[Note: We reprinted Part I of this classic essay by Peter Turnley two Sundays ago. You can still have an example of Voja Mitrovic's printing artistry for your own in the form of an original Peter Turnley print—his 2014 holiday print sale ends at midnight tonight, U.S. Eastern Time. Peter's brother David's holiday print sale (his prints are inkjets, not printed by Voja) runs for two more days, until this coming Sunday. Thanks again to Peter for all the work he did authoring this profile of his great and good friend Voja Mitrovic, "printer to the greats." —Ed.]
By Peter Turnley
I recently sat down and interviewed Voja Mitrovic for several hours about his experiences as a printer. Several important concepts emerged from this interview. He indicated to me that the three most important things involved in being a great printer are patience, developing a good dialogue and communication with the photographer he is printing for, and knowing how to read a negative. It is most important to know the photographer, to know what he or she wants, and to be able to read the image—like photographers, some people see things, and others don't! Great printing involves knowing how to choose the right paper, having technical skills, and a strong artistic and aesthetic sense. He feels that it has helped him very much to have been himself a photographer, in order to understand the goal of a photograph.
Voja gives credit to Josef Koudelka for having helped him become as great a printer as he is. This is because of how demanding and exigent Koudelka has been in what he wants from a print. Koudelka’s prints are very different than Henri Cartier-Bresson's. Cartier-Bresson’s prints are very low contrast with many details in the highlights and shadows—H.C.-B. liked the tonal values of his prints to be like the "color of the Loire River." Gray, but a very detailed gray. Also, Cartier-Bresson’s negatives were, overall, extremely well developed by Picto over the years and in general very consistent. Voya says an exception to this consistency was his early work in Mexico and India, which are among the most difficult of his negatives to print. Koudelka, on the other hand, has demanded prints with relatively high contrast, and yet with detail in both the extreme highlights and in the shadows. On top of this, the development of his negatives in the early years was often very irregular, and the film he used while he was living in Czechoslovakia, before going into exile in 1968, was often cinema stock and very high in contrast. The highlights often become very blocked up. In many of Koudelka’s negatives the tonal range between highlights and shadows are extreme, requiring tremendous "maquillage," or burning and dodging, to achieve contrast and detail to his liking.
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Voja is very proud of the relationships and friendships that he has developed with the photographers he has worked with. These relationships have also offered one of life’s most important gifts—the opportunity to travel. He had been invited by photographers, as thanks for his work, to New York, Mexico, Rome, Barcelona, Crete, China, Cuba, and Barcelona.
He is very proud to be among the first printers to be credited by name for his role in printing the photographs in books of photography and exhibitions. This had almost never happened before the early 1990s when photographers began to credit Voja in their books and exhibitions for his printing. The list of books and books for which he has been credited is astonishing. It includes almost all of the books and exhibitions of H.C.-B. since 1966, including Vive La France, Henri Cartier-Bresson in India, America in Passing, Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer, Mexican Notebooks, and Paris a Vue D’Oeil. He has printed the exhibitions and books of Josef Koudelka for Exiles, Triangle Noir, Koudelka, and Chaos. He has printed both the books and exhibitions of many others’ work, including all of my books and the exhibition and signed collector prints of my photographs.
The book I did with my brother David of our early work, one of many for which Voja made the master prints. Voja has said that my cover picture here is his favorite picture of mine.
Anyone who has taken my Paris Street Photography workshop has been treated to an amazing presentation by Voja. My guess is those lucky few to have witnessed one of his talks will never forget seeing the demonstration Voja makes of showing a sheet of photographic paper of a H.C.-B., Koudelka, Burri, or Turnley "straight" print, exposed only once with no burning and dodging, held up next to a final print showing all of Voja's artisanry. It is a phenomenal sight to see—and a powerful indication of the degree to which a great printer like Voja has contributed immensely to the expression of the vision of the photographer. I have witnessed Voja many times spend at least one hour of physical burning and dodging of a print. I've also seen him be able to repeat perfectly, like a machine, the exact same gestures and make a series of ten identical prints from the same difficult negative.
