Photography's Goal: a black and white print. In black and white printmaking, black and white photography at last yields its prize. To many black and white photographers, this final stage of their craft is the most pleasurable of all. The fleeting scene that was caught on black and white film and elicited in reverse in the darkroom now - magically, it seems - swims into lifelike view. In contrast to the instantaneity of the actual black and white picture taking and the rigid control usually required of black and white film development, black and white printmaking lends itself to leisurely creation. Here, under the yellowish glow of a safelight, poor negatives can be saved and ordinary black and white pictures can be transformed into something special. Here the photographer can shape and tune his black and white image - enlarge it, endow it with tones that are warm or cool, alter the shades of light and dark in the scene, heighten or reduce the contrast between them, cut out the unwanted portions of the black and white picture and otherwise ready it to be mounted in the scrapbook or prepare it to be framed for hanging in the gallery. The physical processes of black and white printmaking essentially repeat those of the first two stages of black and white photography: recording light on black and white film and developing the negative. Like black and white film, black and white printing paper is coated with a light-sensitive emulsion containing crystals of silver atoms combined with bromine or chlorine atoms or both. Light is passed through the negative and onto the paper - either directly, when contact black and white prints are made, or with the help of a lens, when an enlargement is made. The paper is placed in a developer for several minutes so that chemical action can convert into metallic silver those of the crystals that have been exposed to the light; it is next transferred to a chemical solution called a stop bath to halt the action of the developer, then is put in the fixer, which removes undeveloped and unexposed crystals, and finally it is washed and dried. Now at last there is a permanent positive black and white image, its dark areas corresponding to the light areas of the negative, which were generated by the dark areas of the original scene. The view the camera saw has been reproduced in shades of gray in a black and white picture. In each of these steps procedures are dictated by the chemical processes involved, yet black and white printmaking can be highly subjective. Skills of the hand and eye are crucial. For example, the proper exposure of the black and white printing paper is usually determined visually, rather than by a light meter or some other mechanical device. The black and white photographer tests various exposures on a single piece of black and white printing paper and develops the paper to see which gives the best black and white image-the one that looks the best to his eye. His final black and white print is made at that setting. But this is only the beginning of manual and visual control in black and white printmaking, for the black and white photographer is able to make a particular portion of the black and white print darker (a procedure called "burning in") or keep a portion lighter (called "dodging"). At the simplest level this is done by placing the hands between the enlarger lens and the paper in order to control the amount of light reaching various parts of the black and white print. The method may seem crude, but it can be a very effective one. And it is only one among the many manipulative techniques that permit the black and white printmaker to adjust the positive black and white image to match that of the negative - or to deviate from it.