Deceased Experiment Unexpectedly Terminated!

Over the summer I started doing a number of experiments using the process of Lumen Printing.I have been doing Lumens for some time and also doing small workshops but this summer I got the opportunity to do some experiments for myself. One of them was a rather spontaneous affair. I was presented one day with a mouse, a dead one, our cat is young and doesn't quite get the hunter thing and so has only just started using his 'skills'


This poor little corpse had been placed in quite a ceremonious way in the centre of a circular patch of earth in our garden(post paddling pool)

Well, what was I supposed to do with this gift, It seemed only fitting and appropriate that it joined the selection of flowers and moths and other ephemera being Lumen Printed in the garden. The little body was laid out on a sheet of BW Ilford Ilfospeed grade 1 paper and a sheet of glass laid upon it's delicate little form, much like the lid on a coffin made for Snow White!

The first image was set out for a day, I don't really know why I just didn't do the normal few hours but I think the sky was a little dull. Subsequent images varied form a day to actually being left for ten of them as I forgot and went on Holiday. It did not seem to do that one any harm.

Each time the mouse was moved it was carefully slid across onto another piece of paper so as not to damage it, though after the second day it was more like a popsicle on its very stiff tale than I would have imagined.

My original intent was to record the whole process of decomposition from day one, until it became skeletal and the print would have just had a selection of bones surrounded by flora, unfortunately this has been cut short by the intervention of some rather desperate and inconsiderate animal with a serious lack of discerning taste buds. One morning I came out to find that after almost four weeks or so of work the contact frames that had been lying out in the sun had all been turned over and the photo paper was strewn all over the garden. It wasn't the wind, as no interest had been paid to the other prints as they were not containing rather smelly decaying 'meat' believe me I searched around for them but they had gone.

I was a little dismayed as the body was reducing and it would have been great to see the intact skeleton but maybe this is too macabre. I was so focused on producing the prints and creating a series, anyway I have ten images of this mouse.

I had also been 'given' another to work with but that too had gone and so it was back to the flora and fauna and insect world for me until I am graced with another one from my mad cat.

Messing with Lumen prints

While you all wait an inordinate lentgh of time for me to post again, I have been busy or not busy at festivals, while at the last one images from which I will post one day (being realisitc here) I was mulling over what my next workshop at the reserve would be as it was booked for the first morning after returning from HESFES.

So I decided upon something easier on the organisation and got the kit ready for some Lumen prints which would hopefully give results that all would enjoy and with not a great deal of effort. So the tiny little toilet on the reserve was blacked out in preparation for the fixing of the images once they were thoroughly cooked by the sun that morning. The first batch the paper was wet to help pull out some of the colour from petals and then they were sandwiched between glass like a contact print. The results were great and the children and adults loved the images. The usual organic matter was placed on the BW Ilford photo paper for varying times but all at least 50 mins to one hour, when I say usual I meant flowers but one did include a partially desicated frog which came up with a nice result.

The only fix I had was the Ilford rapid fix which unfortunately did not do the prints much justice and in some of them I cold see the colour being leeched out, a shame a some of the flowers had bled and the colour was picked up by the BW paper. I did think at the time that there needed to be another solution. After finishing the pieces that had been made by the children and showing them the prcess in the darkroom. I decided to lay out more for myself these I would take home and leave for as long as possible, they did in the end get exposed for aprox. eight and a half hours before fixing I thought I would try scanning them as I do the solargraphs, the colour is always retained on them when I do it so I figured it would work the same way, luckily it did and these were much better but I still needed to fix. Ammonium Thiosulphate was in the Rapid fix and having done a bit of research I discovered that Hypo was what I needed, Sodium Thiosulphate by it's chemical name and I should then use hypo check to make sure it's still doing it's job!

Mr Cads saved the day and I got both for my next workshop. The images here are some of those done with the children and also some are my later experiments on dry paper for 8+ hours.

For further info and really beautiful images visit the late Jerry Burchfield's site, stunning images and such a loss to the alternative print processing world.