Winter printing

A couple of days ago, I got into the darkroom to start working on a new set of negatives. It had been a while. In fact, my last printing session was long enough ago that it was still warm outside – a full season has passed since then! The rhythm has changed. Printing in the winter is different than the rest of the year.

My darkroom sink is about 15’ wide. 6-9 trays fit in it depending on the tray sizes needed on any given day. That’s pretty good. But when you consider 1) exposure times ranging from 1 ½ to 15 minutes/print, and 2) development times in the water trays anywhere from 30 minutes to all day (or more!), you can see it doesn’t take long before every tray is occupied.

From the beginning of March through October, the covered, open-air woodshop attached to my darkroom doubles as an overflow platform for supplementary trays. When the trays in the sink are occupied, I simply lay more trays outside, filling them with water from a nearby hose. That as-needed provision allows for non-stop printing throughout the day. Exposing 24 different prints or more on a spring, summer, or fall day is no problem.

The renowned proto-gummist Robert Demachy suggested 50 F degree as the ideal water temperature for developing gum. (His book Photo-aquatint is a must read for any gummist. A paperback reprint of the original 1901 book is available through ULAN Press.)

50 degrees seems a bit cool to me. But here our subject is gum printing. And to that we say “To each his own!” 

On the other hand, I think there might be universal agreement that less than 50 degrees would not be advantageous. So the Overflow Deck isn’t available from November through February. And that means that prints brushed and dried with negatives attached, lay in waiting, stacked up like airplanes at a busy airport, waiting to land, waiting to take off. For me, that means more waiting around for prints to “develop.” Time to switch gears. It's winter printing season!

I fact checked the 50 degree reference in Demachy’s book a minute ago and while searching for the reference, came across an interesting distinction he makes concerning the gum development process. He wrote, along with his English counterpart Alfred Maskell, that the English word "development" implies “the heightening in character of that which already exists faintly." But they make the point that that's not what happens in a gum tray.

The gum process is more like “the removal of a veil.” He preferred the word he used in his native French, depouillement. “It means the despoiling, stripping, unclothing, revealing, discovering, getting rid of the superfluous.” It’s a fine and thoughtful distinction and a good way to close this post out.