Photo etchings

siladan010
May 26
3 min read

Updated: May 30

Last year in April, I remember I went on to campus as I wanted to learn to do photo etching.

I started the process, I remembered I purchased a zinc plate, we coated it with photo-sensitive emulsion, cured it, and exposed it. Then Shaazia was ill, so I couldn't go in, then summer break, and it was left behind.

I since went back and just finished a series of 10 etchings. In parallel, I had the urge to go back to the Thames and photograph the river bed as the tide was going down, revealing it. (see my recent post). So I was thinking, what if I print these using photo, etc., technology?

What does it mean when a process is interrupted before it becomes a form?

How does the unpredictability of life outside the making-art-life shape what can or cannot be made?

Is an unfinished process still part of my artistic /art student development?

The plate that was started last April, just before Shaazia was unwell, it's lost, misplaced. I left it in the studio, saying I would be back in a week....the week transformed into a year.

I was back in the studio for a while, working on the prints based on my charcoal drawings. Did the lost etched plate, which connects to a traumatic event for me and my family, serve as the "punctum" as described by Barthes of my obsession with making these prints? I see the whole process as a single big image.

What does this mean? How could I use it to build on the momentum?

I don't know, and I will perhaps have to come back to these questions later on.

While I will be looking for answers, I started printing the photographs made on the river as photoetches.

Here is my visual grappling with learning the process. I am a follower of "learning by doing" as theorised by John Dewey. My research for the PG Cert Professional Academic Practice was around it. (which now I plan to submit for the Festival of Learning and Teaching 2025 UWL for the 3rd of July as was marked as very good and I was asked before to present but I was lacking confidence)

The first plate size is 56x45cm on somerset white 300

I am interested in the details, I love the grain, I am thinking how to bring more tonality in?

Second plate

washiing the plate with soda crystals

I. love th efeeling of lifting the paper of the zinc plate

here I am coating the plate using the roller. I purchased and using my onw ink Charbonnel Etching Ink Black 55985 - i was adice is the darkest black,

I wanted to bust that contrast but still have tonality

The plan is to work. th eay th eplate is ink so i get that result

cleaning the ink off in the highlights

Leaving ink on darks

and play in the shadows

here is the plate in the acid

Here is the exposure unit I was instructed to set up the unit on 16 units of light.

It is irrelevant to make my own tests as I will stop using it in 4 weeks. I feel too pressured to finish the work scheduled, not much time for experiments.

I have access to an exposure unit at work

There i will have ot create test strips as I will be using it to expose in the future.