Silkscreen printing and chemigrams

Turnbull, Venetian Window Grille, silkscreen, 2010

There are various ways to apply varnish (or hard resists) to photographic paper to make chemigrams. One of the methods used by Pierre Cordier in his pioneering chemigram experiments dating back to the 1950s was to use the printmaking technique of silkscreening. If you're not a printmaking aficionado, you might best recognize silkscreen as the medium made popular by Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and other luminaries of the British and American Pop art movement of the 1950s and 60s. Basically, ink is pushed or squeegeed through a motif or design photographically or mechanically applied to a fine mesh screen. The ink only comes through the screen and onto your paper where there is an open area of the design. Such a technique should in theory allow any kind of fluid medium to be pushed through a screened design...and so last fall, as Doug Collins and I worked our way through various ways of applying varnish to photographic paper, we decided that I should use some of the screens I'd made for a series of small prints (like the one above) to make chemigrams. The print above was made with three separate screened images, corresponding to each color in the print. I decided to use the image that I printed in black--the most linear of the three "layers"--as a way of applying varnish to photographic paper. I used Golden's matte acrylic varnish and diluted it about 1:1 with mineral spirits, applied a small amount to my screen and pulled a squeegee over it, thus transferring varnish to paper. What did it look like once I processed the resultant chemigram, you are by now asking breathlessly.

Turnbull, Venetian Window 1, chemigram, 2010

The screened varnish created the black areas you see on the print above. Interestingly, there wasn't much difference between the silkscreened ink lines and the black lines in the chemigram created by the action of developer as it slowly (or not so slowly) seeped under the very thin ribbons of varnish and lifted it from the paper. (The background tones in this chemigram were created by dipping the paper first in developer for c. 2 seconds, then fixer for 2 seconds, then back into developer for the first 3-minute "cycle" [as per Pierre Cordier's original instructions].) However, a second print made in the exact same manner yielded a completely different result:

Turnbull, Venetian Window II, chemigram, 2010

The second chemigram displays many of the standard characteristics of the form: Mackie lines, fragmentation, abstraction, etc. It's easy enough to describe the differences between the two prints but much less easy to explain why they occurred. Although the diluted varnish was screened onto both prints at the same time, perhaps the deposit of varnish differed in weight or thickness, or perhaps the second print was processed when the varnish was not quite dry. It seems to have the characteristics of chemigrams made with "soft" resists like honey, syrup, Vaseline or soft glue. At any rate, I did not dip this print into developer and fixer before the first long developer bath, which explains the lack of colors but not necessarily the fluid final appearance.

The potential lesson here: screenprinting is yet another way to apply resists to chemigrams but the variables still seem nearly infinite and perhaps require very careful monitoring and note-taking during the process. And aesthetically, I'm not sure either of these prints are all that interesting; perhaps what makes a good silkscreen design does not necessarily make a good chemigram.

Paul Kleinman enters the darkroom

I've known Paul for just about five years, not long as things go.  He's an upriver neighbor of mine if you stretch it a little, in the Hudson River Valley north of New York.  I didn't know it at first, but he's an old friend of the great etching teacher at Manhattan Graphics, Vijay Kumar.  Occasionally Paul would come around and show me his ink drawings, landscapes mostly, long lonely lines of dim trees and shadowed hills under a deft touch.  They had a sparse poetry, so unlike the grinning, affable man I knew; I liked them enormously. 

To return the favor, I invited him one day into the darkroom to play with photo paper and light.  After trying first this and then that, he began to settle on a halting, inky language of blurred signs, which I took as another way of expressing the loss and longing (if that's fair) implicit in his spare landscapes, another of his voices.  Here are a couple of pictures from that day; whatever their genesis, for me they deliver a nice shot of glassprint charm and tag.

Kleinman, Glassprint, 2010

Kleinman, Glassprint, 2010

Jeff Robinson does it his way

Last March I did a demo of the chemigram process for an alt-photo class of Martha Casanave's at Monterey Peninsula College in California.  It was a big, enthusiastic class that day - Martha knew how to pump up the excitement level - and one of the students, although I didn't know it then, was a talented young artist named Jeff Robinson, an adept of cyanotypes and Van Dyck Browns and most things alternative.  I returned to NY and heard no more.  Then last month Martha phoned me and said, "You've gotta see what one of the students, Jeff, has done with the process.  I think you'll like it."  I asked her to have him send me some pictures.  He fired up his scanner and sent me these:

Robinson, untitled, 2010

Robinson, untitled, 2010

I was definitely impressed.  I called to ask him about his methods.  He told me first of all that he washes for 45 minutes to an hour, and uses no fixer bath.  OK - I was listening now.  What else?

