Art Intersection presents Light Sensitive, our ninth-annual, international juried exhibition of images created using traditional darkroom and historical and alternative photographic processes and methods. In the current trend of imagery presented on computer screens and the overwhelming volume of digitally printed pictures, Light Sensitive reaffirms and promotes the art of handcrafted prints that uniquely belong to the tradition of light sensitive creative processes.
As our juror this year we are honored to have Christopher James, University Professor and Director of the MFA program in Photography and Integrated Media at Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Awards for Light Sensitive
First place $350
Second palce $250
Third place $150
Three honorable mentions
Art Intersection will pay return postage for individuals receiving one of the above awards and honorable mentions.
Acceptable Processes
Process include, but are not limited, to the following: silver gelatin prints, albumen, anthotype, argyrotype, athenatype, Bayard direct positive, calotype, carbon, casein, chrysotype, cyanotype, dusting-on process, gum bichromate, gumoil, Herschel’s breath printing, photopolymer gravure, Ivorytype, kallitype, mordançage, platinum/palladium, printing-out-paper, solarplate intaglio, van dyke brown, wet plate collodion, whey process, Ziatype, combinations of any of these processes, and all photographically based image-making techniques that incorporate traditional studio-based mediums such as printmaking, ceramics, or painting.
Both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional work may be submitted.
Conventional, unmodified digital inkjet prints are not acceptable for entry; however, the use of digital negatives, created for printing any of the above processes is acceptable.
Important 2019 Dates
January 23 – Submit online with JPEG files and paid fee by midnight MT (GMT-7)
January30 – You will receive an email notification of selected Work
February 27 – Due Date for selected Work to be received and ready to install at Art Intersection
March 9 – Light Sensitive seven-week exhibition opens for viewing
March 16 – Light Sensitive Reception from 5 – 7pm, please join us!
April 27 – Light Sensitive closes at 6pm
April 25 – Local Work pick-up
May 2 – Return shipping of Work will begin
May 23 – Last Date to pick up or arrange shipment, after this date Work is considered abandoned
About the Juror
Christopher James is an internationally known artist and photographer whose photographs, paintings, and alternative process printmaking have been exhibited in galleries and museums in this country and abroad. His work has been published and shown extensively, including exhibitions in the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art-Boston. Represented by the Lee Witkin Gallery in New York City for over two decades he has also shown at Pace-McGill (NYC), Contrasts Gallery (London), Michelle Chomette (Paris), Hartje Gallery (Berlin), and Photokina (Germany). He has published extensively including Aperture, Camera (Switzerland), American Photographer, Solstice (for short fiction), and Interview magazine and in books such as The Antiquarian Avant Garde, á Prova de Aguà: Waterproof, Human Documents, and Handcrafted: The Art and Practice of the Handmade Print (China).
All three editions of his book, The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes, have received international critical acclaim and are universally recognized by artists, curators, historians, and educators as the definitive text in the genre of alternative process photography and photographically integrated media. A significantly expanded 900 page / 700 image, 3rd edition was published in 2015.
Christopher, after 13 years at Harvard University, is presently University Professor and Director of the MFA in Photography and Integrated Media program at Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. He received his undergraduate degree from Massachusetts College of Art and his masters from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is also a painter, graphic designer, author, and a professional scuba diver. Christopher offers individually customized alternative process workshops and portfolio consultations in his Dublin, NH studio. Christopher’s web site is www.christopherjames-studio.com
You can view images from Light Sensitive 2018 by clicking here.
Michael Puff presents a printing process combining a Cyan-Magenta-Yellow digital print on watercolor paper with the beautiful, warm tones of palladium for the Black layer. This wonderful process connects today’s digital, color imagery with the unique properties of the nineteenth-century palladium darkroom process.
In this workshop you will print using your color digital images, create and print color separations and digital negatives, and coat, expose, and develop the palladium over layer. You will print the CMY (cyan-yellow-magenta) portion of your images onto a watercolor paper, and then finish the Black layer using palladium in the darkroom with a K (black) separated digital negative.
By the end of the workshop you will have created several prints using this beautiful process.
Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Opening Reception of Light Sensitive 2018! We loved seeing so many friendly faces, both familiar and fresh. Thanks for helping us celebrate this beautiful exhibition!
