john opera
Anthotypes from John Opera:
"The Anthotype harkens back to the seminal moments of photography’s prehistory.
During the mid 1800s, it was discovered that pigmented solutions derived from various
flower and fruit extracts are light sensitive enough to be used as rudimentary print
emulsions. This process takes up to three weeks of exposure in direct sunlight to render
an image. The process was quickly abandoned when silver nitrate was discovered to
have a much faster reaction time.
The complex natural forms that are the subjects of my Anthotypes are actually
photograms (or contact prints) of ink-on-water drawings that I created as fleeting
compositions in a glass tray. I recorded the compositions on film in order to make a
negative. The negatives were then digitally enlarged for use during the very lengthy
process of making the prints..."
