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Marek was born in Poland. He now lives and works in the United States,
calling Houston, Texas his home. He likes the landscape of the American
West and travels extensively to the National Parks of the West with
his 4x5 view camera. He has a chemistry degree and is a self-taught
photographer. He has exhibited his B&W work in several local juried
shows. About two years ago he read Mike Ware's article about the
new Chrysotype process and decided to give it a try.
Chrysotype is a process of making photographic prints out of pure gold. He believes that gold is the last element to be discovered for the purpose of making photographic images (it has an extensive use as a toning reagent). It has a unique property of making colloidal solution of different colors. What that means for the photographer is that pink, red, magenta, blue, black and all the shades in between can be used in a creative photographic process. Split tones of blue and magenta are possible and are a trademark of the Chrysotype process. Several hundreds of prints later some of his work is ready to be shown.
Marek says about his work:
Finally I can match the color of the picture to my mood. After all we live in a world of color even if we take our pictures on a black and white film.
Marek about chrysotypes
The use of gold in photography goes back to the beginnings, when
Herschel discovered a method for making prints out of gold and named
the process Chrysotype. The process never gained any popularity
among photographers because of difficulties in making gold sensitizers.
It wasn't until the discovery of new gold chemistry by M. Ware (see
his page on this site) in the 1990's that the prints of gold made
by the new Chrysotype process became a reality. I should warn the
reader the process is not for the faint of the heart. I have spent
hundreds of hours experimenting with Ware's process, making extensive
modifications of it, as well as developing new Chrysotype recipes
that are closer to the original attempts of Herschel.
- The Satista print process
- Lumen prints: a description
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Find: New articles Process step-by-step Working practices
Writer / Marek
Matusz
Satista prints
A description of the Satista photographic print process.
Always be careful when handling chemicals. Read the health and safety instructions.
Satista prints refer to a print that is a composed of a mixture of silver and platinum. This is a very old process, invented by William Willis. The process described here varies in details from that is published in Senstivie Photographic Paper and Process of Making the same by William Willis (1,120,580). The process was intended to be more economical then platinum printing, but being able to produce results that looked like pure platinum prints and being as permanent.
Please make sure that you understand all safety aspects of the process. Papers that wok for me are: Arches platine, Bergger COT320 (from Bostick and Sullivan). This process requires negatives that are typical for iron-based processes.
Recipe:
Sensitizer: Ferric ammonium oxalate, 40% solution, standard platinum solution used in platinum or platinum – palladium printing (20% K2PtCl4). This very concentrated sensitizer will crystallize on the surface of some papers. Recently I have been using about 25% FAO solution.
A standard sensitizer formula for an 8x10 print is as follows:
- 1 drop of Pt solution
- 25 to 30 drops of FAO solution.
The process
I coat with a push rod for small size papers, brushing works well
for me for 8X10 or 11x14.
The amount of platinum is not very critical. You can use more platinum, for example 4 drops, I have also used as little as 1 drop of 5% platinum solution (talking about economy now!). More platinum will give blacker print, less platinum tends to give browner prints. I have also used palladium in a sensitizer in place of platinum. Gives a different print tone, but works as well.
Dry very well for consistent results. For best results there should be no moisture left in the paper. One nice thing about satista prints is that dry, sensitized paper will store for weeks. Slightly moist paper will also print well showing a faint image upon exposure.
Printing is very fast. Any UV light source will do. I have a bank of six 20W BL lights and a typical time might be 2-6 minutes. There is no visible image after exposure so test strips are necessary.
Develop in 4% silver nitrate solution. Silver
nitrate will store indefinitely if made with distilled water and
stored in the dark. Silver nitrate is toxic and will stain black
any organic material that it comes in contact with. Wear
gloves for all the operations involving silver nitrate.
My development method is the same as coating method (see Figure 1 and 2). Tape the exposed print to a piece of flat glass placed in a tray. With a plastic eye dropper pour about 4 cc of silver nitrate solution on the edge of the print and using the push rod spread it evenly over the entire print in one single pass. Remember that there should be an excess of developer or else uneven development will take place.
On some papers you can move the developer a few times, but some papers do not take it well. This is fairly simple once you practiced it. For larger pieces a flat bottom tray filled with a solution of silver nitrate might be more practical. Let the print sit for a minute or two and wash the print with water until the milkiness is gone, say 5 minutes.
Clear the print in Na4EDTA solution or Kodak clearing bath,
wash some more. My clearing bath is 20 grams of Na4EDTA and 20 grams
of citric acid/liter of solution. Several prints can be cleared
in this solution. At this point you could do gold or palladium
toning. Satista images tone well with gold, platinum or
palladium toners.
See example in Figure 3 for palladium toning and Figure 5 for gold toning. Residual silver is removed in 10% sodium thiosulfate bath. Images do not bleach, but there is no reason to soak them very long. Wash well after thiosulfate bath.
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