My Journey
I have happily spent the last forty-five years working at the making of photographs. Looking back at this work, I can see myself developing a style and finding my way as a photographer. At the same time, I was busy becoming a craftsperson, learning the craft of photography, printing, and later printmaking. All the while, stretching and growing, forever curious to explore the possibilities of this medium I love. Maybe it is the novelty of a new process that calls to me like a siren, sending me back to the starting line each time I learn a new way of making prints. Always prints. From the beginning, I have printed my photographs myself, feeling that a photograph does not truly exist in the world without being an object.
The Silver Prints
I made my first traditional gelatin silver print when I was twelve years old using a kit from Sears that my mother bought for me. I set it up in the bathroom and taught myself using a series of books published by Time-Life. This introduction to making photographic prints by hand became a calling for the rest of my adult life. Later, I studied photography in high school and college to master the medium.
A black and white darkroom is a unique space, depicted in movies as a small room with a dim red light. My darkrooms have been a bit larger, probably, and the truth is the dim light is more of a yellow color than red. On one side, there is a long sink with trays of developing chemicals; opposite the sink is a counter with an enlarger, endless boxes of various papers, and maybe a radio. Negatives are exposed with the enlarger on to the light sensitive paper and developed in the sink. Minutes later the light is on and the print is examined, sometimes it is a final print, more often a small change is needed here or there, another is made. The dance goes on for hours, the next day the art is ready for the world to see.
I made silver prints for years when I owned a portrait and wedding studio. When I think about this work, I know that these portraits of strangers I made for them to take into their lives will live on without me. Found in the attics and albums of their family members, made by some unknown man in a beret. I have pictures like these in my attic.
I like this idea very much.
The Platinum Prints
In art school, my hero was Irving Penn, a photographer who in the 60s started working to make platinum prints of his photographs. In the early days of photography, photographers could buy paper coated with platinum/palladium emulsion ready to use. By the time Mr. Penn started, the machine-made paper was no longer manufactured, so he hand-coated each sheet himself. By 1997, I was ready to do the same. I had been thinking about it for years and now felt like the time. I attended a workshop with a photographer named Terry Thompson, and I was immediately all in. For the next 20+ years, I exclusively made platinum prints of my work. I perfected my craft and started selling prints to collectors and the occasional commission portrait.
Platinum prints are most often a blend of platinum and palladium metals, but the term platinum print is used universally. Because the emulsion is very slow, the process requires a film negative to be contact printed with the coated paper. The negative and the final prints are the same size.
I mix a small amount of the metal salts along with an iron sensitizer to create the emulsion. This liquid emulsion is then coated to a clean sheet of cotton paper with a special brush. It is a very soothing process, this coating of the paper, the coveted brush quietly moving the dark liquid around the paper. Once dry, I place the negative in contact with the paper and expose it to ultraviolet light. The exposed paper is set in a tray, and a developer is added. During development, the metal salts are converted to metallic platinum and palladium. Instantly, the image appears. I never grow tired of this step; the picture appearing. It feels like magic.
The Photogravures
By 2016, I was needing a new drug. I’d been platinum printing for 20 years. The sirens were calling me to again find a new way to make objects from my photographs. I had been thinking of photogravure for a few years, and then an opportunity came along for me to learn the process. My head was turned, and now I am a printmaker.
Photogravure prints are an intaglio printmaking process that utilizes a plate with an image etched into the surface, ink, paper, and an etching press. Historically, photogravures were made by the printer etching a photographic image into a copper plate using a mordant to bite the plate. Fast forward to today, and although printmakers are still making copper plate photogravure prints, some, including me, are using machine-made polymer plates.
Machine-made polymer plates are steel plates laminated with a light-sensitive polymer plastic layer. Through a photomechanical process, I am able to bite the polymer plate using a film positive and a film aquatint screen. The resulting plate has a very dense and hard surface that is etched with my picture. This etch is a series of small pits in the plate that hold varied amounts of ink. Once coated with ink, I wipe all of the ink off, or so it seems. The truth, however, is the ink is still sitting in the marks on the plate. I lay the inked plate on the bed of the etching press, place a sheet of damp paper on top, and roll it through the press. The pressure from the roller pushes the paper into the pits and pulls out the ink. I turn over the paper, and there is my picture pressed into the paper, again magic. The process start to finish is very tactile and physical. It feels more handmade in a way I struggle to explain. The prints are rich and luxurious. The beautiful paper and inks help see to that.
The Copperplate Etchings
This year I find myself making marks on paper in a completely new way. I am a person who likes change, so it seems change comes my way now and then, some folks might say often. I am still making new photographs, at the same time I want to learn to draw. Drawing and photography are very different ways to make art, am fascinated by these differences.. I feel drawn to the idea of creating a picture with my only tool being a pencil. I find it difficult, new, and hard for me. I love every minute I spend doing it.
As a printmaker I want to be able to print my drawings, and the intaglio process of copperplate etching made perfect sense. Nowadays I make my drawings on a copper plate that has been coated with hard ground, a thin material that resists the mordant I use to bite marks into the plate. Simply put, every place I draw through the hard ground the subsequent trip through the ferric chloride leaves a line etched into the surface of the plate. If I want some tone in my picture I can add a rosin aquatint and pass the plate through the ferric again and a patch of tone is added to the bite.
The two etchings represented in this sketchbook are from the last six months, which are also the first six months of this work. I am just beginning this journey of what I know will be an important part of my work.
When I think about all the hours I have spent, working alone in my studio making work, I smile. I have been living the dream.
Please consider joining the conversation with your journey.
Be well,
Ray
