Richard Bailey

Richard Bailey from the UK is now retired from teaching and lecturing in art and design and pursuing alternative photography.
From: Sheffield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Shows: Casein bichromates, cyanotypes and gum bichromates.

[Show slideshow]

Richard Bailey retired after over 30 years as a teacher and lecturer in art and design education. His teaching experience was across a number of areas within art and design including fine art, photography, graphic design and digital design. He holds a Hons Degree from the University of Sheffield with specialisms in painting and ceramics and a Cert Ed teaching qualification.

It was after his post secondary school education at Rotherham School of Art & Design that Richard Bailey first developed his passion for photography. Following this, his education included vocational qualifications from Coventry College of Art & Design in graphic design and photography.

On retirement, Richard Bailey decided to pursue his interest in 19-century alternative photographic processes after dabbling a little whilst still teaching full time. Gum printing was an alt photo process he had wanted to explore for some time so he set to work reading about the process. After reading Christina Anderson’s books which included a wealth of information on the gum bichromate process amongst others, he felt ready to begin his journey into the magical world of alternative photographic processes. He continues to experiment with other processes including casein dichromate and more recently Dan Burkholder’s Photo Gilding process and the Gumoil process.

Richard Bailey’s current goal is to build a sufficient body of work from which to exhibit his prints.

His introduction to alternative photographic processes was the discovery of a chapter titled “Rediscovering Old Processes” in Michael Langford’s wonderfully informative book “The Darkroom Handbook”.

Inspired by the book he made his first print – a cyanotype photogram on watercolour paper exposed using the sun. He was hooked!

It was a frustrating journey at first with many failures but he learnt a lot and loved experimenting with the process. He particularly enjoyed the uniqueness of each print even after using the same negatives, colours and exposure times. He also learnt to accept the flaws in some of the prints which added to their uniqueness.

“From simple beginnings with cyanotype I went on to experiment further with the gum bichromate process which drew me due to its printmaking and watercolour like qualities.”

More about Richard Bailey: