Alternative Processes Condensed

A Manual of Gum Dichromate and Other Contact Printing Processes.

Christina Z. Anderson

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From the author of "Experimental Photography Workbook" comes yet another manual packed full of information.

Revised edition! Includes a chapter on Solarplates at no extra cost!
A new chapter has been added - Photopolymer Gravure. If you are a printmaker and have access to an etching press, this chapter is for you! Photopolymer Gravure is one contact printing process that is too much fun to pass up, and the chapter will give you a short and sweet introduction into what I have learned from much trial and error and many books.

What's in it for me? See the table of contents

Alternative Processes Condensed, A Manual of Gum Dichromate and Other Contact Printing Processes covers argyrotypes, cyanotypes, gum (including tricolor over cyanotype) ziatypes, platinums, palladiums, van dyke browns, kallitypes, salted papers, and "combotypes". It can be used as a teaching manual as it is "short and sweet but thorough". It has 121 pages, plus 8 color pages.

Introduction from Christina Z. Anderson:

This manual is a super-condensed compilation of research through books and journals and now the internet from the beginning of photography (texts from the 1850's) to current times. It includes trade secrets as well as all my personal experience and failures. Since I have been blessed to have "friends in high places" - in the alt world, anyway - their advice is peppered throughout. The chapter on Gum Printing is more extensive than the rest because that happens to be my personal favorite.

Since large format negatives are necessary for all the processes herein, I recommend wholeheartedly the Precision Digital Negatives book by Mark Nelson as a companion to this manual. I believe in this book enough to completely revise this manual from its first incarnation and delete each chapter's recommendations for matching traditional negatives to the process at hand. With Mark's book the reader will learn how to create custom curves to match each negative perfectly to the characteristic curve of each process - no more laborious darkroom work! With state of the art digital negatives, alternative processes have come into their own.

About Christina

Christina was born into an eclectic family in Baltimore, Maryland, with a scientist father and an artist mother. She had the fortune of being the youngest of seven girls and one boy. Such a large family spurred her interest in people. Such a large number of women influenced her interest in female culture. With excellent schooling as well as early encouragement in the arts, creativity was a way of life in her family.

Christina's first degree was in French from the University of Minnesota, where she also took art classes. She discovered photography in 1996 when pursuing her painting degree.

Graduating with a degree in painting and photography then, she taught at Montana State University in Bozeman for 3 years, before attending Clemson University in South Carolina, from which she received her MFA in May 2005.

Christina's specialties are experimental photography and alternative processes, specifically gum printing. She is all for pushing the photographic process. Her previous book, The Experimental Photography Workbook, contains 50 different experimental processes which she has researched and used in her photographic practice. Previously, her book called Tutti Nudi, Reflections on the Reemergence of the Nude During the Italian Renaissance (available at Amazon.com), was selected to be published by Midmarch Arts Press in New York. These writings are Christina's gifts back to a culture that provides her with never-ending creative material.

Why is this book here? This book is a self-published book. It means the subject was probably too expert or narrow to be taken on by a big publisher, and the author has paid for publishing the book themselves.

Alternative Processes can sometimes be a very narrow field and to help authors distributing their self-published books we have a special section in the shop where these can be bought.

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