Analog Afterglow In The Digital Age
It was 36 years ago when a young newspaper photographer named Tillman Crane dropped by the Philadelphia Art Museum to see an exhibition of turn-of-the-century platinum prints by photographer Frederick Evans. Moved by what he saw, Crane eventually altered the trajectory of his career thanks to the profound impact of the visit.
“I told my wife, ‘I’ll pop in here for a minute, and then we’ll go up to the Egypt exhibit,” Crane says, “and I stayed in there for three hours. I was stunned with the beauty of platinum prints. The man was photographing cathedrals—which was right up my alley. It was just phenomenal. And when I later got into photography seriously, I said, ‘I know how I want my prints to look. I want them to have the luminosity of Frederick Evans’ cathedral prints.’”
As a photographer for a small-town newspaper—with a rare color front page—Crane was already exhibiting an affinity for mastering the technical challenges of his chosen medium. He preferred Fujichrome over Ektachrome film, for instance, because of the neutrality of its base, which ensured colors would print accurately on the newspaper’s Heidelberg press. Soon enough, he started taking classes at schools like the Maine Media Workshops, learning from master black-and-white photographers in
