CARBON TRANSFER PRINTING

Making a Carbon Transfer Print

Making a Carbon Print with Earth Pigments

THE CARBON TRANSFER PRINT

Sought by collectors and demanding artists, handmade prints such as platinum or carbon transfer capture the beauty that great photos deserve. The carbon transfer printing has been around since the late 19th century, and is practiced today by a small handful of people who value quality and artistry over all else. Renowned for its archival stability, rich shadows, clarity, and luxurious texture the carbon print is considered the pinnacle of photographic processes.  

Here are a few characteristics of carbon prints-
          Archival Stability: Since the prints are made of pure carbon pigment, they will never fade. The Long Now Foundation chose carbon prints for the gallery that accompanies their 10,000 year clock.  
          Exclusivity: Even more so than a platinum print, carbon prints are enormously difficult, time consuming and expensive to make.
          Paper: Since the photo will never fade, the paper must last as long as possible. I print on the highest quality and heaviest pure cotton watercolor papers available. 
          Smooth Highlights: A shortfall in most carbon prints. With my method, I can create highlights that transition delicately from paper white without visible grain.
          Clarity and Dimension: Tonality in a carbon transfer printing is achieved through thick and thin layers of pigmented gelatin. The dark areas are raised up like relief on a topographical map giving the print an incredible sense of dimension and clarity.
          Durability: I have 150 year old carbon prints in the studio that look like they were printed yesterday.
          Pigments: Any pigment can be used to create any effect. Imagine a photograph of a nude model covered in gold paint. An inkjet print of that photo would result in nothing more than a yellow looking model. With a carbon print, metallic pigments or even powdered gold could be used to print the model’s body. This would result in a print true to the photographers intentions.
          Rich Blacks: No other pigment based process can produce blacks as dark as the carbon process or separate tones in the shadows as well.
          Luxurious Texture: The texture of a carbon print is an extraordinary thing. The pigment and gelatin perfectly follow the contour of the fibers of the paper resulting in an image rich in dimension and quality.
          One of a Kind: Handmade prints are works of art, not copies of it. Like snowflakes, no two are exactly the same. One can print hundreds of copies of a photo on an inkjet printer, but they are just copies and not original works of art.

MAKING A CARBON PRINT:

There are 10 main steps in making a carbon print. Here is a quick and almost oversimplified version of what goes into making a single photograph.

  1. Sizing paper
  2. Making tissue
  3. Making temporary support
  4. Printing the negatives
  5. Exposing the negatives
  6. Mating the emulsion to a temporary support
  7.  Developing the print
  8. Transferring image from the plastic temporary support to paper
  9. Transferring the print to a final paper support
  10. Clearing the print

The Paper: When it takes hours to make a single print I want to be working with the best materials possible. Any high quality paper will work, but my main choice of paper is 640gsm Fabriano Artistico High White hot pressed. Other papers I use are from the Arches paper mill in France and St Cuthberts Mill in England. All papers are made of 100% cotton fibers and contain no optical brighteners. For the image to stick to the paper, it is necessary to size it with gelatin. I can control the gloss of the paper by applying a thin layer of gelatin to create matte prints or a heavy layer to create glossy prints. If you have a special paper, texture or glossiness in mind, contact me. 

The Emulsion: This is a thin layer of gelatin and carbon pigment from which the image will be made. It’s made by mixing water, gelatin, sugar, pigment, and a sensitizer. This mix is then poured in an even layer over a plastic film and dried in a lightproof room.   

The Temporary Support: This is a plastic sheet which I have coated with albumen and hardened. This will be the image’s temporary home until it gets transferred onto paper. The image can be transferred directly onto paper, but layering isn’t possible because paper isn’t dimensionally stable.  

The Negatives: I use between 4-14 imagesetter negatives. This system allows me total control over the tonality of the final print, and allows me to print beautifully smooth tones. Imagesetter negative are much more expensive than inkjet negatives, but the quality in incomparable. 

Exposing: The negatives are exposed one by one onto the emulsion. Light passing through the negative hardens the gelatin, making it insoluble in hot water.

Mating: The emulsion is soaked in water and sandwiched with a plastic temporary support.

Developing: The sandwich is submerged in hot water and the plastic backing to the emulsion is peeled off leaving the image stuck to the temporary support. Now it’s a mess of pigmented gelatin and nothing can be seen, but as the unhardened gelatin washes away the image appears. 

The Second Transfer: The plastic sheet is joined with the gelatin sized paper under water and hung to dry. When dry the plastic sheet is peeled away leaving the image on the paper.

The Third Transfer: To get a matte print, the image from the second transfer step in sandwiched under water with a final paper support. This sandwiched is then developed just as before.

Clearing: At this point there is still a small amount of sensitizer trapped in the pigmented gelatin in the image and this needs to be washed away.

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