Capitol Reef in Gum Dichromate over palladium or cyanotype.
Landscape images have been used to represent spiritual ideas since the advent of Art. During the Pictorial photography movement, landscape photographs conveyed such spiritual ideas and concepts of the sublime. Pictorial photographers favored gum dichromate printing for its painterly, ethereal qualities.
The gum dichromate landscapes in the Capitol Reef series are also representative of spiritual inklings and sublime beauty. These desert images from Capital Reef National Park are symbols of retreat and spiritual seeking. When camping, hiking, painting, and photographing in nature I often recall a line from The Private Banquet by the poet Rumi:
“The sense of sight is too weak to take in this reality.”
For this artist, the quirks and flaws in alternative process photographs are an integral part of each image and a way of visualizing the spiritual unseen all around us.
Gum prints, an alternative photographic process from the 1800’s, are photographs made from exposing watercolor pigments, gum Arabic and light sensitive dichromate. Each image is hand printed in multiple registrations from cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK, quad tone), or Red, Green, Blue ( RGB tri-color) digital negatives on watercolor papers. The colors blend optically to produce full color images.
