Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the centrepiece of Buddhism for the Burmese
Horse-drawn vehicles are still a common sight in rural Myanmar.
Printed on Argentone Polybrom FB glossy, a difficult paper to lith but one that can produce interesting results. These both had extremely long exposures (up to 1000 seconds) and long develop times in Moersch Master Lith A+B (25:1000) + Solution D at 30+ degrees Celsius. Not a lith paper for the impatient…
Lith prints from a day of traipsing through deep snow in Nabekura Kogen in Nagano (2012)
The same image as above but printed on Argentone Polybrom and toned gold (turning it blue)
Lith prints toned with gold toner result in a moody ink-blue.
The sea at Miura-Kaigan, Miura Peninsula south of Tokyo
This Shetland pony is one of the few survivors at Tokue Hosokawa‘s farm in Iitate, Fukushima Pref. Hosokawa blames the many deaths on radiation from the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was crippled in the March 2011 disaster.
More lith prints of images shot along the Tohoku coastline soon after the monster tsunami on March 11, 2011. From top, Toni, a fishing village in Iwate Prefecture; a man walks through damaged rice fields between Kesennuma and Minamisanriku (a personal favourite); women from a local shelter burning tsunami debris near Minamisanriku; a man surveys the damage south of Kesennuma. Click on images to enlarge.
Experiments in hand-colouring inspired by Adolfo Farsari and other great hand-colourist of the 19th century. As these early attempts of mine show, hand-colouring, or hand-tinting, black and white prints is a skill that requires a lot of practice. Skin colour, in particular, is a long process of trial and error.
These were done using Marshall’s paints on fibre matt prints, but many types of paints can be used on both fibre and RC paper. Click on images to enlarge.
Bath time for a Lepcha child in west Sikkim. I took this picture near the sacred Kechopalri lake while walking a slow and circuitous route in 2002 from Darjeeling in India’s West Bengal to Gangtok, the capital of the Himalayan state and former kingdom.
The stunning gold of the print was the result of toning Forte Polywarm RC glossy paper with Kodak’s two-part sepia toner. Alas, neither product exists today, with Kodak looking to follow Forte into total oblivion. Click on image to enlarge.
Too hot here to spend any time in the darkroom, which I’m now dismantling in preparation to move. Hence these lith prints made a while back of images shot years ago at Miura-Kaigan in Kanagawa, south of Tokyo. Autumn can’t come soon enough…
On my last visit to Myanmar, I visited two cities in the country’s deep south that are off the beaten track. In Myeik, a major port a few hours drive from Thailand, I was befriended by an immigration officer at the airport. On my second day there, he took me to the International Fishing Port, where he had to check Thai fishermen as they landed. The small boats in these pictures act as sea taxis, ferrying fishermen to their boats, which are anchored offshore. Click on images to enlarge.
Toned prints made using scrunched greaseproof paper as a texture that is laid directly over the photographic paper. From top: Gent in Shinjuku; farmers demonstrating against TEPCO in Tokyo; kite over Lawson; kitesurfer on Miura-Kaigan beach. Click on images to enlarge.
Prints of Myanmar shot on a $4.60 Vivitar PN2011 plastic camera on faux panorama mode. All it really does is mask the top and bottom of a 35mm image. From top: hauling rolls of material in Yangon; a Buddhist monk in Dawei, southern Myanmar; a Muslim woman in Yangon. Click on images to enlarge.
positive image 