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First done around 1894
The Gum-bichromate process is the practice of capturing light and combining it with pigments to create delicate works of art. It begins with the sizing and coating of watercolor paper with a gun-bichromate
emulsion. Contact printing with sunlight or strong UV light exposes the image.
Development is carried out by floating the image in water (the solubility of parts of the image change on exposure to light), loosening & ultimately removing the unwanted parts of the image & hardening the wanted parts. What gives this process the its Painterly aspects is the artist's ability to mix water color pigments with the emulsions. The artist can add layer upon layer of emulsion on the finished work, even combining brush strokes to the final image. It is a very beautiful, & very painterly process of photographic imagery. Gum prints, when done to achieve photographic results, look very much like conventional silver halide imaging.
Gum prints are beautiful "painterly" expressions of the artists vision.
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