Not Fugitive Enough

January 10 - February 17th window exposure.

Anthotype + sleepware = something positively resistant to light but for how long?


I think the most wonderful thing about creating anthotypes is the questions this process raises. It doesn't use any silver salts or iron. There is nothing precious about it, no gold or palladium involved and it doesn't use a negative. It needs a positive light resist and it forms an image by destroying a pigment that is unsheltered.


So the questions it raises are doubts. Is this a photograph in the traditional sense? How fugitive is the process? I believe that when defining the object know as a photograph, that there are unspoken parameters that viewer and collector expect to be part of the image.


Maybe the definition goes something like this...light has to be involved in the recording of the image i.e something like "the pencil of nature" for those of us insecure about are drawing skill. This could be light on a CCD or a piece of glass coated with collodian and silver nitrate. The unwritten parameters might be the image has to survive X amount of time. Perhaps X is the length of time it would take for a photographer to show the image to someone else in its original form once she / he thinks it is done. Perhaps this time needs to be extended or limited by some other constraint. What if we were to understand this unwritten quality to mean that the photograph must exist for a period of time equal to the time needed to create the image. Or perhaps it should last twice as long. Maybe we should wish it to last one rotation of the earth around the sun.


No matter how one defines a photograph, whether it exists only electronically (via screen) or on paper, there is an expectation that it will hang around long enough. The anthotype is one step removed from the MTV stencils applied to suntanning spring breakers I saw on screen those many years. It is also, strangely enough, in the same ballpark for longevity as the thermal paper prints from the Fisher Price camera I been re-acquainting myself with these last few months. How fugitive is the process? Not fugitive enough.