Platinotype and Cyanotype Print Making

 

At Albuquerque's Main Library I found a  book devoted to the collection of Paul Strand's work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  In that was the mention of Strand's technique of enlarging negatives from Graflex medium format negatives for the purpose of enabling the production of bigger 8x10 contact prints.  That is the same process Edward Weston used throughout his career, which I had found puzzling as Weston's account is lacking in detail. The book revealed the full explanation, which is that both photographers early in their careers were making platinum (platinotype) prints. Those could only be made as contact prints as production of the positive image required exposure to ultraviolet light, available then only from the sun.

So, platinum printing is similar to the cyanotype process in that both are often undertaken by coating the paper manually shortly before rather lengthy exposure to ultraviolet. There is also some similarity in developing the exposed images.  The cyanotype images are developed simply by washing in water.  This is also true of some platinum prints, though it seems those are more commonly developed in chemical solutions.  Additional processing variations include treatments of specialty papers and additives to the developing solutions including mercury.

Both platinum and cyanotype prints can be rendered in a variety of tints.  Cyanotype prints are most often blue tinted, but they can also be produced with sepia tones by adding a mild acidic solution.

An excellent description of the platinum printing process can be found on the website of the National Gallery of Art.

Strand, Stieglitz, and Weston made their enlarged internegatives on glass plates for the purpose of getting prints.  A simpler process now available is to create a large digital image and then print that out on clear plastic sheets normally used in overhead projectors. I have used that technique with some of my cyanotypes with images coming from my medium format cameras.

The making of platinum prints has always been technically challenging and costly.  The current economic situation can only exacerbate that.  Cyanotypes are still easy and relatively cheap to make.  It is even possible to get pre-coated cyanotype paper; I have found it in a couple museum gift shops, usually marketed as suitable for teaching children about the print making process.

 A few of my cyanotypes:

TMAX

 I haven't felt like paying the price for Kodak TMAX for the past five years, but I did recently find a roll of expired TMAX 400 in a refrigerator drawer to load into my Minolta X-700.  The thirteen years past the expiration date did not seem to significantly affect the results.

New Mexico Museum of Natural History

Albuquerque Art Museum

Tiguex Park (west end)

Rio Grande

Bosque

Tiguex Park (east end)

Good bye to cataracts

Analog Innovation

 A video by Joe Van Cleave illuminates the creation of BIG INSTANT COLOR PRINTS by Ethan Moses.

It is exciting to see this happening right now in Albuquerque.

View the video Now.

Update:

We went to QueLab to see the portraits Ethan had made with the 20x24 camera.  He demonstrated the process for us by making two portraits of me, and immediately processing the image while we watched.  The first image was a little underexposed, though I actually liked it better than the second.  It was a real thrill to see this actually taking place as we watched.

Where am I? -- Where I am.

My photography has slowed lately, and stopped for the past week due to life circumstances.  Reflecting on those facts I decided to look a little closer at the reasons.

The slowing has taken place over a period of several years, partly due to some decreased mobility.  Most of my photography has been done over the last twenty-five years in the course of walking around, snapping some pictures of what I found and then sharing them online. So, less walking and fewer pictures.

The sharing part is probably as important as the pictures; my photographs are most often accompanied by words.  I have maintained this blog, Photography and Vintage Film Cameras, and before that a website since the turn of the century.  I have also contributed pictures and some comments to several online photography sites including Photo.net, Flickr.com and Rangefinderforum.com.

People sometimes advocate for keeping words and photos separate.  I have no real objection to that idea, but it just is not my choice.  I got to reflecting on that fact recently while reading Edward Weston's Daybooks, a journal he maintained about his ambitions and accomplishments throughout most of his photography career. Weston reused some of the entries from his journal to accompany his photos in exhibits and in articles and books. Mostly, though, he seemed to be trying to explain the creative process to himself and to create a context for his photographs. I have tended along the same line, though I have more often thought of the writing and photographs as being integrated into a single product, not usually with a commercial objective.

Not all of my photography has been primarily ambulatory.  A lot of my involvement with picture making has been motivated by an interest in the history of photography, often expressed in a focus on the instrumentation which has evolved over over the past two centuries. I have acquired a large collection of film cameras and have been motivated to attempt to get the best pictures each is capable of producing. I have not spent much money on any of my old cameras; the limitations on the size of the collection are more to do with storage and exhibit space in a small house.

Pictures of people, including portraits of friends and family, have also been a source of inspiration for my photography.  Such pictures represent only a small percentage of my production; they are a concrete expression of my way of conducting social relationships and they rank high in the reward I get from them. I find myself now wishing I had focused more over the years on portraiture and social documentation.  In fact, those kinds of pictures are probably better suited to my current circumstances, so perhaps my efforts will bend in that direction now.

Photography's place in society has undergone some changes over time.  Weston and some others of his generation had something of an obsession over getting photography accepted as a form of fine art.  That concept has had its ups and downs, though is probably mostly accepted these days. To me that issue of status has seemed not of great interest and seems mostly self-serving.  I have always been more interested in the discipline's capacity for illustrating and explaining nature and society, and as a vehicle of self expression.

Attitudes toward photography are revealing of trends in social and political relationships. It seems that people in recent years have become more critical and even paranoid about the practice of photography in both private and public realms.  I encountered a good example of this recently one morning while making some pictures of trees in a nearby park.  Half-way though my walk I was approached by a fellow about my age with a small dog.  

