Sandy King

Sandy King is known to many for his work in Carbon and carbo and as the author of the book The Carbon Print.
From: Easley, South Carolina, USA.
Shows: Carbon, Carbro, Platinum/palladium.


Sandy King is a photo historian and landscape photographer, working primarily with large format and ultra large format cameras. He prints primarily with alternative processes, including carbon, kallitype and palladium, and is the author of The Carbon Print. Sandy has a Ph.D. in Spanish Language and Literature and taught for many years at Clemson University. His research focused on the history of photography in Spain, and he has published several books in the area of Pictorialism. He recently retired from Clemson University, but still lives nearby in Easley, South Carolina.

Although Sandy’s work has been influenced by several important traditions, including Pictorialism, his current thinking about photography is much more in tune with the aesthetic principles of what was known in the earliest days of the medium as the neutral vision, that is, the idea that the lens is an artificial retina capable of revealing to us things independent of our senses, a relatively objective way of seeing defended in the 1920s and 1930s by the members of the school of straight photography, who held that photography has certain basic qualities which, derived from its technical parameters, endow it with a specific mission and impose on it certain mechanical principles. This essentially objective, mechanistic character of photography is an enduring concept that was defended in the 1960s by the French critic André Bazin, and still finds a place in the thinking of numerous contemporary artists. It recognizes that the lens is magical in its ability to gather light from objects in the world and expand this image to a detailed and precise rendering of nature. Photography always begins with something that is real, and this for Sandy is its greatest strength, though not its only one, and it is what sets it apart from other manifestations of the Visual Arts.

More about Sandy King

Sandy King’s book on carbon printing
Carbon Transfer Printing: A Step-by-Step Manual, Featuring Contemporary Carbon Printers and Their Creative Practice

Carbon Transfer Printing: A Step-by-Step Manual, Featuring Contemporary Carbon Printers and Their Creative Practice

by Sandy King, Don Nelson and John Lockhart

Reviews the extensive history of carbon transfer and related pigment processes.

 
 
 
Recommended reading - Learn more about Carbon and carbro printing
Carbon Transfer Printing: A Step-by-Step Manual, Featuring Contemporary Carbon Printers and Their Creative Practice

Carbon Transfer Printing: A Step-by-Step Manual, Featuring Contemporary Carbon Printers and Their Creative Practice

by Sandy King, Don Nelson and John Lockhart

Reviews the extensive history of carbon transfer and related pigment processes.
 
 
 
Recommended reading - Books on Wet plate collodion and Ambrotypes
Chemical Pictures The Wet Plate Collodion Book: Making Ambrotypes, Tintypes & Alumitypes by

Chemical Pictures The Wet Plate Collodion Book: Making Ambrotypes, Tintypes & Alumitypes

by Quinn B Jacobson

Covers everything you need to know about wet-plate collodion photography.
 

Making the Sliding Box Camera: For Wet Plate Collodion or Daguerreotype Photography

Making the Sliding Box Camera: For Wet Plate Collodion or Daguerreotype Photography

by Ty Guillory

Learn how to construct a camera in wood, dating back to the daguerreotype era.
 

Making the Traditional Wet Plate Camera: Suitable for Wet Plate Collodion, Dry Plate, or Daguerreotype Photography

Making the Traditional Wet Plate Camera: Suitable for Wet Plate Collodion, Dry Plate, or Daguerreotype Photography

by Ty Guillory

From the basics to more advanced techniques on building a historically-correct bellows camera for plate photography.
 

The Ambrotype: A Practical Guide by Radosław Brzozowski
Buy directly from the author

The Ambrotype: A Practical Guide

by Radosław Brzozowski

8 of 10   Rated 8,0 – based on 6 votes

A step-by-step practical guide to ambrotypes.
 

The Wet Collodion Plate: 16 Steps To Making The Plates by Will Dunniway

The Wet Collodion Plate: 16 Steps To Making The Plates

by Will Dunniway

9 of 10   Rated 9,2 – based on 26 votes

The veteran of collodion demonstrates in easy steps how to make plates.
 
 
Recommended reading - Learn more about Platinum & palladium
Platinotype: Making Photographs in Platinum and Palladium with the Contemporary Printing-out Process

Platinotype: Making Photographs in Platinum and Palladium with the Contemporary Printing-out Process

by Pradip Malde and Mike Ware

Describes the mechanisms and chemistry of platinum/palladium printing in safe and practical ways.
 

Platinum and Palladium Printing by Dick Arentz

Platinum and Palladium Printing

by Dick Arentz

A complete guide.
 

The Old Made New: Richard Eugene Puckett’s Dry Print-Out Processes with Gold, Palladium, and Platinum
 

The Platinum Printing Workshop: Platinum/Palladium Printing Made Easy

The Platinum Printing Workshop: Platinum/Palladium Printing Made Easy

by Ian Leake

Workshop guide and walk-through of the process.
 

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