Luigi Luccarelli with his work
Peter Friedrichsen with his cyanotypes on birch ply
Amanda Scheutzow with one of her sculptural tintype pieces
Kayla Bedey with her gum bichromate over cyanotype prints
Submissions for Light Sensitive 2018 are now closed. For more exhibition opportunities, please visit our Calls for Work page.
Art Intersection presents Light Sensitive, an annual juried exhibition of images created using traditional and alternative photographic processes. Past work has included analog c-prints, platinum/palladium, cyanotype, gelatin silver, gum bichromate, wet plate collodion tintypes and ambrotypes, chemigrams, and other printing processes. Both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional work may be submitted.
Art Intersection staff will select up to three artists from Light Sensitive to show additional work during the (re)View exhibition in 2018.
Important 2018 Dates
January 16 – Application with JPEG files and paid fee must be completed by midnight
January23 – You will receive an email notification of selected Work
February 20 – Due Date for selected Work to be received and ready to install at Art Intersection
March 10 – Light Sensitive Reception from 5 – 7pm, please join us!
April 21 – Light Sensitive closes at 6pm
April 26 – Local Work pick-up
May 3 – Return shipping of Work will begin
May 24 – Last Date to pick up or arrange shipment, after this date Work is considered abandoned
About the Juror
scott b. davis is an artist and founder of the Medium Festival of Photography. His photographs are created with wooden view cameras ranging in size from 8” x 10” to 16” x 20”. His photographs explore the Sonoran desert and ordinary urban spaces in the American landscape. davis’s photographic prints are made by hand using the exquisite 19th century process of platinum printing.
His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, the Village Voice, the New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and other print media. davis’s photographs have been collected by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Pier 24 in San Francisco, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, and others.
Get back in the studio and practice your skills! If you have taken a Photogravure workshop at Art Intersection or are proficient in the process, you are invited to participate in an Open Studio day dedicated to photopolymer gravure. Please note, this is not a workshop; while you are encouraged to share knowledge with your studio mates, there will be no formal instruction.
If you are not familiar with the photopolymer gravure process, learn it the day before in our workshop with Karen Hymer! Find out more and register here.
Materials Pricing
The $40 registration fee includes your access to our lab and equipment during the Open Studio. You are welcome to bring all your own materials and pay no additional fee. However, Art Intersection will have 4×5″ SolarPlates available for $8 each, paper and ink available for $5/print, and digital negatives for $5 each – this is a great option for those just starting out with photogravure, or those that don’t want to invest in their own materials yet. These additional items will be accounted for at the end of the day.
Working Group
In addition to the open lab, the day will start at 9am with a Photogravure Working Group meeting. This is an opportunity to meet other photogravure printers, reconnect with friends from workshops, and share some work you’ve done already. This meeting will last no longer than an hour, but may be briefer depending on the discussion. Art Intersection hosts Working Group meetings and Open Studios on a recurring basis.
Printing out Paper, or PoP, makes an image by exposing a negative and paper to light without any chemical development. With a printing-out process, you can watch your image come to life during your exposure, rather than having to wait until it is processed! Used originally as a simplified field process without the need of a darkroom, today we use this handmade emulsion to create artful images with subtle and warm tonality.
This workshop begins on Friday night with a lecture and demo, where instructor Siegfried Rempel will discuss the history of collodio-chloride printing and demonstrate two different printing-out methods. Following on Saturday is a day of coating and printing your own hand fabricated, collodio-chloride printing out paper.
The day after the workshop, return to the lab to further refine your mastery of this process! We are hosting a PoP Open Studio on Sunday, March 26 from 9am – 3pm. More information here.
About Collodio-Chloride
The use of Collodion in photography for the production of photographic prints an be found as early as the 1850s, and is most commonly used in the Wet Plate Collodion process to produce tintypes and ambrotypes. The concept of an “emulsion” of silver salts in a collodion binder was introduced by Gaudin in 1853 and by 1861 he was actively producing the “Photogene” collodion emulsion.
The collodio-chloride print has a similar physical appearance to its gelatin counterparts and it can be difficult to tell them apart. In fact, modern gelatin silver darkroom papers evolved from this early printing method! Today, we still practice the collodio-chloride process because of the rich and beautiful tonality it imparts on our images.
