written by: Christina Z. Anderson“Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.” Wilson Bentley, 1925 Over a century ago a nineteen-year-old Vermont farm boy named Wilson Alwyn Bentley began a 46-year love affair with the typology of snow crystals. A century after Bentley, I began a love affair with the historic Read more »
written by: Christina Z. AndersonA decade ago there was an intriguing article in PHOTO Techniques magazine entitled “Silver Mirror Printing and other Unusual Black and White Print Development Processes” (William Jolly, pp. 32-36, Jan/Feb 1999; also “Silver Mirror Printing Update,” p. 11, July/Aug 1999). The process looked fasci- nating. A freshly developed, but not yet fixed, black and white print is subjected to two mild photographic solutions, an activator and a stabilizer, in the darkroom and out under room light. The activator is a dilute potassium hydroxide; the stabilizer is an acetate buffered thiocyanate. Colors appear where there is white in the print: orange, brown, yellow, Read more »
