patsy Highberg, runs through Feb. 13.
Zollikofer Gallery, Hotel Coolidge, White River Junction. A show of paintings by West Lebanon resident Mary Jane Morse has been extended through Feb. 18.
Nicola Smith can be reached at nsmith@vnews.com.