Jon Goodman

In anticipating what I would do for Picturing Northampton I had quite a few ideas. When it came time to go out and make the photographs my “ideas” lasted about 35 seconds and I was back to my instincts. Ideas are good but my ideas rarely go deep enough and they fail to account for the interaction that happens once I start to work. More often than not they serve as a starting point and security against the void. For Picturing Northampton I had a theme and a physical limitation to where I would go. I find the light and fullness of the mid- to late spring in Northampton to be exquisite: the late afternoon light on a clear day is flushed and the green so rich and fecund. So this is when I chose to go out with my camera. My original ideas of where to go just didn’t hold up so instead in the process of things I followed the light as I saw it. These pictures aren’t really about anything. They are just pictures of places in Northampton in the spring. Many of them are quite familiar.

Once the negatives are made then they must be printed. The method that I use is known as photogravure. This is a printing process that goes back to the beginning concepts of fixing an image drawn by light onto paper (photography). It is a process where the image is printed in ink from an etched copper plate using an etching press and cotton rag paper. In a few words the printed image is an aquatint (a tonal printmaking technique) that has been drawn by light. In actual fact the technique is quite long and complex but it allows me a control and access to qualities of the picture that I am unable to accomplish by other methods.

Biography

Born in New York, New York, 1953. Lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.

After graduating from Antioch College, Jon Goodman received a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship to research and learn the technique of dust grain photogravure. He began his study and perfected his craft over two years in Switzerland, at Centre Genevoise de Gravure Contemporaine and Atelier de Taille Douce St. Prex, before returning to the U.S. to work for Aperture, where he established a photogravure workshop. He relocated to the Valley in 1984, opening Jon Goodman Photogravure in Hadley, which he moved to Florence in 1998. Goodman has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, most recently at the Musée Jenisch in Switzerland. In addition to doing his own creative work and printing for other artists, Goodman frequently lectures on photogravure and teaches workshops.