Gum Bichromate Experiment

I have had this image sitting on my desk for ages and wanted to share it as an illustration of the (partially finished) art process. So many of my Google+ Artist friends share their drawings and paintings, and I think this fits in that category, although it a photograph.

This is a gum bichromate treatment of a photo of my grandmother. Gum bichromate is an alternative film-based technique that I learned in a workshop at Gallery 44, which thankfully still promotes antiquarian processing.

The image here is in its rough state, and you can see the masking tape that attached the image for exposure, as well as the pigment brush-strokes that given the impression of having been painted by Francis Bacon (of the screaming popes).

From Fox Talbot to Robert Demachy, from the Lumière brothers to Heinrich Kühn, the bichromate process has a long and varied history spanning well over a century. After falling out of common use for an extended period of time, a resurgence in gum printing began again in the 1970′s through the writings and work of a new generation of artists. It is essentially a modified watercolour. This one was done on Arches paper and has a heavy, antique feel to it.

Gum bichromate (or dichromate) printing involves creating a working emulsion made of three components:

Gum arabic
A dichromate (usually ammonium or potassium)
Pigment

The emulsion is spread on a support, such as paper, and allowed to dry. A negative or matrix is then laid over top the emulsion and exposed to a UV light source. Usually a contact printing device or a sheet of heavy glass to ensure even, constant contact is employed. The light source hardens the dichromate in proportion to the densities of the negative. After exposure, the paper is placed in a series of plain water baths and allowed to develop until the unhardened portions of the emulsion have dissipated.

Dream of the Japanese Maple

"It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them." (Man Ray)

A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light.

The technique is sometimes called cameraless photography. It was used by Man Ray in his exploration of rayographs. Other artists who have experimented with the technique include László Moholy-Nagy, Christian Schad (who called them "Schadographs"), Imogen Cunningham and Pablo Picasso. Variations of the technique have also been used for scientific purposes.

Some of the first photographic images made were photograms. William Henry Fox Talbot called these photogenic drawings, which he made by placing leaves and pieces of material onto sensitized paper, then left them outdoors on a sunny day to expose. This produced a dark background with a white silhouette of the object used.

From 1843, Anna Atkins produced a book titled _British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions_ ; it was the first book to be illustrated with photographs. The images were all photograms of botanical specimens, which she made using Sir John Herschel's cyanotype process, which yields blue images. 


Photograms were used in the 20th century by a number of photographers, particularly Man Ray, who called them "rayographs". His style capitalised on the stark and unexpected effects of negative imaging, unusual juxtapositions of identifiable objects (such as spoons and pearl necklaces), variations in the exposure time given to different objects within a single image, and moving objects as the sensitive materials were being exposed.

This photo would be a negative of a photogram, had the film image not been taken with my Nikon FE in late October. These are leaves from a Japanese garden that have fallen into a pond.

(Thank you, Wikipedia!)

The Hero With a Thousand Faces

This is one of my first Lensbaby (Xmas present to me) experiments - a pair of wooden angel wings from a Quebec church, and now part of my collection of folk art. They hang on my wall and I suppose one could wear them, literally or figuratively.

I am a huge fan of Joseph Campbell's writing, and love how he weaves the stories and archetypes of religions and mythologies into a pattern. Campbell explores the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth.

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

His The Hero with a Thousand Faces, first published in 1949, is a non-fiction book, and seminal work of comparative mythology. He discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies. Since publication, Campbell's theory has been consciously applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. The best known is perhaps George Lucas, who has acknowledged a debt to Campbell regarding the stories of the Star Wars films.

Joseph Campbell talks to Bill Moyers about the hero within...

Moyers: Does your study of mythology lead you to conclude that a single human quest, a standard pattern of human aspiration and thought, constitutes for all mankind something that we have in common, whether we lived a million years ago or will live a thousand years from now?

Campbell: There's a certain type of myth which one might call the vision quest, going in quest of a boon, a vision, which has the same form in every mythology. That is the thing that I tried to present in the first book I wrote, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. All these different mythologies give us the same essential quest. You leave the world that you're in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height. There you come to what was missing in your consciousness in the world you formerly inhabited. Then comes the problem either of staying with that, and letting the world drop off, or returning with that boon and trying to hold on to it as you move back into your social world again.

Moyers: How do I slay that dragon in me? What's the journey each of us has to make, what you call "the soul's high adventure"?

Campbell: My general formula for my students is "Follow your bliss." Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.

 http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/herojourney.html and Wikipedia