From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 02/19/00-01:44:28 PM Z
Hi Jon and All..
As ever, the BEST, the VERY BEST way to get some info on this (or any!)
list is to post a mistake !!! (And as ever, I am perfectly willing to
oblige.) Thus I most ardently thank you for the fill-ins. Of course what
this also proves is that one's "info" becomes very quickly obsolete in
this fast-moving world, because, for instance, when I did mordancage some
years ago, the copper chloride, et al, were prohibitively expensive.
However, when talking HISTORY, one is on safer ground. So, for the general
enlightenment and/or puzzlement, I note the following:
I first heard about mordancage from Pierre Cordier, who taught a workshop
in chemigram at ICP sometime around 1983. He referred (actually in
passing) to a process he called "Mariage" -- what's that!?...He replied,
in effect, "oh you know, it's mordancage". I hadn't heard of that either,
and I daresay instantly lost whatever credibility I might have had.
Cordier made it clear that the process was quite familiar and popular in
France, and that I'd find it "in the literature."
I did ultimately, tho I don't remember where -- it wasn't in any one of 10
editions of "Facts and Formulas," for instance. It may have been
Glafkides, and/or Clerc, but a man by the name of *Mariage* was given as
inventor/discoverer -- and as I recall he was quite prior to Sudre.
Although Sudre of course may have evolved, popularized, and made it his
own.
That info is carefully filed somewhere in the vicinity in a folder marked
"Mariage," and was actually relocated and posted to this list when the
topic arose first time. (Possibly before you were here, Jon????)
Needless to say, it has sunk beneath the waves again, but I'm making a
mental note -- will try to locate. Meanwhile, whoever has a Glafkides at
hand, could look it up.
As for proprietary -- unh unh, I doubt anyone can make that stick, given
the givens.
(As I recall the "etch bleach" was name in Langford, Advanced Photography,
same thing more or less, but the swollen gelatin was used as basis for
rolling up with ink for printing.)
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>
.................................................................
On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, Jonathan Bailey wrote:
> >Craig also knew Sudre *very* well (telling me last summer during our brief
> meeting, "He was like a father to me....") - spending time in France with
> him each year during his Provence workshop. Craig has been working with
> this process for years (if not decades) and is clearly an expert on the
> process. Curiously, neither Craig nor Pierre-Louis were aware of each
> other. I have a small selection of Pierre-Louis' prints, as well as a few
> color reproductions which he was willing to share with me for my classes,
> and I showed Craig this work last summer while he was in town.
> >
> >Judy suggested that mordancage is another name for the historic
> "etch/bleach" mentioned in vintage references, and this may well be valid.
> Further, these old references may be an excellent source for tweaking one's
> practice of the mordancage process once successful results are obtained.
> However, I am under the impression that *mordancage*, whatever the
> similarities it may have to historic etch/bleach processes, is creditable
> to Jean-Pierre Sudre. Craig refers to it as "Mordancage - As perfected by
> Jean-Pierre Sudre." At the very least, I think it's safe to say that Sudre
> considered his use of the process "proprietary" (perhaps setting the tone
> for other practitioners of the process). Sudre's process is performed on a
> print after normal processing and fixing, and this fact *may* differentiate
> it from other etch/bleach processes.
> >
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