[alt-photo] Re: Steichen book on color

[Tomas Sobota]

No, not like dye transfer or carbro. I tried this once years ago, it more
or less goes like this:

1. you coat a glass (or paper, or whatever) with plain transparent gelatine.
2. Once dry, you sensibilize with a dichromate.
3. Once dry, you expose under a negative.
4. Develop with hot water, as if it were carbon.

At this point you have a coat of clear gelatine with some relief.

Next you put the plate in a mordent bath. The mordent is somewhat specific
to the dye you will be using.

If now you put the plate in the dye solution, the gelatine gets
irreversibly tinted by the dye, proportionally to the thickness of the
gelatine coat. So you get an image.

This is what I did and it works, but there must be infinite variants of
this process. I remember that I used methylene blue but I don't remember
using any mordent. Also, the color was rather pale, probably due to the
lack of a mordent.

For color, you will need three successive coats and a way of avoiding that
the dyes migrate from a layer to the next.

Tom

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Christina Anderson <zphoto at montana.net>wrote:

> > Ives' Hichro (imbibition) proc-
> > esses,
>
> Ahhh, interesting. There were a lot of "dye imbibition" prints in the
> book, whatever that refers to (I used to know--it was either dye transfer
> or carbro or some other thing, someone can chime in here) so I wonder how
> Hichro differs.
>
> Also lots of autochromes.
>
> I don't think there was a gum print, though, but again, I was just
> perusing it rapidly. This disappointed me. I remember that Steichen did
> lots of gum prints but he had a fire in his residence--was it a Paris apt.
> from memory? that burned them all. But this all off the top of my head.
> Chris
>
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