Printing Gum over Silver

The practice of printing gum layers over platinum was something apparently done in the early part of the nineteen century. The why of that evades me, even now. Putting color over a platinum print is sort of a form of blasphemy in my head. Like catsup over a banana split. I can, however, see where it might be beneficial to print gum colors over a silver print. Yeah, I know, doesn't seem fair, but it was my sensibilities I was dealing with back then, and silver was what I printed with.

The pure gum print of the image was simply weak from my expectations, which were below the surface of a mental explanation beyond it looked weak. Looking back, what I was seeing was the total lack of dMax of any kind. No black. At the time I didn't know how to obtain a pure black in the print, so I set up the operation to accommodate a salted silver printing of the image to seamlessly move into a multi-layer gum printing thereafter. The results were pleasing, and promising. I had intentions of printing more of these mixed images, but life came along.

I will post the straight salted silver print of this image next. For now, this is the gum over a salted silver print. Four color layers; CYMK, not necessarily in that order.

Gum over Salted Silver Print ~ "Bandon Lighthouse"
1984 ~ 5"x;7" ~ Unique
Bandon, Oregon