Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Tue, 02 Nov 1999 13:13:19 -0500 (EST)
On Tue, 2 Nov 1999, Brian Ellis wrote:
> I'm not an expert, certainly not from a chemical analysis standpoint,
> but it's very common to bleach (potassium ferracyanide, which as I
> recall is what Part A of Kodak's sepia toner kit is) all or a portion
> of a silver print without following it with toner. Witness Eugene
> Smith, Bruce Barnbaum, John Sexton to a lesser extent, and many, many
> others. If their prints are going to fade or discolor or stain with
> age, it's certainly something collectors need to be made aware of. I
> thought that the bleach was just followed by a fix and wash to keep it
> permanent. I've done this quite a lot myself without any noticeable
> problems, though despite my advanced age I guess I'm not yet archival.
I think what Janet may have wanted was to keep the just-bleached tone,
which especially if your print has been in & out of a variety of
chemicals, can be quite golden-mellow in highlights, excellent brown in
shadows.
Not only is there a change in appearance (at least in my experience) when
you put the bleached print in the fixer, there's a great loss in character
-- to the same old b&w gelatin silve print, which (again in my experience)
is nowhere near as interesting. I would bet a nickle (or is that nickel?)
Bruce Barnbaum & co seek a different effect, that what interested Janet
isn't on their radar.
I've come across the question often in my own sg toning -- a BIG change in
the fix -- and have heard same from others, ranging from students to no
less a figure than Pierre Cordier re his chemigrams: Cordier ultimately
decided not to fix them because that cost the pinks and greys, among other
subtleties, but often as not collectors decided not to buy them (he said)
because they (prints that is, tho maybe the collectors, too, we can only
hope) would continue to change.
Judy
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| Judy Seigel, Editor >
| World Journal of Post-Factory Photography > "HOW-TO and WHY"
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