Date: Friday, February 3rd and Saturday, February 4th
Time: Friday, 1-5 PM; Saturday, 10 AM
Limit: 15 for workshop; Lecture is open to the public
Location: Photography classroom/darkroom, Carlisle Fine Art Building (Workshop); Roundhouse Auditorium (Lecture)
The invention of the albumen print is credited to Louis Désiré Blanquart‐Evrard in 1850 and was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative. Using egg whites to bind silver salts to paper, it became the dominant form of photographic positives from 1855‐1890.
Lecture
Preceding the workshop, Stephen Chalmers will give a lecture on the history of the albumen print in the Roundhouse Auditorium on February 3rd starting at 1 PM. This lecture will be free and open to the public.
Workshop
In the workshop, attendees will learn to create digital negatives and albumen prints – the latter process accounts for 90% of 19th century photographs in existence today.
The workshop will span two days, with the process to create digital negatives and the history of albumen printing being covered on the first day of the workshop, and the following day being devoted to attendees printing their digital negatives onto albumenized paper that the students will create.
DAY 1: 19TH CENTURY PHOTO HISTORY AND DIGITAL NEGATIVE CREATION
In the first day of this workshop, attendees will be introduced to the history of the beautiful and seductive process of albumen printing. After viewing 19th century examples of albumen prints and images of an albumen factory, and discussing the history of the process, attendees will be walked through the process of creating digital negatives from their images.
*Please bring your own digital files to create the negatives.
DAY 2: ALBUMEN PRINTING
In the second day of this workshop, attendees will be introduced to albumen printing ‐ the warmest in tone and most precisely detailed 19th century photographic process on paper. Attendees will be taken through each step of the process of albumen printing: creating an albumen solution from eggs, coating their paper with this solution, sensitizing it in silver nitrate, exposing, toning their image in gold, and processing their paper.
*Please bring your digital negatives that you created the previous day, or a contact size negatives (traditional or digital) with a contrast suitable for printing with a “0” filter onto a multi‐grade paper.
Stephen Chalmers Biography
Stephen Chalmers has taught many workshops in alternative photographic processes and digital imaging, and been a visiting artist at numerous colleges and universities. He has also been a contributor to five books, and has been in group and solo exhibitions throughout the US and also in Australia, Ireland, British Columbia, Thailand, England, South Africa, and China. The work of Stephen Chalmers is in several collections including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Light Work, Polaroid, and the Getty Research Institute and has been covered extensively by international media including NPR, The Huffington Post, Time, Pics Magazine (China), Vision Magazine (China), PhotoART Contemporary Photography Magazine (Thailand), and The Daily Mail (UK). Chalmers is currently an Associate Professor at Youngstown State University in Ohio. www.stephenchalmers.com.
