The Experimental Darkroom is a book focused on traditional black & white photographic materials—darkroom chemistry and silver gelatin paper—now used in many non-traditional ways. The book starts with a comprehensive digital negatives chapter. Topics are divided into five sections: cameraless experimentation, camera experimentation, printing experimentation, finished print experimentation, and a section highlighting contemporary photographers who use these approaches today. Each process under discussion is accompanied by photographic examples and a step-by-step method written in a “Just the facts, ma’am” style. Topics included are:
- Photograms and clichés verre
- Lumen prints
- Chemigrams
- Pinhole and zoneplate
- Holgas
- Chromo
- Liquid emulsion and modern tintype
- Lith printing
- Sabattier
- Mordançage
- Bleaching and bleachout
- Toning, traditional to experimental
- Applied color and abrasion tone
- Encaustic, photomontage, and collage
- Bromoil
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Digital Negatives with QuadToneRIP is a text that fully explores how the QuadToneRIP printer driver can be used to make expert digital negatives. The book takes a comprehensive, “under-the-hood” look at how Roy Harrington’s QTR printer driver can be adapted for use by artists in several different creative practice areas. The text is written from the Mac/Photoshop point of view. The book is divided into three parts. Part One is a step-by-step how-to section that will appeal to both beginning and more advanced practitioners. Part One includes quickstart guides or summary sheets for beginning students who want to jump into using QTR before understanding all of its functional components. Part Two addresses dimroom, darkroom, and printmaking practices, walking the reader through brief workflows from negative to print for lithium palladium, gum bichromate, cyanotype, salted paper, kallitype, silver gelatin and polymer photogravure, with a sample profile for each. It also includes an introduction to a new software iteration of QTR: QuickCurve-DN (QCDN). Part Three is devoted to contemporary practitioners who explain how they use QTR in their creative practice. The book includes: A list of supplies and software needed, A summary QTR glossary with a simple explanation of how each function works, A sample walk-through to create a QTR profile from start to finish, How to linearize profiles with simple to more exacting tools, A visual guide to modifying functions, Quickstart guides for many of the workflows, Instructions for crafting monochrome, duotone, tricolor, and quadcolor negatives, Instructions for using QTR to print silver gelatin in the darkroom. Instructions for using QTR to print alternative processes in the dimroom, Instructions for using QTR to print polymer photogravure in the printmaking room, Introductory chapter to QuickCurve-DN software, Troubleshooting common QTR problems, Generic starter profiles for processes discussed, Contemporary artists: their work and QTR process. Learning how to craft expert digital negatives can be a bit overwhelming at the outset. Digital Negatives with QuadToneRip makes the process as user-friendly as possible. Like other books in the series, Digital Negatives with QuadToneRIP will be thoroughly comprehensive, accessible to different levels of learner, and illustrative of the contemporary arts.
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320pp, 400 images. Cyanotype: The Blueprint in Contemporary Practice is a two-part book on the much admired blue print process. Part One is a comprehensive how-to on the cyanotype process for both beginner and advanced practitioners, with lots of photographs and clear, step-by-step directions and formulas. Part Two highlights contemporary artists who are using cyanotype, making work that ranges from the photographic to the abstract, from the traditional to the conceptual, with tips on their personal cyanotype methods alongside their work. These artists illustrate cyanotype’s widespread use in contemporary photography today, probably the most of any alternative process. Book features include: A brief discussion of the practice of the process with some key historical points; How to set up the cyanotype “dimroom”; The most extensive discussion of suitable papers to date, with data from 100+ papers; Step-by-step digital negative methods for monochrome and duotone negatives; Chapters on classic, new, and other cyanotype formulas; Toning to create colors from yellow to brown to violet; Printing cyanotype over palladium, for those who want to temper cyanotype’s blue nature; Printing cyanotype on alternate surfaces such as fabric, glass, and wood; More creative practice ideas for cyanotype such as handcoloring and gold leafing; Troubleshooting cyanotype, photographically illustrated; Finishing, framing, and storing cyanotype; Contemporary artists’ advice, techniques, and works. Cyanotype is backed with research from 120 books, journals, and magazine articles from 1843 to the present day. It is richly illustrated with 400 photographs from close to 80 artists from 14 countries. It is a guide for the practitioner, from novice to expert, providing inspiration and proof of cyanotype’s original and increasing place in historical and contemporary photography.
