Gum Bichromate

Instructor: Laurie Beck Peterson

Four consecutive Monday evenings: 10/9, 10/16, 10/23, 10/30
6 - 9 pm

This workshop, suitable for both beginners and experienced practitioners, will provide students the opportunity to print intuitively in the gum bichromate process.  They will be introduced to the history of the process, view notable examples, and learn through demonstration and the making of prints.  Participants will be using just one high-contrast negative, printing in successive layers of color and brushing away parts of each layer to reveal underlying colors.

Paper, chemistry, and watercolor pigments will be provided by The Halide Project

Please note that this workshop is open to those interested in working from digital negatives, however large format (4x5 or larger) B&W film negatives high in contrast will also work well.

For those working from digital negatives, please bring your own, or you can provide two digital files in advance that will be made into negatives for class.  (You will be given the option to pay for the two negatives upon registration.) 

Artist Bio: Laurie Beck Peterson (Philadelphia, PA, USA) is an alternative process photographer working in gum bichromate, cyanotype and platinum palladium. Her current work focuses on cyanotypes on ash wood stumps and she has recently started using the sustainable plant-based processes of anthrotype and chlorophyll printing. Her images are film based, using a Holga or pinhole camera. Her cyanotypes on tree stumps and work in sustainable plant-based processes, are ephemeral which provides the viewer with an experience that can be transient. Her gum bichromate and platinum palladium prints on paper are archival. Currently, Laurie teaches her research specialty of contemporary use of historical photo processes at Tyler School of Art + Architecture. It is there that she started a collaborative project between photo and architecture students to build a giant walk-in camera obscura on wheels. Her most recent project We All Fall Down began at The Schuykill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia, PA. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in many private and public collections. She is included in the 2021 selection of Rfotofolio photographers and two bodies of work were awarded at the 15th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Awards on view in 2021 at FotoNostrum in Barcelona. Examples of her work can be seen in the book Gum Printing, A Step-By-Step Manual, Highlighting Artists and Their Creative Practice, by Christina Z. Anderson.

This workshop has been generously sponsored The Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.