While Voja has indicated that Koudelka’s prints have been the most difficult for him to make, there are several famous images of H.C.-B. which require tremendous burning and dodging—such as the image of the nuns praying in India. Koudelka’s image of the man and the horse and one of a street scene of a man setting off a fireworks rocket are among those of Koudelka's that Voja has commented are among the most difficult to print.
It is hard to imagine the physical and mental stamina and courage required to be a great printer. You are in the dark with very low light for at least eight hours a day, exposed to the odors and effects of rather strong chemicals. I recall the feeling of walking out of Picto after a long days work, and being suddenly exposed to the late rays of an afternoon summer day, literally feeling off-balance from the physical impact of such a sudden change in environment. I have rarely met anyone who appreciates his annual summer vacation like Voja. He loves to lie on the beach and soak up the sun—which seems to rejuvenate his body after spending so much of the year inside without much light.
Voja is a tall and athletic man always in great shape. I'm sure this has been extremely helpful in his work, which is not only mentally but also physically extremely demanding. You should try to stand under an enlarger with your hands lifted in the air burning and dodging with methodic consistency for one hour for only one print—and then repeat that some times ten times in a day. Each weekend, since coming to Paris in 1964, Voja played on a soccer team on Sunday mornings. He tells me that this enabled him to unwind from a week of stress and revitalize himself for another week of work ahead. He has also always been a wonderful family man, with a wife and two children, and he has a strong appreciation for good food. While I was at Picto, it was always impressive to see the regularity in which Voja would arrive each morning exactly on time, impeccably dressed, and then change in to his work clothes and begin printing. Each day at exactly noon he changed back into his street clothes, and, looking like a handsome movie star, struck out into the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris for his daily ritual of a very good lunch. At the end of the day, at 5 p.m. sharp, he stopped work, and would go to meet his friends at the Café Cosmos for a bit of conversation before heading home for dinner.
Finally, anyone who has ever met Voja, has been certainly struck by several rare characteristics. He is one of the most elegant, truly dignified people one will ever meet. He exudes a rare unpretentious dignity of someone that has led a hard working, decent life, and has cared for his family and friends, and put his heart completely into doing his work as well as he can. His spirit is infinitely fair and generous—when asked who is his favorite photographer, he will always refuse to answer, preferring to indicate the favorite image of each photographer for whom he has printed. He cites "La Rue Mouffetard" and "Matisse with pigeons" as his favorite H.C.-B. images. The man with horse is his favorite image of Koudelka, the image of Che Guevara and the cigar, his favorite of Rene Burri's, and my cover image from McClellan Street seen above is his favorite image of mine. While he has printed for so many great photographers, there are a few he wishes he could have printed for—Robert Frank, Alvarez-Bravo, and Irving Penn. He chuckled as he told me he had recently visited a Robert Frank exhibition in Paris and thought it could have been printed better.
It is likely that with the change of technology towards an all-digital world, that the world will never again know many traditional black-and-white printers like Voja. He worries that all of the technological know-how in the world will not replace what it first means to know how to make a photograph, and then to know how to read a negative and interpret it. There have been already few traditional printers that could do it as well as he could. He recounts how Josef Koudelka has spent in recent years more than six hours with a digital printing technician trying to achieve a match with the subtle artistic expression of tones and detail in one of his prints. He also worries about how long good traditional silver printing paper will continue to be made and laments how expensive it has become.
Voja Mitrovic, Paris, 1993. Photo by Peter Turnley.
I have met with Voja for coffee almost every Sunday morning I’ve been in Paris for the past twenty years. Each time I leave our encounters, my heart is uplifted—I am reminded of what seems important to me—and I feel proud that I have chosen a way of life and a medium of storytelling that has enabled me to know and work with a person with his elegance, dignity, strength, and decency. And, I am sure that I would be only one among a list of photographers who would say that he has been one of the best and kindest friends one could ever ask for.
The world of photography has been lucky to have Voja, and all of the other great printers that have meant so much to the powerful expression of moments photographers have chosen to share with themselves and others for now, and for posterity. He has spent his life in the dark, but he has helped illuminate the life and expression of so many. Thank you Voja.
Peter Turnley
Paris, August 2010
© 2010, 2014 by Peter Turnley, all rights reserved
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