This is one of those books that have lots of pretty pictures to make up for
their lousy research. She should have described the process as "direct
carbon". For more on many direct carbon processes, see my _Gum Dichromate
and Other Direct Carbon Processes, from Artigue to Zimmerman_. This book
has no pretty pictures;-)
The *real* Fresson process and the only one that should be called by the
name Fresson, is a multi-layer system that requires special proprietary
formulas and a very expensive coating contraption about half the size of a
grand piano. The equipment I have took four years to build, one part at a
time on a lathe, early this century. The formulas are useless without the
coating apparatus, and vice versa.
I didn't believe that myself when I was told about it but it quickly became
obvious once I got the process. With the original formulas and the original
equipment, it took me about a year @ 25 hours a week to make it work. I
came awfully close to throwing in the towel many times. It was like trying
to become a juggler starting with 24 balls at a time. Another way of
putting it would be to say that it was like trying to learn to play violin
from a book without an instructor. An instructor, which I was supposed to
have but never got, would have saved me at least 11 months of work. Still,
I'd say that under the best of circumstances, the process is 20 times more
difficult than carbon transfer.
Fresson is much more flexible than carbon transfer however and for that
matter, anything else out there -you can, if desired, take 30 minutes to
develop a picture, one area at a time, under a bright floodlight. This
ain't no platinum. With the right image and the right alignment of planets,
the results, in *monochrome*, can be absolutely stunning as seen in some,
though certainly not all, of Ortiz Echague's work. I wonder if any of those
were shown at the recent Bath meeting?
I began researching the process when I first heard about it in Zoom
magazine, ca. 1970. It was 1976 before I saw some really exceptional
original prints made from it (as with any process there's lots of comme ci
comme ca stuff out there). That's when I decided I had to have it, no
matter what the cost was going to be. And the cost, directly and
indirectly, was going to be very high. Loooong story (to a point documented
in my books -the rest in my memoirs...) but by 1979 I had the process in my
lab and a year later I could achieve excellent results. About ten years of
efforts, total.
In the 80s I lost interest in printing commercially for others. The Fresson
process is an all or nothing proposition. Just like a musician can't use a
Stradivarius once a month and expect top performance from it, the process
requires assiduous practice -almost everyday for fine results. Dilettantes
need not apply. Once you have been away from it for a while, it takes a
minimum of one to two weeks to get it going properly.
In color, the process is an exercice in frustration. Since it is impossible
to mechanically abrade a print in a perfectly repeatable manner on a large
surface, one can't make slight color corrections to a color print. There
are other problems as well described in my books. I never used the process
in color.
Tricolor carBROS could be finely tuned because the gelatin was hardened by
a chemical reaction between silver and the pigmented tissue. Development
would proceed "automatically" and then stopped even if left in hot water
another five minutes. With tricolor carBONS development goes on forever so
temperature and timing are critical, but the process is repeatable. Direct
carbon processes that rely on abrasion would need a device that can provide
the same amount of abrasion over a large surface, automatically. Since it
is possible to walk on the moon, there is probably a way to build such a
device but then it would take away a lot of the fine controls for which the
process is famous. There are better permanent processes than Fresson for
color work, notably UltraStable.
Luis Nadeau
NADEAUL@NBNET.NB.CA
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada