From: Christina Z. Anderson (zphoto@montana.net)
Date: 03/26/02-10:49:07 AM Z
After a 3 yr hiatus (I've been doing solely experimental forms of
photography) I am going to get back into gum, platinum/palladium and
enlarged negatives in the next several months. Thus I will probably be
hounding the list with questions--which to some may be more beneficial than
talking about cults and whatnot--I hope.
Anyway! When I was in New Orleans at the A Gallery of Fine Photography
(apparently they have a website--it was an incredible store; I posted this
to the pure silver list already) I saw a platinum print on the wall, very
old, by (forgive me) a famous photographer--perhaps Stieglitz if my memory
serves me. And it was solarized in the shadows. It was interesting to see
that because I have asked the question on solarization/bronzing to the list
in the past and the usual recommendation is to use platinum in the palladium
brew to prevent this, and hence a full on platinum print should be immune,
more often than not. It was also interesting to see a solarized platinum
print going for big bucks...then I wondered, after all this discussion on
the list about its being hard to tell the difference between kallitypes and
platinum prints, whether that was in fact a platinum print. Presumably if
it was Stieglitz that did the piece we know historically his processes he
used. But does kallitype bronze?
The other thing that was fascinating to me was seeing Heinrich Kuhn's
original gum prints. They were *soooo* soft focus. We are so concerned
about printing gums with perfect negatives, but heck, after seeing his, I
think a plain old paper negative from a digital printer onto typing paper
would do better than Kuhn did! Truly, it was softer in resolution than any
paper negative process I have ever seen. And with the culture going all out
on blur in painting and photography, his images really spoke to me to
lighten up and just do it.
Disclaimer: these opinions herin expressed by a true amateur in the
gum/platinum field.
Chris
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