Daily Archives: April 12, 2016

2nd Day of Printing at Steidl

Here’s Dustere Street where Steidl’s Print House is located.

Dustere Street.
Dustere Street.

We arrived back in the Print Shop at 7 this morning. The first sheet we checked at 7:30 was the first double-sided sheet. The photos on it were by Ruth-Marion Baruch and John Bertolino. Everything that had been printed overnight looked beautiful. Gerhard told us we could stay up and check each sheet all night, but since we’d been checking them all day and every image was perfect, he said it probably wasn’t necessary, so went with that.

Victoria with print sheets.
Victoria looking at the print sheets and making our way back up the stairs to the Library from the Print Shop.

From 7:30 to 1:10 we checked 8 more sheets, roughly every 40 minutes, we’d get the call to “Come down to the Print Shop” that comes in on the phone in the Library. We just drop whatever we’re doing and make our way down the stairs. The printers display the sheet on the drafting table by the printer and we look at it and give our OK. And we take turns! The printers are really delightful and extremely friendly and open, and they seem amused.

Ken & Victoria OK'ing the sheets
Ken & Victoria “OK-ing” each sheet for the printers.

Nadine came and told us there would be a couple of women coming from the Museum for Art and Crafts (Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe) in Hamburg. They are working with Steidl on a large catalog of works from the museum’s total collection. The women did come and they were lovely. Esther is the Head of Photography and New Media Department, and Lena is the designer who will be working on the book. We chatted with them for a little while and then Rudi said it was time for lunch. We had a great time getting to know them and soon Gerhard came to join us.

Lena, Esther and Victoria .
Lena, Esther and Victoria in the dining room.

After lunch Gerhard said he had to put another project on the printer for Chanel so we would be told when to come back, probably in a few hours. Gerhard, Esther and Lena went to the Library to discuss their project so Ken and I went to the apartment to rest. We both took naps!

Rudi in the Library. Ken in the Print Shop.
Rudi in the Library. Ken in the Print Shop with the cardboard for our book.
Nadine, Ken.
Ken and Nadine looking at book sheets. Ken looking at one of David Johnson’s sheets.

We went back over to the Library at 5:00. Gerhard told us that the project for Chanel would be done later so we could go and have dinner or whatever and they would call us when the printers would be working on the book again. So we took a walk around the Old City. We came back and had dinner in the apartment from food we’d picked up from the local market. At just after 10 p.m., Florian the printer called us and said they had a proof ready. So we went next door and of course everything looked perfect. We told them that just like last night, we were sure we didn’t need to look at each sheet during the night. Each sheet looks better than any print we’ve seen to date. Steidl fine tuned the press to print these photos beautifully. We’re ecstatic! So we said we’d be back at 7 in the morning, and thanked them, and bade them Gute Naght!