PRINT MAKING

In comparing photographic printmaking to music, Ansel Adams wrote, “the negative is the score, the print is the performance.” From age 15 Charles Dennis was mesmerized by this synergy. Over the next 37 years he would intensely study the teachings and technique of Ansel Adams along with becoming, in his own right, a fine art lithographer and commercial printing executive.

In the final few years of his life, after decades of darkroom and field study, Charlie immersed himself in the emerging realm of digital photography and graphics to speed his work to completion. He passionately applied cutting edge digital techniques to create a remarkable limited series collection, left with many notes and master templates to his wife, Susan.

Susan was faced with the daunting task of finding a master printmaker to carry on the posthumous work of her husband. The acclaimed Chapel Hill photographer and printmaker Bill Bamberger saw a rare talent in Charlie’s work and agreed to partner with Susan to create, one by one, the limited edition collection. This painstaking process took over two years and is still underway, creating new images from Charlie’s original negatives to expand the artist’s body of work.

All images were captured using formulations and calibrations from Ansel Adams’ Zone System. No photographic image nor print has been manipulated in any way. Each print is made and reviewed with Charlie’s original master print along side it to capture every nuance, shadow and detail as requested in his final work notes. Prints are produced using the highest quality archival inks and stocks on an Epson 9600 Stylus Pro using a giclee inking process.

From the Photographer's Work Notes:

"Most of the images produced for the Fran, In Memory of the Trees and the Bald Held Island collections have been made with medium format equipment; 6x7, 6x9, and 6x6.  Only 2 lens were used for the Bald Head Island work; a wide angle equivalent to 28mm in a 35mm format and a normal lens equivalent to 50mm in 35mm format.  Traditional silver base film was used (Kodak Tmax 100 and Tmax 400) and processed by the photographer using jobo rotary drums.  Camera and lens were calibrated using formulations for the Zone System for both films.  Digital prints are created from film negatives scanned using a high-resolution scanner to Adobe Photoshop where the image is adjusted for tone balance and clean up.  Images are, in no way, manipulated nor altered by adding or removing any elements of the original image."