Printing with photographic emulsion on materials

Printing with Photographic Emulsion on materials is a highly creative and enjoyable printing process and encourages students to explore new ways of giving expression to creative ideas.

This creative and versatile process offers almost endless ways of combining images and materials and offers an extension to visual expression using other than the familiar photographic papers.

Printing with photographic emulsion combines painting practices with photography practices in a creative way.

What is Liquid Light?

Liquid Light is a photographic emulsion -silver gelatin- coated onto a variety of surfaces and materials including stone, silk, wood, canvas and almost any type of paper, and allows black & white negatives to be printed on those surfaces. Instead of using black & white negatives you can use an arrangement of objects placed on the coated surfaces such as paper, wood and glass. You can also combine a negative and objects on coated surfaces.

The tutor gives a step-by-step demonstration and the students practice how to coat the emulsion onto the various surfaces including fabric, wood and different paper surfaces. students print from their own negatives or use an arrangement of objects.

In addition, the finished black and white prints prints can be retouched and toned using, sepia toner, blue toner, gold toner and two colour toners. The colour toners give the photographic prints an added dimension, is also makes the prints archival.

My recommended book on the subject: Silver Gelatin, A user's guide to liquid photographic emulsion by Martin Reed and Sarah Jones.