U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: printing gum on glass

Re: printing gum on glass



As for myth busting -- lotsa luck, Chris. You can bury them at the
crossroads with a silver stake through their heart & they Do Not Die !

LOL you are absolutely right. BTW, guess who repeated (but maybe did not
start) the gum on glass myth only able to print silhouettes: none other
than Paul Anderson in 1917 :) But this followed the theory that halftones were created more and better the bumpier the paper, therefore smooth glass could not possibly hold halftones...which is really an odd one and I wonder why it ever started.


However, since you ask, I have done some photographs -- tho don't ask me
when I'll print them. Maybe never: NOTHING could be as thrillingly fey as
the originals. Picture, for instance, an arched wooden door (relic I
suspect of the '20s) with irregular freehand vertical stripes in high
gloss yellow on grey undercoat, set in a cement wall of delicate pink,
above a dirty sidewalk with random circles of ye olde paper plate and
cups. A half hour later, I spotted the "artist" returned to his task,
painting the whole thing solid yellow: ruined !

(The stripes were priming for some kind of filler. I did NOT tell the
fellow he shouldn't paint gloss on gloss. He's supposed to know that.)
J.
On my way to Santa Fe we had to spend the night in a funky town called Kayenta with lots of this sort of stuff that would make good gum prints. Abandoned houses with no windows anymore and brilliant blue walls, looking out framed glassless windows onto sweeping desert vistas, trailer homes with the inside floor littered with every imaginable liquor bottles...I popped my head into the last one to begin shooting and there were three people sitting in the trailer on chairs. One said, "Messy, isn't it?" I about freaked.
Chris