Workshops for historical photographic techniques:
For many photographers, classical as well as alternative techniques of making photographic images, possess the qualities of something old, decrepid and long antiquated. No matter how incomprehensible it is for the stalwart devotees of new age technologies, the number of photo artists who allow themselves to be enchanted by extremely precise, jealously guarded alternative techniques, often kept secret under dramatic circumstances, keeps on growing. It seems that the infinite number of technical variations and possibilities of digital print bears with it an inseparable desire to discover all those old methods of manually extracting the resulting image from a negative as an expression of searching for the necessary counterbalance to perfection.
By the end of the19th century, a whole range of charming techniques were being used, thus making each photograph a unique and often unreproducible original. Besides, the overwhelming majority of old techniques did not occur in the past as a result of technical necessity but as an expression of the desire to come close to the process of making a painting or a work of graphic art. Anyone who even just once attempts to create a platinum print or gum biochromate print, will instantly grasp that a whole new world of photographic imaging is opening up ahead with a compelling richness of tones and gentle shades of colours realized on carefully chosen papers.
Workshop organizers are well aware that it is not only possible to practice old techniques today, but moreover they can become an inseparable part of seriously minded contemporary photographic art. Every participant of the course will therefore be able to give his image the appearance of a historical painting, but will also have the room to search, with the help of recognizing the principles of old printing techniques, for a new visual expression in his current photographic work.
Prof. Miroslav Vojtěchovský, Workshop Lecturer
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