Adventures in Alternative Photo Processing

*Holding on - By Samantha Bias 2019 ; Anthotype

This year has been a huge time of change for me. One of the changes being that I decided to dive into the infinite world of photography. As a painter I never thought I would enjoy living my life through a lens and I still don't. So I found an alternative. It's kind of on the cusp of painting and photos; it's alternative photo processing!

What is alternative photo processing (alt pro) you ask? It's an untraditional form of photography often experimental, outdated or primitive. My favorite form of alt pro is cameraless photography.

Now, how can you take a photo without a camera? Well let me tell you - it's possible, fun and it's my new favorite medium!

In May of this year I applied to be an artist in residence at the Cleveland Print Room. CPR is known for its community outreach and education specializing in dark room and looking beyond the camera, breaking the traditional rules of what is deemed photography. I did not think as a watercolorist that had little to no experience in photography in a million years would get picked. To my luck, passion and hard work my proposal was accepted and I was chosen to create cyanoypes in my project called "Behind Blue Eyes".

I was (and still am) thrilled that I was awarded the opportunity to have the space and a stipend to be able to deep dive and learn this very new and exciting medium.

At first, I kept it very safe doing botanical cyanotypes like the great Anna Atkins which I drew much of my early inspiration from. I knew that I enjoyed learning about the botanical properties of plants and have for my entire life. From then on the webs began to spin in my head of how I can push those limits beyond the cyan blue and see how far I can go.

One very late night - of which I would typically treat paper with the photosensitive emulsion - I had an idea. It sparked in my brain that 'what if I could create a photosensitive chemical using the photosensitive chemical in plants instead of using a pre-mixture emulsion for cyanotypes?' From then on the though spider webbed into the alt process that I am using today - Anthotypes & Chlorophyll Process.

My experiments were not always great successes, but art is a tricky mistress and not everything is a masterpiece.

I feel that my residency at the Cleveland Print Room and allowing myself to learn new mediums, let go of perfection and step out of my comfort zone has been really paying off.

Stay tuned for the how and why of my new alternative processes in the works!