Art Intersection presents Light Sensitive, an annual juried exhibition of images created using traditional and alternative photographic processes. Past work has included analog c-prints, platinum/palladium, cyanotype, gelatin silver, gum bichromate, wet plate collodion tintypes and ambrotypes, chemigrams, and other printing processes. Both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional work may be submitted.
The Art Intersection curatorial staff will select three artists from Light Sensitive to show additional work during the (re)View exhibition in November 2017.
Click here: Light Sensitive 2017 to view the PDF Light Sensitive 2017 Submission Guidelines
Important 2017 Dates
January 23 (deadline extended): Application and JPEG submissions due
January 31: Notification of selected work
February 25: Selected work due at Art Intersection
March 4: Opening reception Saturday 6 – 8pm
April 15: Exhibition closes Saturday at 6pm
About the Juror
Ann M. Jastrab is currently the gallery director at RayKo Photo Center located in the SOMA arts district in San Francisco near SFMOMA and the Yerba Buena Arts Center. RayKo is a comprehensive photographic facility with rental darkrooms, digital labs, studio and galleries that has been serving the San Francisco Bay Area for over 20 years. RayKo Gallery serves to advance public appreciation of photography and create opportunities for regional, national and international artists to create and present their work. RayKo Gallery offers over 1600 square feet of exhibition space and presents eight to ten exhibitions yearly with many nationally recognized artists; there is also a section of the gallery called The Marketplace that is reserved for Bay Area artists and displays a wide variety of photographic work. RayKo also has a thriving artist-in-residence program.
Besides being a curator, Ann Jastrab, with an MFA degree, is a fine art photographer, master printer, and teacher as well. Ann has curated many exhibitions for RayKo as well as juried exhibitions for the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Academy of Art in San Francisco, Artspan, SFAI, the Center for Fine Art Photography, and other national and international venues outside of San Francisco. She has reviewed portfolios at the Seoul International Photography Festival in Korea, FotoFest, Photolucida, GuatePhoto, Review Santa Fe, Review LA, PhotoAlliance (Our World), SPE, Medium, Palm Springs Photo Festival, Filter, Lishui International Photography Festival in China, and Click646 as well as being a juror for Critical Mass. She has also been teaching courses at the Maine Media Workshops (formerly the Maine Photographic Workshops) in Rockport, Maine since 1994.
Ann is always looking for new artists for the gallery, both for solo shows and group shows. She is most interested in seeing documentary projects, fine art photography, alternative processes/historical process work, and also work made with traditional film cameras as well as plastic and pinhole cameras. Ann is not interested in seeing work that is obviously digitally manipulated. Ann can offer exhibition opportunities as well as resident artist possibilities.
Application to Light Sensitive 2017 is now closed.
You can view images from Light Sensitive 2016 by clicking here.
The platinum/palladium process is one of the most beautiful and archival processes, and in this workshop, you will create platinum/palladium prints from your images. Michael will teach a one-day, introductory workshop about this luminous 19th century process in the Art Intersection Photographic Arts Lab and the participants will take home two to three prints of their images.
As a participant, you will send digital files to us and Michael will create a digital negative adjusted for his process. You will hand-coat fine art paper with the light-sensitive solution and expose the sensitized paper through your digital negative using one of our UV light sources. After processing the exposed paper, you will have your photograph as a platinum/palladium print.
Art Intersection will supply all materials for this workshop. The making of a digital negative will be discussed, but for the workshop itself, please send two color or black and white image files (300 dpi at 10” on the long side), at least one week prior to the workshop. An email with details will be provided once you are registered.
Before the workshop, learn more about your instructor and get a preview of the platinum/palladium process! Michael will give a free lecture on his artistic practice on Friday, October 28 from 6:30 – 8pm.
Michael T. Puff
Michael T. Puff lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been a visual artist since early childhood, working as a painter and sculptor. During his years in higher education studying Theater Arts and Egyptian Archaeology, Puff worked as a theater set designer and received many awards for his work from San Francisco Bay Theater Critics. Today he works as a systems computer programmer at Stanford University and builds miniatures, while also pursuing his passion of fine art photography.
