The past months have been eventful, growing more eventful as time goes on. All of which has kept me full-time busy until very recently, allowing me time to return to printing again. I've begun a gum over palladium print that I've long attempted to print, with little success. I began with 8x10 negatives, always with some blemish of one type or another showing up inn the print, in the sky. Always. The legends about photographers trying to print images of Native Americans without their permission, "capturing their Spirit". Not that I'm going to argue that line. It just kept happening.
Until, I tried again, this time with an 11x14 negative. Apparently, my appeals to the Grandfathers let me have it, certainly for persistence if nothing else. I am now four print layers of gum over the palladium print, using six color mixtures. There will be several more print layers left to arrive at the fully colored image. I'm keeping this print fairly straight forward, using colors expected of Native dancers at an official Pow Wow, which is where I captured these images.
The print to show for today is one of the two final prints in the Mexico portfolio I printed recently. The prints in this series are all palladium toned Kallitype prints; now, palladium prints, or "poor man's palladium" print. Still a palladium print. I switched from using the sodium citrate developer, the warm toned developer, to the cold toned sodium acetate developer. All else remained constant. This is where it comes down to interpretation of the print image. The mood of the setting; the Pictorial Effect. Altering an image to better suit the mood of the image, to better relay the emotional connection the photographer had, with teh viewer. But that's theory. The reality of it being one of the images will be the final image, being these prints are all unique.
The two prints side by side;
Palladium toned Kallitype 11x14
"End of Day"
Progreso, Yucatan
Developed in sodium citrate Developed in sodium acetate
