{"id":516,"date":"2010-09-27T15:40:22","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T19:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/?p=516"},"modified":"2010-09-29T09:17:18","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T13:17:18","slug":"a-note-from-the-chemistry-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/?p=516","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Simeen Sattar: Artists’ Materials: Metals and Prints"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a physical chemist in the physics program with a long-standing personal interest in art history.\u00a0 I\u2019m teaching a new course this semester about the chemistry of photography.\u00a0 Since the goal of the course is to understand the chemistry of light-sensitive materials, the first four weeks have stressed light and color, ionic and covalent compounds, and chemical reactions.\u00a0\u00a0 Alongside these topics, we\u2019ve studied, and made, dichromate prints, cyanotypes, and diazo prints.\u00a0 In contrast to conventional photography, none of these processes involve silver.<\/p>\n

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Student making diazo prints<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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Diazo Prints<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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In the cyanotype process, a paper coated with a yellow light-sensitive solution is exposed to sunlight.\u00a0 Within a few minutes, ultraviolet light induces the formation of an iron compound known as Prussian blue in exposed areas.\u00a0 It\u2019s quite magical.\u00a0 The cyanotype process was invented by the renowned astronomer Sir John Herschel in the 1840s.\u00a0 Prussian blue itself is part of another story. \u00a0Discovered in the early 1700s, it is the first modern artificial pigment and displaced ultramarine and cobalt blue from artists\u2019 palettes.<\/p>\n

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A stunning cyanotype made from a black and white negative.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We\u2019re now moving on to the chemistry of silver-based photography using a wonderful book by Roger Bunting called The Chemistry of Photography<\/em>.\u00a0 The highlight of this week\u2019s experiment is making a silver mirror.\u00a0 Next week, we\u2019ll make salted paper prints, the precursor to silver\/emulsion photography.<\/p>\n

Photos and cyanotype: Kazio Sosnowski<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a physical chemist in the physics program with a long-standing personal interest in art history.\u00a0 I\u2019m teaching a new course this semester about the chemistry of photography.\u00a0 Since the goal of the course is to understand the chemistry of light-sensitive materials, the first four weeks have stressed light and color, ionic and covalent compounds, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}