Robinson, untitled, 2010

"I use 11x14" or larger - I've got these big trays - and always FB paper, some of it discontinued stuff like Ilford G3 and G4."  The G3 and 4 are noted for what some believe is an antifogging emulsion, which contributes to the extreme whiteness of the base paper.  "I use Dektol straight, no dilution, but I don't use a developer tray either - I just swab on Dektol where I want it dark and fixer where I want it light.  Then I throw on some stabilizer and activator, both at 1:3, and take it outside to let it cook a few minutes in the sun."  He doesn't spell this out, but the photolytic events that take place there may be enhanced by the solar spectrum, encompassing the full range of electromagenetic radiation: the effects could be quite different from those produced by the reduced spectra of actinic light.  In any case, the paper next gets that long wash, during which additional color changes may occur.  But once dry, Jeff has observed no color instability.

Robinson, untitled, 2010

As my colleague Rich Turnbull said on first seeing these chemigrams, Jeff's work is seriously beautiful.  Almost uncannily so.

The example of Morell's glassprints

Abelardo Morell works with the light falling through small holes.  His camera obscura pictures of architecture and Italian piazzas are well-known and deservedly so.  He has also explored photograms and other cameraless techniques, and more recently has done some impressive glassprints, or clichés-verre, in his Island of Rota suite.

Morell, Fern Nine, 2009

Seen as contemporary and shown in the best contemporary venues, like the Bonni Benrubi gallery and MoMA, his work none the less draws heavily on classical themes, Anna Atkins, 19th century botanical illustrations, pressings of flowers.  The use of the glassprint method is appropriate because historical, and also because it allows a great piling-up of imagery and flourish: by using multiple plates or by rearranging the plant and ink materials on one plate repeatedly, he transcends mere illustration to give us considerable depth and wonder.  Glassprint results over the past century have been quite divergent; few would see many similarities between the glassprints of Klee, Picasso, Man Ray, Gyorgy Kepes, or Aris Koutroulis, no more than one would find much in common among photographers or painters of the same period.  Morell's glassprints return us to the earlier state.

And yet a modern sensibility still rules.  He scans his prints, retaining the original as digital file, then prints them as much larger archival pigment prints, possibly on an Epson, in limited editions at 24x20" and 40x30", depending on your taste and pocketbook.

glassprint & chemigram workshop in NYC starts soon

Collins, Creation of the World, Part 1, 2010

The annual workshop in glassprints and chemigrams will be held earlier than usual this year, on two successive Sundays, January 30 and February 6, 2011 - so this is your chance to reserve a spot.  Contact Manhattan Graphics Center right away if you're interested, by email or phone.  Because part of the instruction takes place in the darkroom, space is quite limited.

chemistry room, MGC

There aren't many places where you can learn these unusual techniques, which lie at the boundary of photography and painting (with a little alchemy thrown in), but one place certainly is MGC in the Soho area of lower Manhattan.  If you're from out of town or abroad and have always dreamed of coming here, let us know and we'll help you find accomodations that suit you.

By the end of the workshop, you'll feel yourself beginning to develop a personal visual language that will lead to a deepened expressiveness, and you'll be given tools to continue your explorations on your own.  Meanwhile, your best work will be featured in a project-space exhibition in April at the center.  So join us next month to embark on this special adventure.

chemigram workspace, MGC

Marco Breuer

Breuer, C-995, 2010

His show has just ended at the Von Lintel Gallery on 23rd St, quietly, the way he might have wanted.  But for those lucky enough to have seen it, the lessons of this part-time farmer from upstate New York are not easily forgotten.  For Marco Breuer's work is like a series of urgent dispatches from the field, the results of his ambushes on and abuses of the silver gelatin emulsion he so much loves.  This is point zero of cameraless photography, the ground state.  It doesn't get any more basic.

