From: Richard Knoppow (dickburk@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 07/07/01-04:07:21 PM Z
At 04:00 PM 07/06/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>
>I saw Aaron Rose's show yesterday in Chelsea, at the Paul Kasmin Gallery.
>Was, I'm afraid a letdown... Much publicity had been given to fact that
>he'd toned pinhole photographs in "solutions of metals he mixed himself."
>He was quoted as saying he used vanadium, copper, gold, silver and tin,
>among others. The colors appearing were all shades of tan -- nothing that
>couldn't have been done with sepia toner, for all the metal he ran down
>the drain. And should NOT be taken for examples of metal toning. (Just
>gold & sepia together produce wonders if you have the least idea what
>you're doing.)
>
>I have some vanadium toned prints by Dallas Simpson, for instance -- a
>GREEN that could make your dreadlocks stand on end. OK, I WILL try to get
>them on a website... for once a color that the monitor phosphor is right
>for.
>
>From there we went to the Fashion Institute of Technology, where the
>museum had a show of dyed silk by a master Japanese dyer, whose name I
>confess I have not remembered (difficult for us gringos). This was one of
>the peak esthetic experiences of the year, if not the decade. The colors
>truly bowled over a gum printer now doing BRIGHT. Imagine the tones from
>cloves, and onion skin -- altered by different mordants. All at once I
>want subtle (admittedly I'm impressionable). This show is on until fall &
>HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. It's also beautifully installed (27th st & 7th
>Avenue).
>
>Judy
>
The toner description sounds like typical gallery hype. Old photography
handbooks are filled with toner formulas. Many look more like alchemy than
chemistry and make you wonder if anyone actually ever tried them. Iron and
Copper toners are common, Vanadium can produce yellow and green, tin and
lead were used plus some others. I think many of these old toners are
mostly curiousities.
Rather thorough investigation of metallic toners was made in the late
1940's by the Cinecolor company. Cinecolor attempted to compete with
Technicolor but had to find methods wich did not infringe on Technicolor
patents. Their approach was to use film coated with emulusion on both sides
with appropriate toning. For three colors they used an additional dye
image. None of this worked very well but the published papers have all
sorts of toning formulas in them. Most of this stuff was published in the
_Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers_, check
the cumulative indexes for Allen Gundlefinger, who was the author or
co-author of most of them. The process didn't survive the arrival of
Anscocolor and Eastmancolor.
---- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles,Ca. dickburk@ix.netcom.com
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