Beyond the blues: Van Dyke brown printing

Some time ago I wrote some words on the blog about the Cyanotype printing process, one of the oldest photographic processes. Well, as one dives deeper into the world of alternative photography the discovery of other chemical processes is almost inevitable. A contact printing technique quite similar to cyanotypes concerning the chemicals and procedure is the Van Dyke brown printing process.

Invented shortly after John Herschel showed the world his deep-blue prints in 1842, also this process was discovered. Using a solution of ferric ammonium citrat, silver nitrate and tartaric acid, it produces beautiful dark-red, brown and black light prints. All you need is a big format film negative or digital negative printed on some overhead transparency, high-quality paper, the solution, fixer and some sunlight.

Like the cyanotype process, also here the workflow isn't the most complicated one. Coat the paper with the solution in a dim room, let it air-dry, put the negative on the paper, use a glass plate as weight and expose the whole sandwich to sunlight (or other UV light). Immediately when exposed, the coating starts to change its colour: from light green to a strong brown. After exposing the print has to be washed and fixed with normal photographic fixer for 2 minutes.

A lot of parameters are influenting the resulting picture: the negative, the chosen exposure time, the thickness of the coating and the type of paper used. It is almost rocket science to set all these parameters perfectly. But actually this is not the goal, it is more about experimenting, changing the setting, adding other chemicals and playing around with the whole process in general.

Have a look at some of my personal experiments:

Four mid format negatives with shots from Ljubljana

Print from a digital negative, about 10x18 cm

Contact print from an 6x9 film negative/sunset in Vienna

Print from digital negative enlarged to A4 format

Digital negative from a mid-format shot/doors to hell

I hope that somebody is going to pick up this printing technique, it is not that expensive at all, leaves enough room for extensive experiments and is highly addictive. Sounds good, eh?

photos & text: David Tiefenthaler