B&W Gallery

Black & White Gallery

REALITY TRANSFORMED:
Platinum Multiples
by
Ruth Formanek

These Rorschach-like platinum/palladium multiples use some of my negatives from many years of shooting. These medium-format negatives are either contact printed or enlarged, and assembled in multiples, both straight and reversed. If you look closely at one frame at a time, you will recognize individual scenes of landscapes, trees, waterfalls, etc. But these individual scenes are subordinated to the overall design resulting from the presentation as multiples; they assume a perceptual dynamic of their own and a reality not present in the original negative. The design, which seems to transform reality, illustrates the principle that ‘the whole differs from the sum of its parts.
I explore this transformation of reality by
(1) trying to identify those elements of images which lend themselves to multiple printing,
(2) studying the perceptual principles that make such transformations possible (e.g., size, figure-ground reversals, edge merging, contour and contrast alterations), and
(3) trying to understand how such perceptual changes can produce an esthetic appeal.
Although multiples can be produced in the darkroom or digitally, I prefer the rich tonalities inherent in platinum/palladium prints.
This is a process which was used in the 19th century and is almost as old as photography itself. Watercolor paper is coated with a mix of platinum, palladium and other chemicals, the negative is contact printed by means of either sunlight or special fluorescent bulbs, then developed in potassium oxalate. Each print is thus unique. In contrast, the silver gelatin process can produce an unlimited number of identical prints from one negative by way of the enlarger and photographic paper.

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