Down the Rabbit Hole

Wet prints drying of rusted papers with cyanotype prints

I’ve found that one thing always leads to another. You just have to start somewhere and follow the trail, even if it does lead you, like Alice, down a rabbit hole. Look at where she ended up - in Wonderland!

I’ve spent the last few days researching alternative photography. Led by a blackberry which whispered its secrets of pink juices that turned purple when applied to thick papers. I started with the search words of ‘botanical prints’ even though I swore I would never make any. I felt that cyanotype prints using only plant life were very pretty but only gave me limited scope for visual storytelling.

Botanical prints led me into reading about chlorophyll prints which utilise a plants natural photosynthesis to create images on a leaf. Absolutely fascinating! This lead me into searches for alternative photographic techniques, something I have only touched the surface of when making argyrotype (brown) and cyanotype (blue) prints from transparencies of my original photographs.

Turns out that there is a whole body of research into silver nitrate, the ingredient which is the mainstay of photography. In analogue photography, film and papers are coated with silver nitrate to make them light sensitive. When developed and fixed, small flakes of the silver nitrate remain in the liquid developer and fixer solutions. That leaves toxic waste to be disposed of, even when the silver nitrate is filtered into a storage tank.

Furthermore silver is a mineral extracted from silver mines, tied in with environmental and human exploitation in countries such as Mexico, Chile, Bolivia and Peru. All this of course leads to questions about capitalism and slavery. Phew! I never thought about any of these crucial questions when I used to make prints in my tiny darkroom.

The darkroom was my happy place. It was many years before I was able to set one up with secondhand equipment. But Cyclone Debbie changed all that. By the time I reached my flooded art studio, all the darkroom equipment and chemicals had been thrown into a pile of flood debris out in the street ready to be collected by council. I knew I would never go back to having a darkroom again.

I started utilising cyanotypes as an easy alternative. It required less steps than making screenprints, less equipment and cost than analogue photographic prints and was very portable. I’ve made cyanotype and argyrotype prints in Scotland, Iceland and all over the UK as well as in my most recent mini residency in Mornington, Victoria.

I returned from Mornington with a swag of papers coated in cyanotype solution ready to expose. I used up the last of the solution on some fabrics I bought at the local op shop and was keen to have some fun and play around with them once I got home.

After exposing the fabrics and washing them out in water, I thought I’d give them a proper wash in detergent but I didn’t want to add them to my normal wash in case the blue colour bled onto the clothes. I put them in a separate bucket of soapy water then forgot about them for a couple of hours. When I pulled them out to hang on the line, the blues had mottled into greeny brown like an abstract painting!

I thought about some rusted papers I had made a couple of weeks ago. They were similar colours to the strange combinations revealed on the fabrics. I thought “what if I try to purposefully make that abstract painting by painting cyanotype solution onto my rusted papers”. I even added some soap bubbles in case that made a difference.

The outcome was surprisingly exciting. I don’t know if the bubbles helped or it was the reaction of rust (iron and caustic soda) with cyanotype (Potassium ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate) but the result was stunning.

I’m going to try kitchen chemicals next like citric acid, bicarb of soda (Sodium bicarbonate) and maybe soda ash (Sodium carbonate). I’m not sure what will happen when these acids and alkalines mix together on paper but it’s another rabbit hole that I’m sure will lead me into who knows what wonderland.

In process: rusted paper with cyanotype solution painted on and bubbles added

Finished print: cyanotype and rust paper now dry