Photography and Corrosion
By Ryan • Jan 31st, 2008 • Category: News for Creatives (archives), PhotographyBy Adam Fifield for the Daily Utah Chronicle:
“Chic, young consumers are snapping photos of each other at the clubs on razor-thin camera phones, but some local photographers are resisting these digital and social trends by revisiting the original art of photography that is tied up with chemical processes and the balance between exposure and corrosion.
Jesse Canales, whose photographs are being shown at Nobrow Coffee and Tea, uses a century-old technique called Kallitype. Patented in 1889, this process involves brushing a solution over the exposed paper and utilizing silver nitrate and other metal salts to create a print unrivaled in permanence. Much like a ritual, the infernal artist mixes his chemicals and potions, where the moment of artistic brilliance occurs somewhere between the fact of illumination and the process of decay.
Even before the invention of photography, artists have dabbled with chemicals. William Blake, the famous English poet, developed what he called, “The Infernal Method,” a process in which he used corrosive acid to etch elaborate drawings on copper plates. In his literary and artistic work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake explains his process to aid his textual themes: “But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives…melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.“
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