Munch and me and "enhancement" of photographs

 

My fascination with images by Edvard Munch started with "The Scream". Sometime ago I got bored with that work. 

After all it is one of the most repeated works in the world, often printed very badly with not so close colour rendition.

Then while in New York in 1985 I became entranced by his lithographic work when some pieces were on show at MOMA in a collection covering 400 years of woodcuts and lithography from Durer to Munch.

Then I went off and bought a big book on his life and work.

Then I saw Peter Watkins' superb documentary of Munch's life.

Then I discovered Munch's photographs. 

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait ‘à la Marat,’ Beside a Bathtub at Dr. Jacobson’s Clinic, 1908-09.

This astonishing man used photography much of his life. In the image above, he is obviously in a bathtub, playing out a version of his fascination with Marat's murder by Charlotte Corday.

He repeated many themes such as this one all his life, always pursuing some sort of finality to his search... was he ever satisfied?

Another image which he was obviously haunted by was "The Sick Child" which often featured in his sketches, his paintings and his lithographs, which he corrected with many "modifications" and repositionings.

But all these things kept drawing me back to his photographs in which he investigates himself. His selfies! It's crazy to use this term when we know how terrible "selfies" can be as they are used in this modern world. Munch's self portraits, whether photographed, lithographed or painted, are deep investigations of his own psyche, for want of a better word.

In his photos he records his moments of joy in the sun at the beach, his reflective moments when alone, his experiments such as in the bathtub, and his ruthless objective realisation of his advancing decrepitude.

I think he also fancied himself as a Nordic warrior

without any armour to protect his sword!

But the photograph which haunts me most is this one

 

Self-Portrait, Somewhere on the Continent II

By Edvard Munch - Google Art Project: pic, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38105396

A few years ago I tried to play with this image and Bill Mousoulis helped me create a "mirror" from the photo which we used on Facebook:

As you can see there are serious blemishes such as the circles near his head, which must have been in the original image I downloaded at the time, but they are not in the large single image above.

It was just a little game I was playing imagining what Edvard might have been thinking at the time he created his selfie "somewhere on the Continent" in a rented room, or hotel room, alone, and contemplating his private thoughts. We all have them don't we? But we don't all do something concrete with the thoughts we have.

Recently this image has been coming back to me more and more and I have played with it using Topaz to enhance it, not doing selective things such as brushing out scratches or processing marks... just sharpening and noise reduction:

I've found that all "enhancement" changes the nature of the image you are working on: you can get it sharper, show more detail, less grain or noise, but it changes the mood of the original. Sometimes dramatically, making people seem like carton characters, carboard cutouts.

So I try to keep the enhancement down to very small adjustments. In this particular image I'm not really concerned about the scratches, the processing marks, or the negative dirt. I don't wish to change it from the sepia, although normally I'm not drawn much to sepia.

If you compare his face in closeup with the original, you can see his features are certainly sharper, his nose is extremely prominent, more defined, but I don't mind that because his expression doesn't seem to be altered. 

In some of my other efforts at restoration of old images I found that by pushing the enhancement too far you change the character of the person... the AI makes them less like people and more like cartoons of themselves.

Now let's go back to Edvard's painting and lithographs.

When you think of his huge repertoire you might not think of Munch as painting a work such as this:

I had no idea he painted anything like this until I bought the big book I mentioned earlier. It was one of only two such images I could find anywhere at that time 

but eventually I did find some others:

There really are quite a few of these and they cover many themes he repeated all his life, including his self-portraits:

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait, 1926, The Munch museum, Oslo, Norge

His lithographs also exert a huge influence in my life. I love Black and White! I love classic movies in pristine B&W prints.


Some recent restorations such as "The Third Man" and "A Touch of Evil" show those films as they have never been seen since first released.


Similarly for B&W photography from the masters, and there are so many of them.


But there is something really special about lithographs!

 And then there is "The Sick Child"

Munch worked this theme over and over, in sketches, paintings and lithographic plates. From the sequence Peter Watkins presented in his film on Munch one gets the impression that this experience of the illness and death of his sister was so deeply troubling for Munch that he could never let it go.

"The motif of the sick adolescent girl is based on Edvard Munch’s memories of his sister Sophie, who suffered from tuberculosis and died at the age of 15. Tuberculosis was a constant threat, both in society and in Munch’s family, and there was no cure – his mother died of the disease when the artist was five years old." 

https://www.munchmuseet.no/en/our-collection/the-sick-child/

I tried to create a tribute to Munch six years ago on the theme of "The Sick Child". It was my first try at doing something like that, also one of my very earliest experiences of sourcing from the internet. I made many mistakes at that time, but I'm just not up to redoing it or making a better version.

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Valise, 1906.

I've decided not to try to "enhance" this image in any way. If there are any blemishes or imperfections, and there certainly are, but I like it just as it is.

So now I leave you with these thoughts to pursue as much as you like... you will find the man with a valise left us plenty to explore. 

pt

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait ‘à la Marat,’ Beside a Bathtub at Dr. Jacobson’s Clinic, 1908-09.

https://www.wmagazine.com/gallery/edvard-munch-photography

https://www.munchmuseet.no/en/our-collection/the-sick-child/

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait, 1926, The Munch museum, Oslo, Norge