All images on the website are handmade either by contact printing processes (gum, cyanotype, platinum/palladium, and combinations thereof) or by wet darkroom processes (hand colored gelatin silver, gelatin silver mordançage, chromoskedasic sabattier, etc.). The contact printing processes require hand coating of solutions on watercolor paper and exposure to UV light, not to normal enlarger light as one finds in the darkroom. The wet darkroom processes are made in the traditional way of a black and white print and then subjected to aftertreatment as outlined below. All prints on this website require much time and attention in the making. Instructions on how to do the processes are in one or the other of the books for purchase on the Books page.
Both gum printing and mordançage are chance processes wherein imperfections arise, as well as happy accidents. I work in both processes in a very meditative, hands-on way. I derive pleasure in process, in remaining aware and in the moment while expressions of beauty occur. I find something deliciously ironic and even anachronistic about spending days making one print at a time in history when we don't have to do so.
Gum printing:
Gum prints are essentially photographically controlled watercolors. The prints are made in a 19th Century process called gum bichromate or dichromate, or gum printing for simplification. Even though the image resembles a color photograph, it is only a fabrication of pigment and hardened gum Arabic. Gum Arabic is mixed with watercolor paint and a photosensitive substance called ammonium dichromate, and painted onto watercolor paper. When exposed to sunlight in contact with an enlarged negative, the gum Arabic hardens into an image that is “developed” in plain water. Where the light hits the most, the gum hardens the most and creates the shadow areas of the image. Where the light hits the least, the gum and pigment wash away proportionately, leaving the highlights of the image. For each print, this exposing and development process is done three or more times, layer upon layer--first blue, then yellow, and finally magenta for tricolor gum. Each print takes several days to complete. The prints, when finished, are completely archival. If a monochrome gum is desired, most often two or three (or more) layers of gum are still used to create a rich, glossy print.
To make my gum prints I use Fabriano Artistico Extra White Hot Press paper, sized with glutaraldehyde hardened gelatin. I make separately curved negatives for each color of pigment using the Precision Digital Negative system (PrecisionDigitalNegatives.com). I print my negatives on Pictorico transparency. I expose each layer for about 6 minutes in a UVBL lightbox. I develop anywhere from ½ hour to 1 hour in water. I print three to four layers on each print, so the coating, exposing, developing, and drying process occurs multiple times. Many times I use a cyanotype coating as a base layer which enables me to more accurately register the print over a light box and provides finer detail.
Mordançage:
This process was originally called the "bleach-etch" process until Jean Pierre Sudre coined the term "mordançage" (pronounced more-dan-sahhhj). Since my work usually centers on social deconstruction, it is fitting that I use a photographic process to physically deconstruct the photograph itself and, along with it, the sanctity of the pristine black and white print. In the mordançage process, a caustic, acidified copper bleaching solution is used to bleach and dissolve away the silver image. It leaves the print in a reverse relief—in other words, the dissolution occurs proportionately to the darks. With a little rubbing, the solubilized silver gelatin layer lifts off of the print and leaves behind whites in reverse relief where the darks once were. Complete rubbing produces a reversed or more negative image, but more often than not, some positive remains because the original highlights and midtones in the print are not as affected. If there are large areas of darks in the print, these areas can be left attached as veils. The print can be redeveloped, toned, or dyed after the bleaching and rubbing to produce colorful and uniquely altered prints.
Chromoskedasic sabattier:
A decade ago there was an intriguing article in Photo Techniques magazine entitled Silver Mirror Printing and other Unusual Black and White Print Development Processes (William Jolly, pp. 32-36, Jan/Feb 1999; also Silver Mirror Printing Update p. 11, July/Aug 1999). The process looked fascinating. A freshly developed but not yet fixed black and white print is subjected to two mild photographic solutions, an activator and a stabilizer, in the darkroom and out under room light. The activator is a dilute potassium hydroxide; the stabilizer is an acetate buffered thiocyanate. Colors appear where there is white in the print: orange, brown, yellow, pink, purple, green, and blue, as well as silver on normally monochrome black and white paper. All of these colors are the result of the “Mie” effect. The first actual article explaining this effect was in Scientific American (Dominic Man-Kit Lam and Bryant W. Rossiter, Chromoskedasic Painting, pp. 80-85 and 136-7, Nov 1991). Lam discovered the process in 1980, but it wasn’t until 1989 that Rossiter explained to him how the Mie effect was responsible for the colors that appear and gave a name to the process. Rossiter’s choice of “chromoskedasic” is Greek for “color by light scattering.” Very soon, another article appeared in View Camera magazine, written by Alan Bean (The Black and White Corner; Chromoskedasic Painting, pp. 40-43, Sept./Oct 1992). At the same time, Professor Jolly, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Berkeley, began extensive research into the whys and hows of “chromo”. Lam obviously inspired many.
Jolly’s first article on the chromo process preceded the 1999 silver mirror printing article by years (Darkroom and Creative Camera Techniques, Chromoskedasic Duotone Pseudosolarization Using Development Fogging, pp. 30-31, Nov/Dec 1992). His enthusiasm for the process is quite apparent as he ended the article with this statement: “I have not worked out all the details of this method, but I feel that it is such an exciting process that I should not delay in letting the readers know about it, even in its present imperfect state.” Jolly wrote another update to the process in the same magazine in 1993 (Chromoskedasic Pseudosolarization Update; Popular Technique Improved, pp. 28-31, Sep/Oct 1993), and then 5 years later the article on silver mirror printing.
To explain the Mie effect, a black and white print is normally monochromatic because the silver particles that remain in the print after fixing absorb all color and reflect black. In chromoskedasic printing, the silver particles are carefully managed with different chemicals with or without exposure to light, to become different sizes. These different sized silver particles scatter light in different ways to produce the different colors. Smaller particles will look yellow; larger particles will look red.
Jolly’s explanation for silver plating is as follows:
“The fogging developer contains thiocyanate, which dissolves the silver halide by complexation. The complexed silver ion then undergoes so-called ‘physical development’ on the emulsion base, much as silver is plated out on a glass surface in the traditional chemical method of making silver mirrors. The rate of silver deposition is enhanced by making the second developer highly alkaline with potassium hydroxide (Silver Mirror Printing p.35).”
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