Brian Ellis (beellis@gte.net)
Wed, 03 Nov 1999 11:36:29 -0500
Hi Judy - Yes, I did understand the effect she is after. I have gotten that
effect myself sometimes and it can be very lovely, though I've found it hard
to duplicate from print to print. There's two different techniques or goals
going on I guess. One is what Janet is after (i.e. the sort of yellowish,
golden look over the entire print, in which the entire print is dipped in a
tray of bleach). The other is the Bruce Barnbaum/Eugene Smith et al look or
goal, which is to increase local contrast by selectively bleaching some or all
of the highlights, usually with a brush or a cotton ball. It t seemed to me
that in either situation the print is being bleached so if the bleaching is
going to cause the print to fade, discolor, stain, etc. it would do so
regardless of which look was being obtained. However, after thinking about it
and reading some of the other posts I'm wondering whether I did in fact fix
the print when I was trying to get the "Janet effect." Perhaps I just took it
straight from the bleach and washed it without a fix. I went back and looked
at a couple of my prints that I bleached (with the "Janet effect") and they
don't seem to have faded, stained, etc. but I probably did them no more than
three years ago so maybe they will in time. I hope all of this makes sense.
Anyhow, thanks for the message. Brian
Judy Seigel wrote:
> 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
>
> .................................................................
> | Judy Seigel, Editor >
> | World Journal of Post-Factory Photography > "HOW-TO and WHY"
> | info@post-factory.org >
> | <http://rmp.opusis.com/postfactory/postfactory.html>
> .................................................................
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sun Dec 05 1999 - 17:09:23