The Gum Print

My current situation being what it is, my printing opportunities are inconsistent and sporadic. I use someone else's darkroom, which I am grateful for, yet the times when it is a week or more in between print sessions, well, as Buddhists say, wanting is pain.

The darkroom arrangement has to do with a nice gentleman known as PJ, who makes available a large darkroom with five enlarger stations set up to anyone involved in his darkroom photographers group. Nice people too. PJ is interested in learning more about black and white photo chemistry, as a well as hand coated processes. I am obliging him, teaching him about gum printing.

There are several reasons I chose gum printing as a one on one teaching arrangement. First, I do not believe in photographic art being taught academically classroom style. Photojournalism, event photography, commercial photography or sports photography can all be taught classroom style. In my mind, once you cross over into the world of Fine Art, in my view, it should be taught mentor to student, with the student picking a photographer who's work they admire and want to learn how to do that process. It is passed down, as Art has historically been done for centuries. But that's me.

The more direct reason I chose this medium breaks into two reasons, one being I wanted to put my own hands on this process once again after thirty years. Life having it's own plans for you type of thingy. That's the personal reason, the better reason to cough up is that the gum process is probably the easiest and most chemical free process in photography. It is also the most difficult to master. The gum printing process offers the widest range of personal influence upon the end result, with dozens of choices along the process to be made, each altering the print in some way as well as the end result. One mistake anywhere along the way before final rinse and the print is useless.

It is not the intent of this blog to teach gum printing. That would be boring for the reader and certainly not do anyone any favors. Anyone wanting to grasp the basic gum process merely need google it to enjoy a list of sources to read. Thirty five years ago it is the way I ventured into the process, coming across a volume of The Keepers of Light. A time well before google or the internet. I read the process. I am self-taught. For those that fancy themselves art photographers, the first step is using your curiosity to find an outlet for your creativity.

I would also like to get something out of the way right off the bat. Tradition plays a major role in black and white photography. In today's world of instantaneous digital apparatuses, traditional photography, as in film based photography, holds to what has always worked, with exceptions. Case in point. In gum printing, the light sensitive material first used was a bichromate oxide material in solution. That was when gum printing was first being advanced, around the turn of the twentieth century. That was potassium bichromate. Hence Gum Bichromate print. Bichromate was replaced with potassium Dichromate probably before I was born, but it is still being used today. With exception to me. That irritates the hell out of me. I call them what they actually are, today. Gum Dichromate prints.

Referring back to the above thought about believing in a mentor student arrangement for photographic art, it is even more important for this arrangement when it comes to gum printing. The common wisdom's and old practices of printing gums, technically work, yet in my view undeveloped. Realizing I will sound pompous as hell for this, but for the most part, the gum prints one sees of contemporary printers are very similar to prints one would see from the classical period a century ago, following the dictum that gums just can't show texture and detail in the print, and the tonal range is stunted with dark, muddy colors. That would be a fairly reasonable description of gum prints a century ago, hence the dictum.

I have recently come across two contemporary gum printers showing their work online which have gone beyond the muddy dark print, and even demonstrate a bit of texture and some detail. Just makes your heart feel good seeing good printing being carried on, a century after it was mostly given up. There is a resurgence in hand coated processes in the last few years. Fifteen years after the digital craze rolled over the nation, not just with working photographers, but the general public, and that changed the photographic landscape quickly. Photographing events became difficult to come by. When you leave a throw away digital camera, with flash, on each table of an event, you have fifty photographers shooting photos for you to pick up after the event. Event photographers go begging.

There is more to be said of gum printing in general, as well as aesthetically, which I intend on doing in later posts. I have blogged for years on independent publishing and writing in today's world. I have published eight books under my brand; Brother Coyote Publications. My last book was on black and white film photography and photo chemistry that controls the negative. A very good primer on how to control the gum print as well, being every traditional photographic process is based upon a negative. It is the negative that controls the print. Simple as that. Understand your negative for the process it is intended and enjoy the outcome. More later. Thoughts and questions welcome of course.