I am a self-taught artist and photographer as a hobby. Links: Website Vi Andare (Lisbon, Portugal) The pinkish line around the perimeter just under the darker border is where I applied white vinegar with a small paint brush before exposing the print. The items in the print are small plant cuttings, a dead coneflower seed head and a poker chip. My current lumen prints have been influenced by the global pandemic. To expose a lumen print or a cyanotype, I use natural sunlight or a small ultraviolet light that I have attached to a tripod. My physical work space is rather limited, so I tend to make very small pieces (chemigrams, cyanotypes and lumen prints), that are 5×7 or 8×10 inches. I often utilize ink or diluted developer to counter the fading. The frustrating aspect of lumen printing, in particular, is what happens to the print after it has been fixed (the colors sometimes become faded). What I find most captivating about the process of contact printing is its sheer unpredictability. I am hopelessly obsessed with the world of alternative photography. I have a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and a MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop. Links: Instagram Maureen Mulhern-White (Connecticut, USA)īorn in England, I spent my early years in the UK before moving to the US where I am a naturalized citizen. Unfortunately not everyone feels the same way and they seem to inspire superstition and extreme negative feelings in many people. I have been watching a pair that are nesting in a tree outside my kitchen window and have developed a great fondness and admiration for them.

The idea for the image came about following a heated discussion some friends were having on social media about magpies. This latest image is composed of some of these hand-drawn negatives, fruit netting and a piece of silk. I’ve also been making hand-drawn negatives using permanent markers on acetate. My initial experiments were mostly with flowers and other organic materials but since lock-down I’ve also begun to incorporate some man-made objects. I’m still working my way through that roll of paper as well as a selection of other papers I’ve picked up since then. Perhaps I could give it to a student I knew? I had a look on the internet to see if it might still be usable and discovered the wonder that is lumen photography. I found it again in 2017 and wondered if it was still usable. It turned out that I didn’t use the paper at all and it stayed at the back of a cupboard for many years. In 1999 I was starting a fine art photography degree in Glasgow School of Art and I bought a large roll of Kodak Polymax paper thinking I would get a great deal of use from it. My introduction to making lumen photographs came about by chance. 5 Jaime Aelavanthara (Lakeland, FL, USA).2 Maureen Mulhern-White (Connecticut, USA).In a way, it’s the perfect GAS antidote.įor the previous six contributions – as well as a more detailed introduction to lumen printing and other alternative photographic processes – please see Part 1, which came out last week. The process is experimental, tactile and above all simple – requiring only sunlight, photographic paper (expired or fogged paper will also do) and optionally fixer. In its simplest form, lumen involves placing objects on photosensitive paper and exposing it to sunlight to create an image. Using the medium of lumen, an alternative process which involves printing with sunlight, we explore themes of self-isolation and home-boundedness – both through the subject-matter (flowers from the garden, magpies by the kitchen-window…) and through the materials themselves (the prints were made using objects and light found in or around the home).

Lockdown Lumen is a collaborative project by 12 artists in 8 different countries in various stages of COVID-19 lockdown.

Lumen print