From: Stuart W Melvin (swmelvin@earthlink.net)
Date: 07/25/03-04:06:12 PM Z
Three hearty cheers Chris. In regards to the gum journey .....BUT.......I
would like people to know that I (not Gore) invented the internet ;-D.
Stuart
-----Original Message-----
From: Christina Z. Anderson [mailto:zphoto@montana.net]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 3:38 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Re: Gum Pigments
Man oh man, leave the list for a day and look what happens! I wanna be Mae
West in that Best of Show movie, if there's a role for it (oh, whoops, I'd
need a boob job). Or Jane Fonda. Mark Nelson, have any ideas? (if you say
I look like Lily Taylor I'll punch you.)
Dick, hate to say this, but in agreement with you, our revered William
Crawford, even, has info in his book about colors not to use. Throughout
history the "baddies" were the chromium pigments, said to interfere with the
process, Prussian blue being incompatible with the cadmiums (which does
fade), aniline colors which would stain, tube pigments whose fillers would
interfere with the process or create staining, Emerald green is poisonous
(as if we are going to drink our pigment) etc. So, yes, this was a myth I
totally believed in, and said myth was debunked on this list time and time
again over the last 6 months. B.S.M.--before Stuart Melvin :) (that's a
joke, see the smiley face). In fact, around the turn of the 1900's these
pigments were all used in gum.
Contrary to Judy and Jack's opinion about old books being wrong,
intentionally or not, I find that most errors or myths about gum printing
have been in the latter 20 years of the *last* century, and NOT during the
end of the 1800's and early 1900's. In my opinion that is because during
that time period of about 30 years around the turn of 1900, many many people
were actually DOING gum and madly talking about it! Instead of doing other
alt processes, dabbling in gum, and not taking the time to waste paper--just
for the hell of it.
Livick, too, promoted this myth with his adherence to Linel/Sennelier
Pigments. I bit on this one. It was our own Katharine Thayer who first
turned me on to M. Graham pigments--cheap, high quality, pure. It has also
been Katharine's intense questioning of my scientific process that has
forced me to correct and prove myself before adding to the existing gum
mythology.
I do think that we have been establishing some bottom line gum truths here
*on this list* with the caveat that YRMV. Now, hopefully, Stuart and Clay
and Kerik will add to this burgeoning basis by being vocal or more
vocal--about gum in particular (in other words, Kerik and Clay, if I
remember correctly, post mostly about platinum, right?).
<Dick said> Not only any brand, but colors that "don't work" thus leading to
pigment
> testing to see which ones do and how much to use etc. Not having printed
> gum in about 25 years I follow these discussions with some amusement.
> Stephen Livick is big on gum brands but I think much credit has to be
given
> to him for getting Stuart and the others going as they did get their start
> when we had an on-line class taught by Stephen Livick on the B+S
discussion
> group a couple of years ago.
>But more importantly he has taken up the cudgel and expended a
> great deal of time and energy researching and experimenting with the gum
> process. Stuart has worked over two years full time perfecting the gum
> process.
> The only thing I am sure about is gum printing will never be the same.
> --Dick
This is a statement that hits dear to *my* heart, and probably others on
this list, too, who have shared deeply about the process. Time and
energy??? How about money, to the tune of $738 on arcane books ALONE over
the last year?! I was so thrilled to have met Art Chakalis at APIS and find
a kindred soul who actually was as anal about chasing down a process
(Fresson, in his case) as I am! Now he's just being busy finding Sandy King
large format IR film!
If I were to count up the hours of testing and sharing on this list that I,
personally have done, over the last 7 months, probably toooo much sharing
even, and some of it confusing to some other members occasionally, and
certainly much of it poo-pooed....or the amount of sharing about gum that
Katharine, Dave, Judy, Keith, Jack, Sandy, Sam, and others have done, it is
hard not to be sensitive when one person is praised as the "greatest new
thing". Kinda like my mother in law who says to me last night, "....my
favorite great grandson..." in referring to the one of the three that is not
mine. Credit needs to be given where credit is due. And that includes
giving you and Melody credit for putting on APIS--I'm sure sometimes you
wonder, "Why bother..."
If "gum will never be the same" it will be because of the contribution of
many--HERE--on this list, willing to take the time and contribute, and NOT
hold back their secrets. Change takes collaboration. And I guarantee you
that Stuart, himself, will echo this sentiment, saying that the support and
testing of Clay and Kerik got it all to where it is now--in fact, he said as
much in his talk.
It's a thankless task, this gum research. Do we ever hear about Sucrow and
Beauregard, nowadays, as contributing to the gum process? (As if it doesn't
happen in platinum, too.)
And in reference to gritty imagery vs. fine detail, ya do gum bad, ya get
grit; ya do it right, ya get fine detail. It is not hard to get fine
detail, even tho this myth is promoted time and time again.
However, the way you get to the end product ultimately doesn't
matter--museum walls are not going to care about whether we roller on or
brush on our pigment, or that we used lemon juice or ammonia in our
sensitizer to make the sensitizer react differently. The only one who might
care about that is Dusan Stulik when analysing the image with his
spectro-microscopy (?) thingy (Howard Efner, I need you here...).
Chris
PS I'm itching to talk about staining and some things I've found, but I
think I'll wait a few weeks til APIS dust settles.....
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