Welcome!
Spring 2023 - More news! Check out Analog Forever Magazine's online exhibition "Elemental".
“Catalina” by Sylvia Galbraith (@sylviagalbraith) is one of our favorite images from our April 2023 Online Group Exhibition, “ELEMENTAL,” curated by renowned photographic community leader and The Photographer’s Eye gallery director, Donna Cosentino (@donnadcosentino)!
The exhibition explores the fundamental powers of nature – earth, water, fire, air – and how photographers interact with these elemental forces. The results of which range from beautiful landscapes made with expired film to abstract cameraless photograms that will bend your mind.
Thank you @analogforeverzine, for choosing one of my 'experiments" ! I may be on to something....
Catalina. Unique silver gelatin mordencage print, 11 x 14". 2023
Spring 2023 - Photography Award at Insights, Elora 2023.
I thought I’d submit a couple of my recent experimental process photographs, kind of a test to see the reaction, as they're a total shift from anything I've done up until now. Apparently the jurors liked them, and I was surprised to come home from a holiday to find I'd won the overall Photography Award! Wow! You’ll have to check out the show to see the photographs in person - it runs until June11 at the Wellington County Museum in Elora.
Mordançage, a Historic Photographic Process
Based on a 19th century method, the process known as mordançage has been used to dramatically alter black and white photographs since the 1960s. In the darkroom, using a series of chemical baths that include acidic copper(II) chloride and hydrogen peroxide bleaching solution, the artist subjects a fully developed traditional silver gelatin photograph to a series of wet chemical reactions which lift the pure black portions of the print off the substrate, while leaving the lighter areas intact. When immersed in a warm water bath, the resulting “veils” can be allowed to move and flow across the paper as the artist wishes, finally becoming fixed in place as the print dries. Staining from the process introduces unique characteristics, providing insight into the chemical transformations involved in this artistic process.
Landscape, Undecided. Unique silver gelatin mordencage print, 11 x 14". 2023
Winter 2023 - Summer plans are well underway, and as I mentioned earlier, I have been invited to co-facilitate an art retreat in Orkney, Scotland this coming July. I am so excited to be part of this retreat... Orkney has always been on my list of "must photograph" places, and I'm looking forward to sharing my experience of this amazing place with you. Details about the retreat can be found on the Luxeca Studios website. This will be a small group, so if you think you'd like to be included, you should send in the registration form on the website right away.
See you there, and in the meantime, I'll leave you with this, from Orcadian poet George MacKay Brown:
Beachcomber
Monday I found a boot –
Rust and salt leather.
I gave it back to the sea, to dance in.
Tuesday a spar of timber worth thirty bob.
Next winter
It will be a chair, a coffin, a bed.
Wednesday a half can of Swedish spirits.
I tilted my head.
The shore was cold with mermaids and angels.
Thursday I got nothing, seaweed,
A whale bone,
Wet feet and a loud cough.
Friday I held a seaman’s skull,
Sand spilling from it
The way time is told on kirkyard stones.
Saturday a barrel of sodden oranges.
A Spanish ship
Was wrecked last month at The Kame.
Sunday, for fear of the elders,
I sit on my bum.
What’s heaven? A sea chest with a thousand gold coins.