Workshop: Platinum/Palladium Printing  with Julian Pearce

Platinum Palladium Printing is a one-day workshop 9.30 am to 4.00 pm, intended to provide participants with a thorough understanding of platinum/palladium printing and will involve hands on practice of the processes involved.

Topics covered include:

• a brief history of the process;
• discussion of the platinum print aesthetic based on a selection of contemporary platinum prints;
• an overview of digital negatives and suggestions for sources for more detailed information;
• using digital negatives made from two of each participant’s digital images, each participant hand-coating watercolour paper with the platinum and palladium salts, exposing, developing and clearing the prints to take home;
• control of print tonality from somewhat cool to warm;
• sources for chemicals used and suitable papers.

All materials required for the day, such as paper, platinum and palladium solutions etc, are included in the fee.  Detailed notes of the material covered will be provided.

Participants will be asked to email two digital images to the instructor prior to the workshop. These images will be used to produce digital negatives for use in making their own platinum/palladium prints by the end of the workshop.

Participants take home two platinum prints from their own images.

The Maud Street Photo Gallery. Brisbane, 7 June 2025

Julian Pearce learnt platinum/palladium printing from Gordon Undy (of Point Light Gallery in Sydney), who is regarded as one of Australia’s leading practitioners of this art in Australia.  Gordon learnt his technique from George Tice who was at the forefront of the resurgence of this alternative process in the US in the 1960s.  The workshop therefore passes on this fine tradition.

Julian has exhibited his platinum/palladium images in solo exhibitions at the Queensland Centre for Photography (and group exhibitions) and at Point Light Gallery in Sydney and in numerous group exhibitions including at the Redcliffe Regional Art Gallery.  He is a contributor to a book of original alternative process photographs, The Spirit Within Australia, which is held in the permanent collections in the State Libraries of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, as well as The Bodleian Library Oxford UK, the Library Congress in Washington DC, and Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.