His method is to violate the photographic surface to see how far he can push it; he pounds, pummels, scrapes and gouges it, and even burns it.  Likening himself to a sculptor, he chisels away layers - literally - until he forces it to give up its expressive core.  The results can be stunning visually - these colors are hidden in photographic emulsion? - but they also can have the provisional and elliptic quality of laboratory results, maybe not everyone's cup of tea.  A picture I like very much, C-1012, may also look, to some, like the electrical discharge from a poorly wired socket.

Breuer, C-1012, 2010

But this is what you get when you strip it down and use the right tools: an utterly gorgeous image.  We will never completely master the sheer physicality of the materials of our art, in their mute resistance and mystery.  Yet we are locked in an eternal embrace with them where we must make them respond or we have failed.  In this struggle, Breuer takes no prisoners.  More of his fine work can be seen on the Von Lintel website.

The recent exhibition had another component, a bit of theater in which the gallery walls were redone in black, scratched with chalk markings, lines, symbols and formulae, as though we were inside the darkroom, sharing intense moments of creativity with the artist.  As I say, a bit of theater.  We sent our man-in-the-street, John LoCicero, to go have a look, and he filed this excited report:

Hand-Tool-Material: the chalked flashes and ghost swipes of a lesson plan - far now from W. H. Fox Talbot, this "pencil" re-draws upon photographic traditions/materials to index immediacy/measure/media - in this outlier darkroom: the power of the center is enacted through a triptych of approximations - angular hard lines score the edges of mysterious colors, tints and complements, miracles of multiple exposure - chalked agitations amplify onto the wall the scratched excavation of chromogenic paper coatings - evoking "the riddle of lumen", cresting angular slices graph sharp anxious contrasts from the containing black.

That pretty much says it all.

Resistive notes (2) - to shake or not to shake

Ah, that is the question.  Many emerging chemigramists have written to ask me, when I lay my photo paper in a tray of developer or fixer, do I agitate it there, in its 10 mm or so of liquid, or do I let it rest?  Does it even matter?  Let's approach this question by thinking about it for a moment.

It seems clear that a motion tangential to the surface of the paper (and of the liquid too, if not deep) will produce a shear stress acting on the paper in a manner to dislodge anything clinging there, if given enough time and enough agitation.  Now, to review, chemigram materials resident on the paper might include (1) hard resists, like varnish, (2) soft resists, like syrup, or (3) quite inviscid and nonadhesive fluids like the fixer or developer themselves, for example, or other household chemical agents that may be chosen for suspected properties.  But their rapid dislodgement is not always desirable; it really depends on the effect we seek.  In the case of inviscid, free-flowing fluid, we are usually quite content just to dip and pull, securing the signature mark of the enveloping chemical and moving on to other things.  But just for the record we show, in figure 1, what a shear stress might yield in such an evanescent situation, from one of my own works from 2009.  It's rather hard to reproduce, this effect, requiring a certain lightning-quick flick of the wrist, since the viscosity coefficient of waterlike materials is so small - so don't attempt this if you discourage easily.  Just think about it as a possibility.

figure 1

 

The choices and our ability to profit from them are more varied as we move up the rheology scale to tougher resists.  Some workers may favor a slow progressive erosion of the bonds between paper and resist, others may like it faster.  The difference between the two can be seen in the width of the resultant Mackie lines.  Testing this, we performed a simple experiment three times during the first week of November, using Ilford RC paper, somewhat impure Kodak developer and fixer (but normal for chemigrams), Golden MSA varnish, and common x-acto incisions, to compare a paper that received monitored agitation with one that was left unattended in the tray.  The time to withdrawal was twenty minutes, by which time the effects were amply demonstrated. 

figure 2a, agitated

We illustrate this by one of the runs - they were all similar - shown in figure 2a (with agitation) and 2b (stationary).  When we enlarge them and apply a scale (not shown in this post), we find a Mackie expansion of 10 mm in the stationary case vs 14 mm in the agitated one, a 40% increase that remains significant even if the crudeness of our measurements is discounted.

We can compute a velocity, for those who care, of 4.2 x 10 (exp -2) m/hr.  Not much, but not zero either.

figure 2b, stationary

At this rate, the Mackie line would circle the earth at the equator in a runtime of 3 x 10 (exp 8) hours, or 34,224 years, give or take.  So shaking the paper seems a good way to get where you want to go.  Patience helps too.