Introducing curators and artists: part I

Mornin' all,

As you may know we are organising this next exhibition in a slightly different way to the last. Not only will Zosia and I be choosing artists and their photographs, we will also have three artists as guest curators. Because of this we have decided to give each participant room for themselves to give a brief description about themselves and why they have chosen whom they have chosen.

It would seem that I have volunteered to go first and because you already know me as one half of the*kickplate*project, I will skip ahead...

I would like to share with you 5 photographs by the French photographer Charles Guerin, who kindly let us use his photograph on the exhibition poster as well. He works exclusively with analogue photography, developing and printing his own photographs and experimenting with traditional/alternative techniques such as: wet/dry plate collodion, gum dichromate, van dyke, cyanotype and pretty much anything else you could wish to try.

It’s examples of two of these techniques that I would like to show you, not only because of the technical skill that goes into making such beautiful and one-off prints, but because he uses theses techniques to create beautiful images that have depth and texture.  

I have chosen 2 gum dichromates and 3 cyanotypes, a description of which I will leave to Charles:

“Gum dichromate is a process from the middle of the XIX [century], using arabic gum, pigments, and potassium dichromate. The two photos were prints on watercolour paper - the first, julie'arms, is in four layers and sized 27x37 using black iron oxide pigment. The second, julie and the butterfly, is in four layers, sized 22.5 x 19 using black, van dyke and [a] flesh coloured pigment.

First is a toned cyanotype from a 4x5" negative, second is a toned cyanotype from a polaroid negative (665), the third is a cyanotype, untoned, from a dry collodion plate. All cyanotypes are printed on watercolour paper.”

You can see more of Charles's photos on his flickr page.