Please join us for the opening night, Wednesday 28th June 2017
ABOUT THE PROCESSES: Since the first days of photography there have been alternatives to silver for print-making. In 1842 Sir John Herschel discovered that light-sensitive salts of iron could be used to make prints in the pigment Prussian blue (cyanotype), or the precious metals: gold (chrysotype), silver (argentotype), and mercury (celaenotype). In 1873 William Willis extended this list to platinotype and in 1917 to palladiotype. These iron-based printing methods are known collectively as siderotypes, from the Greek for iron: sideros. Fine paper is hand-coated with the chemicals and exposed to an ultra-violet lamp in contact with a large negative. Print colour may be chosen to suit the artist’s expressive intention for the image. These examples have been selected from various sets of Mike Ware’s work to illustrate the range and characteristics of his updated siderotype processes.
ABOUT DR. MIKE WARE: Following an academic career in chemistry, Mike has been independently committed since 1992 to studying the history, science, and art of ‘alternative’ photographic processes, especially siderotypes – those based on iron photochemistry. He has supervised postgraduate research in photograph conservation, and acts as a consultant to major museums. He exhibits his personal photographic work, and conducts workshops, worldwide. His research has appeared in over 50 publications in both the popular and academic literature, including four books.
http://www.mikeware.co.uk
I am very excited to be presenting this body of work and I have been lucky enough to learn a few of the above processes from Mike many years ago. Mike has always been a hero of mine, ever since I downloaded and printed of my first ever web page back in the 1990’s. It was a page detailing the Cyanotype process, totally free of charge and fully up to date with modern chemistry. It is this spirit of freely passing on knowledge, which Mike has continued to maintain, that historical processes will flourish into our modern era. I just wish Mike could join us for the opening night drinks, but alas it a long trip to make from the UK. I do believe he was fond of Australian Red wines…
Please RSVP as space in limited
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