320pp. 390 images.Salted Paper Printing: A Step-by-Step Manual Highlighting Contemporary Artists is a book about the first photography-on-paper process from the dawn of photography’s history. InSalted Paper Printingthis 19th century process is updated with 21st century digital negative methods. With a few inexpensive ingredients such as ordinary table salt and silver nitrate, evocative hand-coated prints can be created from a camera as simple as a smartphone.Salted Paper Printingis divided into two parts, richly illustrated with close to 400 photographs. Part One is a complete how-to on the salted paper process from simple to complex, with an extensive troubleshooting guide illustrated with 70 photographic examples. Part One includes creative ideas to push the boundaries of the salted paper print, such as handcoloring and printing salt in combination with gum bichromate. Part Two is devoted to contemporary salted paper artists who share their methods and secrets to creating their beautiful salted paper prints. Topics that the book covers are: a succinct bulleted timeline of key events in salted paper’s history; how to organize the salted paper “dimroom”; what the best chemistry supplies, equipment, and papers to use are; a step-by-step digital negative method; how to practice photogenic drawing, William Henry Fox Talbot’s original salted paper process; simple and advanced methods of salted paper printing; how to salt, salt-size, and sensitize paper with traditional and animal-friendly methods; using the sun or an ultraviolet light source to best expose your image; step-by-step processing directions; toning the salted paper print with gold, platinum, and other metals; troubleshooting salted paper, including lots of photographs of common issues; printing gum over salted paper to add gloss, tone, or full color to the salt print; handcoloring salted paper, printing cyanotype and salt together, and other creative suggestions; finishing, framing, and storing salt prints with examples of varnish, mat and frame choices; contemporary artists’ advice, techniques, and works in 2-, 4-, or 6-page spreads.Salted Paper Printing provides much for the beginning salt enthusiast as well as for the advanced practitioner. Backed with thorough research from 180 books, journals, and magazine articles from 1839 to the present day, there is enough information to provide inspiration and proof of salted paper’s original— and continuing—place in historic and contemporary photography.
320pp. 400+ images. Gum Printing: A Step-by-Step Manual, Highlighting Artists and Their Creative Practice is a two-part book on gum bichromate written by the medium’s leading expert, Christina Z. Anderson. Section One provides a step-by-step description of the gum printing process. From setting up the “dimroom” (no darkroom required!) to evaluating finished prints, it walks the reader through everything that is needed to establish a firm gum practice with the simplest of setups at home. Section Two showcases contemporary artists’ works, illustrating the myriad ways gum is conceptualized and practiced today. The works in these pages range from monochrome to colorful and from subtle to bold, representing a variety of genres, including still lifes, portraits, nudes, landscapes, urbanscapes and more. Featuring over 80 artists and 400 full-color images, Gum Printing is the most complete overview of this dynamic and expressive medium that has yet appeared in print. Key topics covered include: The history of gum, Simple digital negatives for gum, platinum, and cyanotype, Preparing supplies, Making monochrome, duotone, tricolor, and quadcolor gum prints, Printing gum over cyanotype, Printing gum over platinum, Troubleshooting gum, Advice on developing a creative practice.
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230 pp, 299 images, 89 artists. First edition 2013; revised edition 2022. Gum Printing and Other AMAZING Contact Printing Processes The book has been revised, shortened, better organized, has a new digital negative chapter, updated information from the last decade added to all chapters, and an introduction to the chrysotype process. Both digital and print versions are now through Magcloud.com. This book is textbook-style, good for a semester-long alt class where processes vary year to year. It is not an in-depth one-process book highlighting artists like those in the Routledge Contemporary Practices in Alternative Process Photography series. Process descriptions are short and sweet with the idea that the class alt experience will be broad and then a student can concentrate on a process of choice and purchase the in-depth books in the Routledge series. There is extensive historical research on gum and casein—to my knowledge the only book that has this. It also contains the lengthiest treatment on casein in print to date. The book begins with a helpful chapter on Setting Up the Dimroom with extensive paper information to make purchasing papers for alternative processes easy. A chapter on Digital Negatives provides a method of digital negative making for all processes in the book (for more in-depth treatment see Reeder’s and Anderson’s Digital Negatives with QuadToneRIP, Demystifying QTR for Photographers and Printmakers). Then the book is divided into two sections. Section I covers the dichromated colloid processes of gum (for more in-depth treatment see Anderson’s Gum Printing, A Step-by-Step Manual Highlighting Artists and Their Creative Practice) and casein. Included in Section I is a Pigment Chart that thoroughly discusses appropriate pigments by color name, number, and brand. There is also a Troubleshooting Chart. All historical research on both gum and casein is included for those who feel that the dawning of photography was a fascinating time in history, full of wonder and discovery, egos and arguments. Section II covers the most popular, student-friendly, contact printing processes in a succinct manner—cyanotype (for more in-depth treatment see Anderson’s Cyanotype: The Blueprint in Contemporary Practice and Golaz’ Cyanotype Toning: Using Botanicals to Tone Blueprints Naturally), argyrotype, kallitype, Vandyke brown (coming soon! Nelson’s Kallitype, Vandyke Brown, and Argyrotype: A Step-by-Step Manual of Iron-Silver Processes Highlighting Contemporary Artists), chrysotype (for more in-depth treatment see McPhee’s Chrysotype: A Contemporary Guide to Photographic Printing in Gold), platinum/palladium (for more in-depth treatment see Malde’s and Ware’s Platinotype: Making Photographs in Platinum and Palladium with the Contemporary Printing-out Process) ziatype, salted paper (for more in-depth treatment see Anderson’s Salted Paper Printing, A Step-by-Step Manual Highlighting Contemporary Artists), and combination printing.
And for the Chinese audience!
