DOI article:
Robert Demachy, The Gum-Print
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30317#0041
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case it is safer to use single colors for each impression, the lighter tones
underneath.
Finally, I have noticed in several gum treatises a half-true statement
(just a question of “nuance,” but art is made of “nuances”) about redevel-
oping a dried print after soaking in a bath of diluted bisulphide of soda. It
is quite correct that the film may be softened that way, even up to the point
of abandoning its support altogether; but what one would be inclined to
believe from the above vague statement, and what is not true, is that the
different parts of the gum-picture have retained their original and varying
resistance to friction. Instead of this the film hardens in an inverse ratio to
the insolubility, the shadows being less resistant than the half-tones. It is
important to remember this before taking up a brush. Moreover, I have
always found it impossible to handle a print in this state with anything like
the freedom allowed by ordinary development, without leaving most disagree-
able traces of intervention, hard lines and scrapy effects. Wide, flat areas,
skies or walls or neutral backgrounds may be lightened by careful rubbing
with a very fine sponge or a pad of cotton-wool, but, even then, you will
notice that the lighter tone is given by the abrasion of the tip of each
individual grain of the paper, not by a general thinning of the film as in
primary development. In fine, development may be renewed, but a rede-
veloped print will always be inferior, as to quality, to one that has been cor-
rectly developed at first. This is another fact in favor of my theory — that
no after-treatment will produce a result equal to that of cold-water develop-
ment of fresh paper.
I have come to the end of these few notes and I find I have been using
in this last paragraph, and indeed throughout my article, a word that to me
means something quite definite, but that will be understood differently by
different photographers. Quality—but what quality? Here comes the in-
evitable note of interrogation which follows all descriptions of those subtle
things that make a splash of color and a spot of white ugly or beautiful.
And it is the introduction of this new element, peculiar to art, in a
photographic process like gum, that gives rise to the dangerous confusion
these lines are timidly directed against.
The gum-bichromate process is indeed difficult to teach, for it is a ques-
tion, not of “what you must do,” but of “how must you do it?” There is
a difference.
Robert Demachy.
underneath.
Finally, I have noticed in several gum treatises a half-true statement
(just a question of “nuance,” but art is made of “nuances”) about redevel-
oping a dried print after soaking in a bath of diluted bisulphide of soda. It
is quite correct that the film may be softened that way, even up to the point
of abandoning its support altogether; but what one would be inclined to
believe from the above vague statement, and what is not true, is that the
different parts of the gum-picture have retained their original and varying
resistance to friction. Instead of this the film hardens in an inverse ratio to
the insolubility, the shadows being less resistant than the half-tones. It is
important to remember this before taking up a brush. Moreover, I have
always found it impossible to handle a print in this state with anything like
the freedom allowed by ordinary development, without leaving most disagree-
able traces of intervention, hard lines and scrapy effects. Wide, flat areas,
skies or walls or neutral backgrounds may be lightened by careful rubbing
with a very fine sponge or a pad of cotton-wool, but, even then, you will
notice that the lighter tone is given by the abrasion of the tip of each
individual grain of the paper, not by a general thinning of the film as in
primary development. In fine, development may be renewed, but a rede-
veloped print will always be inferior, as to quality, to one that has been cor-
rectly developed at first. This is another fact in favor of my theory — that
no after-treatment will produce a result equal to that of cold-water develop-
ment of fresh paper.
I have come to the end of these few notes and I find I have been using
in this last paragraph, and indeed throughout my article, a word that to me
means something quite definite, but that will be understood differently by
different photographers. Quality—but what quality? Here comes the in-
evitable note of interrogation which follows all descriptions of those subtle
things that make a splash of color and a spot of white ugly or beautiful.
And it is the introduction of this new element, peculiar to art, in a
photographic process like gum, that gives rise to the dangerous confusion
these lines are timidly directed against.
The gum-bichromate process is indeed difficult to teach, for it is a ques-
tion, not of “what you must do,” but of “how must you do it?” There is
a difference.
Robert Demachy.
