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Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 09:08:18 -0500
From: Rae Adams <rae.adams@gtri.gatech.edu>
To: Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com>
The workshop with Pradip Malde was incredible. His and Mike Ware's ammonium
platinum printing-out process works -- no doubt about it (I'm always a cynic
and a skeptic about anything--I have to see it done and done well before
I'll believe!). I made two prints with the process and used his humidity
contrast controls. So that's why I'm saying it works--even I could do it.
The proof of the pudding, however, was Pradip's prints. He has done some of
the most beautiful platinum work I have seen. Since the resurgence of
platinum recently, I've been looking at a fair amount of contemporary
platinum work and have been quite interested in historical platinum
printing. The pieces that Pradip brought with him are better than the great
majority of contemporary work I've seen. He's also a first-rate instructor.
Thus, if you know anyone who is interested in his and Mike's process and
wants to take a workshop, I can recommend it.
As you can tell, I had a great time and got far more out of it than I
expected. I just mainly wanted to work on coating techniques and printing
out methods but actually learned the process well enough to use it. We
also played around with Mike Ware's fast cyanotype recipe (under five
minutes exposure), which is quite lovely, too. ..... I put a brick and
some pine straw and leaves on my cyanotype to print, and it came out quite
interesting. Enough light got through around the edges and through the
holes in the brick to give it a three-dimensional look.
cut---------------------------
When I asked Rae for permission to send, she added a few superlatives
which I carefully noted for inclusion but have now lost in the Mississippi
Delta of my computer table. When I find them (they do surface in the dry
season) I'll send along.
Meanwhile, I suppose some practical person will want an address for this
course. My own Random Access Memory tells me it's in the southern US,
somewhere between here and Key West, that is. But I note that, according
to legend, Djuna Barnes, who lived in my neighborhood in the 1930's and
'40s, used to throw her stamped addressed letters out of the window in the
expectation that some passerby would put them in the mailbox. And they
always did. I trust some passerby will provide this information, which is
also somewhere interred in the overload around here.
Judy