Prints

This handmade photographic print is made with the cyanotype process. We begin with a mechanically simple view camera that can expose a large piece of film: four inches by five inches. When that film is developed at home in a sequence of chemical baths, it forms a negative version of the image in front of the camera. Light parts of the image are dark and dark parts are transparent.

To make a positive print, art paper is cut to size and brushed with a light-sensitive solution of two different iron compounds. When the sensitized paper is dry, the negative is placed on top and exposed to strong ultraviolet light, like in sunlight. When the sensitizer solution is exposed to light, it forms the stable, distinctive blue pigment ferric ferrocyanide, known as Prussian Blue. The transparent parts of the negative let through more light and form darker deposits of Prussian Blue resulting in a positive print of the scene that was in front of the camera.

Discovered by astronomer and chemist John Herschel in 1842, the cyanotype process has long been ignored by photographers as a parlor trick. It arises here as a tool for making small scale, truly handmade photographic prints without computers, labs, or extensive darkroom printing equipment.