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Ice, Ice

Currently on view in Energy in Flux at Maine Museum of Photographic Arts 

October 4- November 30, 2024

I make inventive collaborative photographic work using my cinema eye to explore the chemical and physical possibilities of photographic processes. Sir John Herschel invented the pre-silver nitrate process, ferroprussiate (Cyanotype) in 1842. He discovered that Iron (ferrous) salts could create a blue and white image when combined with Ferric ammonium citrate and exposed to light. This is how the botanist, Anna Atkins, created her first historic book, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in 1844. I learned of cyanotypes from a Non-Silver Photo Class in 1976. It opened my eyes to obvious possibilities: physically collaborating with light-sensitive chemistry, light and time and water. This opened my life-long focus on “What If, and If Not Now, When?”

My “Ice, Ice,” cyanotype series has the same base and process: cyanotype chemistry (traditional formula) applied to Color Photo Print Paper, exposed to light with found natural materials, placed on the surface, including ice, water, glass fragments. What I varied was how I responded to changing weather:sensitized papers were placed in the snow overnight, allowing for unpredictable results.  The glory of working with cyanotypes is the printing-out process in natural light and the “developing” in water. The image is a record of the ice melting, the wind blowing and light changing. Again, I bow to the wisdom of renowned physicist, Richard Feynman - "The prize is in the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, ……those are the real things.…” The images enable the viewer to imagine, be curious and be in awe, simultaneously. - C.S.

Ice, Ice, Glass, Foraged Nature, Ice slides, 2005, Cyanotype on color photo paper, 24 x 20 inches, $450 each

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© 2024 by Caroline Elizabeth Savage all Rights of Reproduction Reserved

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