"Why are you taking pictures of people and their dogs?", he asked loudly.  "I haven't made any pictures of people and their dogs", I responded.  "I saw you", he said "what's that hanging around your neck?"

"You are wrong", I said as I walked away. 

I briefly thought about pointing out that the law was currently on my side regarding photography in public places, but it seemed a futile effort.  My impression is that this is more a phenomenon in Western cultures as I don't see much evidence of it in Japan and the East.

Another gauge of people's attitudes toward photography is an effort to censor or suppress the exhibit of pictures perceived as somehow inappropriate for public display.  Sally Mann's pictures of her children have periodically been targeted by such initiatives; recently she and a Texas museum were threatened with charges of pornography. That attack was short-circuited by the state's justice system, but similar efforts are ongoing.  It is of a piece with the resurgence of racism, misogyny and xenophobia which I had hoped the country was moving away from.

Weston, Volume II, California

Weston's Daybooks are intermittently maintained journals that provide a unique opportunity to appreciate an artist's creative trajectory.  The judgements he makes about his own work tend toward the mystical. Tina Modotti commented in a letter to Weston on his mysticism and portrayed it to his approval as a strength. I think that if you want to evaluate Weston's impact as a photographer in his own time, it is more profitable to look at what the Daybooks reveal about his photographic techniques.

Weston began his career doing gauzy portraits in the 19th Century pictorialist tradition.  He and a few others then rebelled against that attempt to imitate painterly styles, choosing instead to use the capacity of large format photographic gear to yield images with a wide spectrum of tonalities and extreme resolution. The primary tool in producing such images was the smallest possible aperture behind the lens which yielded images with great depth of focus, making everything near or far in sharp focus.

What made Weston's images stand out from others in Group f.64 was the frequency with which he made frame-filling closeups of subjects which included vegetables, shells, bones, rocks and household utensils. Dark backgrounds removed any reference to the object's normal context and emphasized abstract patterns. Since Weston nearly always used only natural light for his compositions which were recorded with low-sensitivity films, his exposures were commonly 30 minutes in length and sometimes as long as three hours.  He even used these exposure and compositional techniques as far as was possible in making portraits.  He talks of hand holding his cumbersome medium format Graflex camera for sunlit portraits at a 1/10 of a second shutter speed.         

Weston did a lot of nudes, some full figure, others closeup with resemblances to his still life work. Those images seem to have been well received at the time and sold well. Weston devotes a lot of space in the Daybooks to his work with nudes and generally gives himself high marks for his efforts. I think a case can be made that he was objectifying his subjects and that this judgment is bolstered by his attitude toward the women in his life (many of whom started out as his models) with whom he could never seem to make a lasting and meaningful connection.

In regard to personal relationships Weston redeems himself to an extent in the second Daybooks volume with lengthy entries about his four sons.  Although Weston and his wife, Flora, lived apart for most of the time the boys were growing up, Weston maintained a close relationship with them all as they grew toward manhood. In a 2017 Lumiere Gallery interview Brett, Cole and Neil all spoke fondly of their father and his parenting efforts.

Thoughts about Weston's contemporaries in photography did not make their way into the Daybooks. He talks about painters, sculptors, dancers and musicians that he met over the years and shows no hesitancy in judging their competence. Imogen Cunningham and Roi Partridge were neighbors and friends.  Consuelo Kanaga took a selection of Weston's prints to New York to be seen by Stieglitz. Weston showed his work in a San Francisco gallery owned by Ansel Adams.  However, the work by those photo greats receives no attention in Weston's journal.

Weston refers briefly to an aspiration to have his writing recognized and published.  He did use excerpts from the Daybooks to go along with some of his exhibits, and his writing is easy to read. However, he never shows any real progress toward self knowledge in all the years he devoted to the Daybooks, and his awareness of the world outside his studio was skimpy at best.  Much of his career took place during the Great Depression, but he made only very fleeting references to it.  There was no indication of an awareness of Cartier-Bresson's observation that "The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks!".

The Daybooks saga ends with a note about meeting Charis Wilson, who managed to stick by Weston for over ten years.  For anyone wanting to understand Weston, the book by Charis is everything the Daybooks are not.

Portrait of Charis Wilson by Edward Weston, 1935

Reliability

 

For a recent visit to Phoenix I decided to take along my Olympus Infinity Stylus because of its pocketability and always-reliable performance.  I only took time to shoot a few frames on the roll of Arista 200 I had loaded in the camera.  Back home, I took a walk through Albuquerque's Old Town to finish off the roll.

The camera was made about thirty years ago and I've put over 50 rolls of film through it since I found it in a thrift store.  It has never missed a beat in all that time, and I may have only replaced the three-volt battery once, even though the auto-everything camera must draw quite a bit of power.

I found several examples of the Infinity Stylus in thrift stores over the years and never paid more than ten dollars for them.  I was initially incredulous when I saw them going not long ago on ebay for well over $100.  On giving some thought to the issue, however, I'm thinking now that the combination of quality output and never-say-die reliability makes the current prices quite understandable.

I only got around to using the Olympus Infinity Stylus once in 2024.  I'll try to pay more attention to the little jewel this year.

At One (point five)