Photographic magic for me has always been seeing an image mysteriously emerge in the darkroom. When I was appointed Artist in Residence at Parham House in 2018, I knew I had to look at it with fresh eyes. It was time to evolve backwards. It was time to create something new from the past. If I was to create art in a historical setting, then I needed to reach back to photography’s historical roots. I would shoot images using a 10x 8 “ glass plate camera, develop the negatives and produce Salted Paper Prints using a formula developed by Henry Fox Talbot in the 1830’s. Simple. Far from it.
Re-discovering the alchemy that I had loved, meant learning a new vocabulary and creating a darkroom that more closely resembled a chemistry lab. I spent almost a month last winter ordering equipment and raw chemistry. My husband, the photographer Hugh Gilbert, tore into our tractor shed, laboured in frigid January, and built me a small self-contained and very particular world, a new darkroom. My carbon footprint grew as the Amazon deliveries proliferated. I also discovered suppliers of wet plate photography chemicals from Berlin to Bozeman via Santa Fe.
I had wanted to try salt printing years ago and finally took a one day course in 2016 with Paul Ellis at Photofusion in Brixton. When I dropped in for some advice last winter, Paul recommended buying a book by Christina Z. Anderson, a fine art photographer and Professor of historic and experimental photography at Montana State University. I purchased it immediately and followed her instructions to the letter. Having a firm grasp of traditional modern silver photography helped, as I have had darkrooms previously in New York and London. Her book, Salted Paper Printing: A Step- By Step Manual Highlighting Contemporary Artists is the Bible of this process. She provides a thorough list for everything you will need in terms of equipment and chemistry. She then offers a myriad number of formulas for the various steps in the Salted Paper Process. The book also highlights contemporary artists using the Salted Paper Process and shares their technical and artistic visions.
Time was Not on my side when the Darkroom was actually finished. I needed to make test prints, decide quickly which formulas I would use in developing the negatives, salting and coating the French water colour paper, and toning the prints. There wasn’t time for error. I needed to be decisive in my choices. To my surprise, I got decent test print immediately. Anderson also answered my elementary questions via email quickly and succinctly. I was up and running!
