Gum over Gold Toned Kallitype ~ Girl with Flower

This print is a re-print of an earlier attempt, which in the end I didn't like. I knew I could do better. I did. I could see that many of the textural qualities were being lost, a slightly too heavy hand. I kept the gum layers sheer, only to enhance what was already there, without making the image look like the colors had been painted on, with a house painter's brush. The more I print the more I come to realize that the lighter hand is always preferable to a heavy handed attempt.

The primary objective of making prints, for me, is capturing the light, or more specifically capturing the light as it reflects off objects in the image, including people. That's my objective. Bright sunlight can be seen reflecting off trees, people's clothes, rocks and dried grasses. Capturing that light is reflected in the correct negative densities to begin with, then reciprocally printed to reflects them in the print image. I would tell you that to be zone 7, relative to the density range of the negative. Zone 7 on a negative isn't one density. I can be any density chosen. It is the relationship of the densities below the highest density on the negative, down to zone 1. If the relationship between zone 3 (shadow textural density) and zone 7 (white with full detail ~ highlights) then the negative will print well, as a Kallitype, platinum, salt paper, print(s). As always, one prints to zone 7.

This print was printed on Hahnemuhle 320/gm, pre-shrunk in water at 120 degs or more, for 1 minute. That is all that is necessary as the printed Kallitype image becomes the base of the gum layers, just as a good sizing would. This print entailed three gum print layers, with the middle layer entailing three colors, each applied locally.

Gum over Gold toned Kallitype
"Girl with Flower" ~ 8x8 ~ Unique
Eugene, Oregon ~ 1983

"Jars in the Window" ~ Final Version

I just did something I have never had to do before. Reprint a gum image, three times before I liked what I had done. All of it in public view. First iteration of this image was a gum print, ten print layers and probably two dozen colors, to realize in the end that I simply didn't like what I did. The underlying application theory worked, in the sense of color selection and print times, etc, yet the finished image always turned out dull, no life, no light. Making any black and white print is all about printing with, and for, the light quality of the image. Without light in an image, there is but tonalities, and colors, but no life. That has been the grail of printing for me for thirty five years of learning just how to control for that.

I attribute some of my failing to see the deterioration of the print image quality over several layers is simply crappy eyesight. Being blind in one eye and color blind to red/green has it's drawbacks when working with colors of any kind. I take humble color advice from my color guru wife, an artist that sees the fuller spectrum of human color sight. This print arrives at what I had wanted to represent a moment of my past as I saw it then, and wanted to recreate. A simple comparison of the last version and the final one is a good example of light quality. The first version simply lacks the light quality of the second. Each print teaches the printer a little more.

This is what I had in mind

Gum over Palladium
"Jars in the Window" ~ 8x10 ~ Unique
Eugene, Oregon