Christina Z. Anderson talks about her work in the Tricolor gum bichromate process and shows some gum bichromate prints.
About Christina Z. Anderson
Christina Z. Anderson’s work focuses on the contemporary vanitas printed in a variety of 19th century photographic processes. Anderson’s work has shown nationally and internationally in over 120 shows and 60 publications. Anderson has authored books which have sold in over 40 countries—The Experimental Photography Workbook, Gum Printing and Other Amazing Contact Printing Processes, Gum Printing, A Step by Step Manual Highlighting Artists and Their Creative Practice, Salted Paper Printing, A Step-by-Step Manual Highlighting Contemporary Artists, and Cyanotype: The Blueprint in Contemporary Practice; also Digital Negatives with QuadToneRIP, Demystifying QTR for Photographers and Printmakers co-authored with Ron Reeder, and Handcrafted: The Art and Practice of the Handmade Print co-authored with Wang, Jianming, and King. The Experimental Darkroom, her newest book, will be released fall 2022. Anderson is Series Editor for Focal Press/Routledge’s Contemporary Practices in Alternative Process Photography series and Professor of Photography at Montana State University. To see her work, visit christinaZanderson.com.
Tricolor gum bichromates
Entropy
My love affair with the altered landscape began in 2003 when I moved to South Carolina for graduate school. There I saw my first kudzu. This beautiful plant with its heady fragrance, purported to grow up to a foot a day, transforms everything it covers into sculptural wonders. In the process it smothers its host, robbing plants, bushes, and trees of sunlight and nourishment so that they eventually die. I am fascinated by something so beautiful yet so deadly, a botanical femme fatale. All my work is in some form of alternative process, has been for almost 20 years. This series is in tricolor gum bichromate, platinum, and cyanotype over platinum.
Summer Rain
I revel in the beauty of the physical world, in magical moments like this where rain droplets meld with a summer sunset. I try to capture that feeling through the gum bichromate process, which to me is the most artistically expressive alternative process there is because of its use of layers, textures, color, and the visible artist’s hand.
Hi, I am intrigued. I have a gum bichromate print in green, passion blue and black mounted with a latex letterpress mould. entitled ‘self portrait of MONUMENT’ signed To Christopher, merry xmas 1995 May this picture serve to remind you how much fun music can be love from Tim does this mean anything to anyone. I would love to find out