Gums a la Demachy and Puyo and all sorts of other things

Mark

Two things.

In my long time in the alt game I have tended to be a bit cynical about
people who appeared to think up names for 'new' processes which were 'invented' to
solve problems which had arisen as they had not understood how to make the
original process work, (sometime, in the early days, I was in danger of doing it
myself). Obviously there were 'new' processes which did offer something
new.. When the 'inventors' then incorporated their own name in the new process, I
would laugh out loud. But then when Lorenzo Cavini and I saw what was possible
with the gold and and cyanotype processes we had arrived at in our
retro-invention experiments, we knew we had something so special that it deserved a
name. Obvious problem.

Mike Ware had already used 'new chrysotype' and 'new cyanotype'. Both of
these appear to achieve nothing special, one tends to discolour after ten years or
so and they are both over complicated.
Incidentally, in his recent article on iron processes in History of
Photography, MW does not mention the two new processes we had arrived at This was
proabably as he was just bringing out a new book on chrysotypes which misses the
principle that enables very short exposures although Michael Maunder had
coverd it in a series of articles in AG and I had presented my version at APISs in
Santa Fe and in Scotland and at the Object Glass of Science conference in
Oxford where Michael Maunder had presented his work on the principle as wel, .and
there have been articles in the BJ and View Camera..

So what were we going to call ours. As, many years ago I had presented on
this list a long list of silly names including some with Greek and Latin
derivations, including the Pteritype (reference to pterodactyl), I had to be careful
. But then I realised that it would be easy. We had a couple of things that
really were special. They gave beautiful results, they drastically reduced
exposure times, they needed no special chemistry and they were easy to do So in
the world of cladistics, giving scientific names to animals ands plants and so
on, when they have something BIG they call it rex which is the Latin for 'king'
( hehe !). So we called them cyanotype rex and chrysotype rex which sort of
reminded me of tyranosauraus rex and the 'pteritype'.
I suppose that it was a piss take of myself. But then I have never been able
to take myself too seriously although someone once accused me of having
megalomaniac tendencies as live in Napoleon Road !

As to curves, I do take them very serously, I have both of Dan's books and I
would not have asked him to speak at APIS if I did not take curves
seriously.. But that is for processes like platinum. applying curves to achieve standard
development times is, as Katherine has pointed out, quite inappropriate for
gum as
emulsions are different every time you apply a coat and one has infinite
control in development..

A joint workshop might be fun though,as Don Bryant suggested, but I was
thinking of Richmond, Surrey, not Richmond Va. How do I get a PDN rex ?

Terry

 
Received on 07/17/06-03:02:04 AM Z