Re: acetone

I first started to make color carbon prints in the early 80s, based
on some ti-color carbro prints I had seen a year or so earlier. These
prints all had a great deal of relief, so that characteristic has
always been important in my mind.

Eventually I concentrated on monochrome carbro and still got a huge
amount of relief. When I switched to monochorme carbon, I got a lot
less, but could not figure why, so I kind of lost contact with the
relief question.

Then, several years ago I brought some carobon prints to APIS in
Santa Fe and also saw Vaughns prints, which, though quite small, were
really like small jewels to my eyes. Some of my prints had relief,
but all of his did, which really got me thinking about the issue, and
what I decided for myself was that relief was highly important to the
kind of aesthetic I want to present.

Do what you like with your carbon printing, but know for fact certain
that many vintage carbon prints show a lot of relief, even if you
have never personally seen it.

Sandy

At 8:06 PM -0800 12/22/06, Vaughn Hutchins wrote:
>Eric,
>
>I hadn't heard of the relief when I started to make carbons, either
>(but then I never saw a carbon print other than mine until I saw
>Sandy's. I just saw a little relief in some of my wet prints and
>decided to go for more.
>
>Of course, relief was not unknown back then -- it is the basis of
>the woodbury printing process...hope I got that spelling right. If
>I understand the process properly, molten lead was poured over a
>high relief carbon print (but I think they left out the carbon!).
>The resulting plate was then inked and pressed onto paper to create
>an image.
>
>Even if I got prints with no relief, carbons can capture a range of
>light that silver can not...that is one of the things that excited
>me about the process in the first place (before I discovered the
>relief properties). Compensating development was never very
>satisfactory to me. With silver printing I always photographed
>under the redwoods on cloudy days -- to get a controllable contrast
>range for the silver prints. Carbons opened up a whole different
>kind of light for me.
>
>Vaughn
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Received on Fri Dec 22 20:25:04 2006