Photographic Mandalas:  Palladium Prints and Color Prints

An outgrowth of my interests in the mandala and in textural photography, these visually abstract images are nonetheless photographic from start to finish.  Prototypes were made by hand from multiple copies of textural photographs, then rephotographed to create negatives and diapositives, which were in turn used to make prints by various contact processes. The color prints were developed by hand in trays, while the palladium prints involved the hand-coating of artist's paper with a palladium chloride solution, exposure by ultraviolet light, and tray development. 

The palladium prints were printed with a single exposure to a negative, with a sheet of sensitized artist's paper and a negative positioned in a printing frame.  I had to take some care in applying the solution, but with a little experience this was not difficult.  The color prints (mostly chromogenic, or Type C) were a bit more complicated, as they were made by two successive exposures (and occasionally three):  one with a negative, and another with a diapositive (both black and white), each with a different color setting applied to the enlarger head, so as to print one color in the shadows and another in the highlights of the image.  To preserve the alignment of the image, I used a system of pin registration, with all negatives, diapositives, and photographic paper punched to register precisely on the pins.  (The "pins" are small, flat strips of stainless steel affixed to the glass of the printing frame, each one with a button-shaped protrusion or "pin", about 1/4" in diameter and 3/32" in height.  The materials are punched with a standard office punch.)

Pin-registration is not the only complexity of the color prints.  Although part of a limited edition, each one is unique in its color scheme.  Color is adjusted in Type C printing by means of yellow and magenta filters, graduated in strength, and controlled by dials on the enlarger head.  The prints were exposed in groups, for which the sets of exposures were planned to follow a certain sequence.  For example, I might expose a set of eight sheets of photographic paper at 50Y, 55Y, 60Y, 65Y, 70Y, 75Y, 80Y, and 85Y with the negative (for the shadows), and then, respectively, 75M, 70M, 65M, 60M, 55M, 50M, 45M, and 40M with the diapositive (for the highlights).  With this progression, the colors would range from yellowish to bluish in the shadows, and in the highlights from greenish to more magenta.  

While I realize this is excruciatingly technical  (even incomprehensible) for most people, there was an idea or two behind all this that went beyond mere questions of method.  One was simply my preference for variation, even deliberate, within an edition, instead of the usual objective in printmaking of all kinds – lithography, etching, what-have-you – of making a series of more-or-less identical prints.  A little more interesting is my notion of the progressive, regular intervals of the variations in color, which I see in relation to tonal intervals in music, which are essentially mathematical.  (Musical intervals are logarithmic, of course – in that each octave is pitched at twice the frequency of the octave just below it, and the notes at particular intervals in between – while my settings are simply numeric.  But the idea of harmony implicit in these intervals is the same.)

The following is a text that goes a bit into the way these things were made.  For more on the subject of mandalas (whatever be the medium), see the two texts in the next section of this group, "Mandalas - A Brief Artist's Statement", and "Mandalas:  Their Evolution, and Long Production Notes".

Photographic Mandalas – Brief Production Notes

– The mandala has been, for a time, one of the most important motifs in my work.  Much of my painting, graphics, and drawing used mandalas or mandala-like imagery.  The mandalas, like most traditional mandalas, were always rather schematic – that is, although usually rather intricate, there was no attempt at verisimilitude to the natural world.  To develop this further, I wanted to make mandalas with a richness of detail that would rival that of nature itself.  Meanwhile, from the beginnings of my work in photography, I had already been preoccupied with texture and pattern.  I realized I could incorporate photographic imagery into the mandala.  (This work dates from about 1979 to 1984.)

– Working with a pair of mirrors, hinged together to form a sort of hand-held kaleidoscope, I studied selected prints of textural imagery to determine the possibilities.  A given mirror angle determined a certain number of sections; e.g. an angle of 30° gave me an image of twelve sections.  I then printed a batch of each image, half exposed with the negative in the normal orientation, the other half with the negative inverted. These were cut with precision to yield the sections I wanted, then assembled carefully on mounting board.  This prototype was rephotographed with a graphic arts camera to create a series of negatives of different degrees of density and contrast, as well as diapositives made from the negatives.

– I then made prints by various processes, especially palladium printing and other hand processes.  In this, a sheet of artist’s paper is hand-coated with a solution of palladium chloride, exposed to a UV (ultra-violet light) source in contact with a negative, and then developed.  The image is formed of a deposit of palladium, much as a conventional black-and-white image is formed of silver, but with a tonal and tactile lushness that far surpasses a conventional print.  To make prints in color, I used a system of pin-registration, exposing sheets of color paper successively to a negative and a diapositive, one to print a range of color in the shadows, and the other to print another color in the highlights.

For additional commentary (besides the two items linked-to above), see this artist's statement:  "Artist's Statement for the Nicholas Roerich Museum Exhibition". 

Allen Schill

© 2014 Allen Schill.  All rights reserved in all countries.  No part of this document may be reproduced or used in any form without prior written permission from the author.  Anyone is welcome to link to it or to quote brief passages, but I would like to be notified.

Links to mandalas made by photographic means:

Digital Abstraction

Photographic Mandalas in Palladium and Color