Alternative Photography: The Cyanotype Process

Through my work in a museum here in Slovenia, I also had the pleasure to learn a lot about alternative photography and its extraordinary possibilities compared to your average digital photos. The term alternative photography is actually not used for analog photography (which has been the most normal thing until like ten years ago digicams appeared), but for much older forms of photography, that go back until 1839, when the first "light writing" was presented to the world.

Besides digital and analog photography (on film), there are a lot of different techniques of how to make a photo. But all of these can be broken down to two elementary things you need: a camera and a light-sensitive plate. Most of this photographic processes produce a negative, that has to be then transformed into a positive print, for this step you have again a whole load of different processes. One of them is the cyanotype process.

Maybe you have already came across a cyanotype, it is a print in intense blue colors, also called prussian blue. It was invented by John Herschel in 1842 and is pretty much unchanged since then. All you need are two chemical solutions (potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate), a negative and sunlight. When mixed, the two solutions are getting sensitive to light. Just apply the liquid to a piece of high-quality paper, dry it with a fan and then contact-print your negative in the sun. The exposure time varies between 5 to 15 minutes, depends on the negative.

To sum up all this scientific stuff, I just suggest you to try it out. Cyanotypes are probably the easiest process when talking about alternative photography, and the results can be awesome. Also you get the chemicals either on the internet or in better photography and film shops. Getting the right paper and exposure needs some experimenting, but hey, in the end, thats what it's all about!

Some middle format negatives and a leaf enjoying a sunbath

There is no need to fix the prints with chemicals, water does it all

6 x 6 cm middle format negatives turned into blue positives

This print was done with a digital negative, printed on a transparent plastic sheet. As you can see on the edges and in the grainy picture, I used the wrong paper haha

Getting the exposure right for every frame is impossible, but some of them turned out quite good.

releaf

text and photos: David Tiefenthaler