Exhibition: The Print Exposed 2023

The Print Exposed is a truly unique exhibition aimed at encouraging the understanding, and appreciation for handmade alternative/ historic photographic print processes evolved from the birth of photography.

Photographers selected for the exhibition are automatically considered for The Mike Ware Award.

The photographs bring a mix of beauty and intrigue created by passionate photographers and photographic artists.

The Print Exposed 2023 is split into 2 groups  – those who are invited those who have submitted works for approval. It is the submitted works that qualify for Mike Ware Award.  The Mike Ware Award is made on the combination of visual artistic merit, the craftsmanship of the work and the control of the scientific processes that create these images.

Photographers included are: Keiko Goto, Greg Soltys, Tim Rudman, Bianca Conwell, Elizabeth Opalenik & Robert Poole.

Gold Street Studios & Gallery. Trentham East, Victoria until 21 May 2023.

Photograph above by Robert Poole.

Artist’s personal statement:

I make, by hand, images in precious metals on fine, ideally handmade, papers. Although I do make silver-gelatin prints, my main output is in ‘alternative’ or historical processes. In each, the image-forming metal nanoparticles are in an intimate symbiosis with the upper reaches of the cellulose fibres of the paper. All such prints are made using the Malde-Ware ‘print-out’ processes for optimum control and economy of effort and materials. These siderotypes depend on contact of the negative and paper, so require a large negative (the same size as the print), either from a large camera or by enlargement from smaller formats. Printing in platinum or palladium is considered by many to be the pinnacle of print-making for its beauty and permanence. Such processes are familiar to many, but gold – the material used in one print here (Nautilus) – is not. Herschel’s use of gold in photography was described first in 1842 but then largely forgotten. In the 1980s, Mike Ware revisited printing in gold and introduced a wonderful printing-out process in pure gold – ‘new chrysotype’. The chemistry can endow the print with subtle blue-pink split tones and hues, which I find entrancing and unique. 

In summary, I want to make prints with my hands, with materials I understand, trust, and see, not a bunch of pixels. If I should make anything beautiful and worthwhile, I want it to last. 

“Things as they are …..without substitution or imposture is a nobler thing than a whole harvest of inventions” (Francis Bacon, seen in Dorothea Lange’s darkroom).