Pre-work Project 7

Daguerreotype 

Daniel Kuczynski
To create a daguerreotype start with polishing a silver-coated copper plate, until it's almost mirror-like. Sensitize the plate in a dark room with iodine and expose the plate to mercury vapor. Once developed, immerse it in a solution of hyposulphite soda. Lastly the print is coated in a leaf of pure gold and admired usually in a glass frame. 

Cyanotype
Egill Ibsen
Potassium ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate (green) each are separately mixed with water to create an aqueous solution. Then they are blended together equally. Using watercolor or printmaking paper paint on the solution and dry in a dark room. Negatives are placed on the paper to make a print. Rinse the print in water and dry. This creates a print with white tones on a blue background. 

Tricolor gum bichromate

Jalo Porkkala

A Gum bichromate is a 19th-century photographic printing process based on the light sensitivity of dichromates.  To create a gum bichromate you would use a multi-layered printing process.  Using a watercolor or printmaking paper, each color layer is coated, registered, exposed to light, and washed. The print is then floating face down in a bath of room-temperature water to allow the gum, excess dichromate, and color pigment to wash away. Several changes of water bath are necessary to clear the print. After, the print is hung to dry. When all layers are complete and dry, a clearing bath of sodium metabisulfite is used to extract any remaining dichromate.