Today I am going to talk about a technique that I experimented some time ago. Its name is Heliography. The peculiarity is that this technique was invented in the 18 hundreds, by Niépce, so you can imagine that there are very, very few shops in the world that can process the technique to print images.
It all started when my nephew Rodrigo mentioned the in Mexico City there was a place called “El taller de Mike”, that was doing Heliography works, and he suggested that we should try work with one of my images.
We went into my portfolio, we selected an image that was a perfect fit, and now I am going to tell you how the entire process works, and what was the outcome of the image we selected.
First step, after selecting the color image we generated a Black and White negative.
Second step, a thick copper sheet about the size of the final print was chemically sensitized as a photographic paper.
Third Step, we placed this copper sheet under the enlarger and with the negative illuminated the entire area of the copper sheet; and then it was chemically developed.
Fourth step, areas of the copper sheet that received light generated a microscopic groove, so after placing black ink over the entire copper sheet, and wiping the excess of ink, areas of this microgroove retained black ink.
Fifth step, the copper sheet was placed over a roller press, and over it, a Fine Art white paper, previously wet, was carefully placed so it aligned with the copper sheet.
Sixth step, the roller press passes over the entire area between the sandwich of both copper sheet and white paper, transferring the black ink from the microgrooves to the white paper obtaining the final print.
During the printing process we decide to make some adjustments, so into the black ink we added some tonalities, some red, some yellow, some green, so the 8 prints that came out, each one has a slight different tonality than the other one, so we create 8 unique prints.
Now I am going to show you the outcome of the project, this is the final print, as you can see it has a yellow leaf in the center, this is because we made an additional experiment, we decided to paint it with gold ink, making it a unique image. So, this is the culmination of a project that mixes old technology a new technology.
