From: Christopher Lovenguth (chrisml@pacbell.net)
Date: 03/27/02-02:15:55 AM Z
I'm a little confused here. Are we talking about what I call "plating" which
is a build up of some type of metal over an extended period of time or an
oxidized print? Or are we talking about solarization? These are completely
different things. It also sounds like some people are talking about the
phenomenon of over exposing to the other side of the "exposure bell curve"
which gives you the "black sun" in some older prints when they tremendously
over exposed a negative. This too is a different thing but more similar to
solarization then plating.
I don't think you can solarize a non-silver print. Can you? Solarization is
achieving that over exposure to an extreme that the tones shift in the
opposite direction like the "black sun". It is done when you re-expose a
print after it has be excited by a developer, thus hyper exposing your
print. It is not about building up metal on your paper. I know most of you
know this. I don't think you can get any non-silver print to such a hyper
state in the short period needed to solarize. If you can solarize
non-silver, please tell me how because I would love to do it! I have gotten
the "plating" effect, described by Judy, when I dry my Van Dykes with a hot
blow dryer. For some reason the metal thickens up on the paper. I'm no
chemist and I don't play one on TV, but my guess is that rapid oxidation
happens due to the emulsion still being wet and hot air (oxygen) is being
"pumped" into the print.
BTW I have been to the A Gallery in New Orleans and I am very jealous of
anyone who lives in that area to have such a resource at his or her
disposal. It has a finer and extensive collection of photographs then any
museum I have ever seen! Where else can you see a Skoglund, Stieglitz,
Cameron, Uelsmann, Bellocq and many others all within 100 feet of each
other? I just happened across it while visiting and it messed up my plans
for the whole day because I ended up spending almost four hours in there.
Great place and their website (not to Spam but for resource) is
www.agallery.com.
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