Puff began photographing in 2004 and later, under the guidance of master printer Mark I. Nelson, learned the platinum/palladium printing method he uses in his current work. Puff uses modern digital image capture with the extremely permanent and hand-crafted platinum and palladium printing process, merging the contemporary with the historical to produce unique and captivating images. The time-staking printing process he uses, which incorporates platinum and palladium metals into the chemistry, allows for a unique image with a beautiful color and tonal range.
Puff’s love for the theater is evident in much of his work, as he photographs on stage-like sets, often using dancers and actors as models, with images that could function as small moments from a larger narrative. A surreal theme runs through much of his work, as he uses his strong digital editing skills to manipulate scale and mood creating complex otherworldly images.
An image that will be featured in Michael T. Puff’s solo exhibition in Ryan Gallery
Phoenix Rising by Michael T. Puff – featured in the Off the Wall exhibition and silent auction
Our first Tri-Color Gum Bichromate workshop with Diana Bloomfield last September was such a hit, we decided to do it all again! This past Saturday and Sunday Diana led nine students through this labor-intensive and difficult process. The workshop included many first-time gum printers, and despite the tricky nature of the process, all produced fantastic prints! As we gathered around to look at everyone’s completed work at the end of the two days, one thing was apparent: there is nothing like the magic of gum printing, and no one better to teach it than Diana Bloomfield!
We are grateful for all of our students, but we especially would like to extend a big THANK YOU to our four class participants who travelled from far, far away to take this workshop with us – Cary from Alaska, Timothy from Michigan, and Scott and Kelly from Pennsylvania. We’re so glad you could join us!
Diana discusses digital negatives during her demonstration at the beginning of the workshop
Diana “develops” an exposed print in water
Diana discusses the cyan-layer exposure she demonstrated as it hangs to dry – Terry, the student who provided the negative for this print, will later add yellow and magenta layers
Janet washes out her print after exposing the yellow layer
Karen coats her paper with a mixture of watercolor pigment suspended in potassium dichromate and gum arabic. The potassium dichromate hardens the gum arabic upon exposure to UV light; the parts of the coating blocked by the negative remain soft and wash away in water.
Tim washes out his print
Kelly very carefully registers the negative for her next layer
Janet, Tom, and Matthew attend to their prints
Each layer of pigment make a big impact when gum printing. The print on the left includes cyan, yellow, and magenta layers; the print on the right includes cyan and yellow. Both prints by Karen Hymer
Diana discusses the finished prints one by one with the class
Karen, Diana, and Tom mask off the brush-marked border of Cary King’s image in order to look at the print without visual distractions
Scott Wrage shares his tri-color print, not yet dry enough to pin up, with the rest of the class
Prints clockwise from left by Matthew Covarrubius, Kelly Wrage, Karen Hymer, and Timothy Wells
This past Saturday, March 26 we had the pleasure of hosting a Photogravure workshop taught by Tucson artist Karen Hymer! The weekend began with a lecture by Karen on Friday night – she talked about the history of photogravure and the evolution of her artwork as she continues to use the process.
Seven students joined us for the workshop and got hands-on experience making photopolymer plates from their images, then pulling prints from the plates. Karen taught the process using Solarplates, which are steel plates coated with a light-sensitive polymer emulsion. When exposed, the polymer hardens; the unexposed polymer washes away in water, leaving an “etched” plate ready for inking after the plate has dried in the sun. Ink is then applied to the plate and wiped from the highlight areas. Finally, paper is laid on top of the plate and both are run through an etching press.
We are forever grateful to our friends at Cattletrack Arts Compound and Santo Press for lending us their etching press – we could not have done this workshop without their help!
Karen demonstrates the “development” of the Solarplate in water
Exposed and developed plates harden in the sun
Karen demonstrates inking the plate
Participant Shari Trennert prepares to run her plate through the press
Shari has made a print from a “test strip” plate to check her exposure before committing to a full plate
Jean-Charles Chapuis, Cyd Peroni, Tom Moore, and Gina DeGideo hard at work inking their plates
Chris Palmer and Karen compare a test print with another print of the same image to check for contrast and density
Gina uses a cotton swab to fine-tune her ink application
Cyd lays a sheet of fine-art water color paper over her inked plate before running it through the press
Participants enjoy letting their creativity run free and working in a community environment
Participants let their finished prints dry before taking them home
