U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: The Fresson/Arvel Process

Re: The Fresson/Arvel Process

On Nov 27, 2007, at 1:52 PM, Marek Matusz wrote:
Very interesting thread. I was in the Big Bend NP hiking and taking pictures, happy without a computer or cel phone for a few days. I only got to read some of the emails now.
Here is my comment from the practical standpoint of a gum printer. My one coat gum prints have eveloved to a practice that gives maximum darks and long (relative) tonal range of the final print (not to be confused with long negative density range). Some of my prints were included in the travelling portfolio last time around.
Hi Marek; I was curious to see examples of this. The latest traveling portfolio that I see online is 2006; that one as far as I can tell includes one print treated this way: Louisiana Lake. Are there others in that portfolio, or/and is there another later portfolio that has more examples?

In some simple tests of gum hardening, I found that while boiling water or dilute acid didn't dissolve exposed (crosslinked) dichromated gum, a drop of standard strength household bleach dissolved it instantly. I've speculated from that observation that the bleach undoes the crosslinking somehow, although I don't know that for sure. I can see how overexposure and diluting the bleach would be useful to ensure dissolving some of the hardened gum without dissolving it all, and I can see how it would take some finesse to dissolve enough of the shadows in heavily overexposed gum to open them up without dissolving the highlights. It's an interesting idea and looks like you've learned to use it with skill.
katharine



Here is a description of my pratice.
Coat the paper with gelatine / harden it.
FOr the gum layer I prefer highly pigmented carbon black.
Use longer exposure (3 to 5 times normal exposures). I really have not tried to push it even further.
Soak in water to remove dichromate.
Develop in a weak chlorox solution. My dilution is about 20 cc/ liter of water. Could be as little as 10cc if I want slow action or as much as 40 to 50. Once the print starts bleeding the pigment I place it in water and watch for a few minutes following the development. If the development is slow, dip back in chlorox for a few minutes. The reason for moving it back and forth is that the action of chlorox continues for a few minutes and it is easy to just wash the gum layer completely.
Actually I use this method a lot for my tricolor gum prints as well.