Re: Gum bichromate and photographing the nude, was Re: "CALENDAR ARTIST"

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From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 09/10/02-10:59:10 PM Z


On Tue, 10 Sep 2002 Ender100@aol.com wrote:

> That's interesting, I was under the impression that gum prints tended to be
> much softer and less detailed... maybe I'll try them again then.

For various reasons it got to be the style mid-20th century to print gum
on paper with the texture of tree bark -- maybe to make it look "arty,"
like a loose watercolor. That, combined with the many coats necessary to
reach a decent level of tone or color when people got converted to the
Paul Anderson gum-pigment ratio test folly, with the loss in register in
increments each time, made for some really soft diffused prints.

I think the fact that the gum coat does have a physical body, something
that sits on the paper, unlike a platinum emulsion that sinks into it,
does make a somewhat softer image, but a single coat on smooth paper can
still "fool" the uninitiated into thinking it's platinum. Of course if
that's your ideal of beauty my suggestion would be to print platinum in
the first place.

It's not clear to me whether this discussion about how sharp gum can be
(and my own feeling is probably sharper than you, or anyway I, want it to
be) is because that's the aesthetic ideal, or just as an intellectual
theoretical philosophical exercise.

I prefer to think the latter.

Judy


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