Two photographic prints on habotai silk.The one  on the left is 75% platinum and 25% palladium. On the right is a pure platinum print.

I have made a set of three prints in platinum on silk, and one in platinum with a small amount of palladium added to preserve delicate mid tones. The images are from my Texas Revolution series: The Alamo, San Fernando Cathedral, the Tumulus of the Heroes at Goliad, and the Urrea Oaks just south of Refugio Texas. These prints are unique: after several years of testing, reformulating, ruining hundreds of sheets of pure silk and wasting countless grams of platinum and palladium, I have perfected printing platinum on silk. I do not mean the moronic assertion common on the interwebs: "I do platinum prints using palladium." Rather, I mean images formed from potassium platinum chloride dissolved in distilled water and mixed with a light-sensitive iron-based chemical applied to specially prepared silk. The silk in these videos is habotai, originally a Japanese product though now largely made in China. Habotai silk is simply a different weave from charmeuse and is glossy on one side and matte on the other. Habotai is particularly appropriate for printing with platinum (or other metals) as it preserves details that are obscured by charmeuse.

 

The Book is an edition of eight platinum and palladium prints, six of which are on silk and two on cotton. All are mounted (sewn at extreme corners) on black primed cotton canvas. On the reverse of each canvas page is mounted a poem introducing the photograph en face and printed on either light cotton canvas or silk. The binding is anodized aluminum with a screwpost configuration to permit laying the prints flat and also to facilitate removing a print at will.

In 2017, the American Institute for Conservation published Platinum and Palladium Photographs: Technical History, Connoisseurship, and Preservation. That book contains a fascinating chapter on platinum printing on textiles, by Ronel Namde, at the National Gallery of Art. Namde observes that platinum prints on textiles have long been written about but that few such prints actually exist. That chapter can be downloaded from the AIC site: Platinum Printing on Textiles PDF.

In 1897 William Willis' Platinotype Company released for the first time, with great fanfare, silk presensitized with platinum. Other textiles coated with platinum ready to print had been available since at least the early 1880s. But it was not announced until early in 1897 that someone had figured out how to prep silk so that, on exposure to uv or actinic light, the platinum could be reduced to its image-forming elemental state. Why the material was never popular and why practically no platinum on silk prints from that time exist today is unclear. My guess is that the printers cleared their  platinum silk in the standard hydrochloric acid used for dissolving the ferrous iron in platinum prints on paper. At 1% or 2% strength that acid probably severely damaged the fibers of the silk and so,  in the heavily polluted (with sulfur dioxide, from coal burning) air typical of the first three-quarters or so of the 20th century, the silk and the images deteriorated and were discarded. Another major factor could just have been the high price: far less costly silver prints on silk, usually toned with gold, from the 1890s well into the 1930s are plentiful and can be picked up for a trifle off Ebay, Etsy, etc.  Nowhere is a platinum on silk print to be found for sale (or viewing).

By 1910 or so the price of platinum -- a metal far more important to the war-crazy Europeans for manufacturing weapons than for producing high art -- had exploded. Willis introduced palladium paper and the Satista paper (platiium-silver). In the early 1920s the platinum-treated silk was discontinued. Gone, not made anymore by anyone anywhere. And when the Platinotype Company shut down in the 1930s the formula for preparing silk for printing platinum was discarded, probably in a furnace. When the price of platinum eventually fell back to an affordable level after World War II, Irving Penn and other photographers resumed printing with platinum, and less so with palladium, using the old hand-coated paper techniques.

Platinum on cotton prints were all the rage in New York City among well-heeled photographers who could actually afford such prints during the mid 1980s. Mapplethorpe, Leibovitz, and Horst all notably commissioned platinum-cotton prints of some of their better known images (none were on silk, which was not possible since the early 1920s). Some of the cotton prints even figured in the 2018 film, Mapplethorpe. The tragedy of those prints, considering Christie's and various NYC art galleries' fantasy descriptions of cotton prints with platinum variously as linen, canvas, silk -- anything not the pedestrian cotton on which they were printed -- is simply that they were not on silk. The late David Chow reported on his wordpress site,  with straight face, that the famous Horst image of a nude Lisa Fonssagrives reclining on a piece of silk -- titled "Lisa on Silk" -- is, as a Christie's copy writer mistakenly noted, printed on silk. In another outburst of enthusiasm for nonsense, Chow also claimed with no basis that Horst printed entire sets of his negatives in platinum on silk. Hardly. Just visit www.platinumaxon.com: Axon's splash page lists a few of his clients, including Horst P Horst. Even recently, one gallery so frustrated apparently by the non-existence of any platinum-silk prints to sell has announced they can offer Mapplethorpe images in platinum on silk -- as photogravures made with platinum. Not quite the same thing as an actual photographic print. I have set up a separate site,  platinumprintsonsilk.wordpress.com, to counter Chow's misinformation since he is in no condition to correct his errors.

In 2022, I began experimenting with printing nickel on fabric. I had hoped to reengineer the same technique for nickel as the one I invented for printing photographs in rhodium: use palladium to trigger image-forming reduction of the recalcitrant metal followed by an acid bath to dissolve the palladium. To my shock, I found that nickel actually protects palladium from attack by hydrochloric acid. In other words, my process did not work. However, I found nickel mixed with noble metals enhances the luminosity of images. It is particularly effective with palladium and gold, less so with platinum. With dry print out processes I routinely mix in iridium, ruthenium and rhodium for various special effects and a small amount of nickel balances those metals: nickel deftly soothes iridium's contrast, cleans up rhodium's sootiness, and restores the acutance that ruthenium erases while keeping the unearthly glow. After I mastered printing on cotton and cotton-linen blends, I moved on to The Prize: platinum and palladium on silk.

The Book is the presentation of the first photographic prints with platinum-palladium and palladium on silk ever made.  This is a first iteration -- I expect to add more pure platinum prints and withdraw many palladium-nickel ones.

Inspired by the French Symbolist Mallarme, The Book presents flowers as symbols of transformation. The Book is bound in anodized aluminum. The pages are easily removed and the images framed or otherwise mounted for display.

COVER: Cotton on Aluminum

INTERIOR FRONT COVER: Title and First Image

The 5x7 negative of tulips in vase is printed in platinum enhanced with palladium and gold. The fabric is medium weight charmeuse silk.

SECOND PAGE: Poem Facing Second Image

The 5x7 negative of tulips in vase is printed in platinum and palladium. The fabric is light weight habotai silk.

THIRD PAGE: Poem Facing Third Image

The 5x7 negative of aroused tulips is printed in palladium with nickel. The fabric is medium weight cotton.

FOURTH PAGE: Poem Facing Fourth Image

The 5x7 negative of out of control tulips is printed in palladium with nickel. The fabric is light weight charmeuse silk.

FIFTH PAGE: Poem Facing Fifth Image

The 4x5 negative of sunflowers in vase is printed in palladium with nickel. The fabric is medium weight cotton.

SIXTH PAGE: Poem Facing Sixth Image

The 5x7 negative of lightstruck tulips is printed in platinum, palladium, and gold with rhodium and nickel. The fabric is light weight charmeuse silk.

SEVENTH PAGE: Poem Facing Seventh Image

The 6x8 negative of the transformation is printed in palladium with gold and nickel. The fabric is medium weight habotai silk.

EIGHTH PAGE: Poem Facing Eighth Image

The 4x5 negative of the Awakening is printed in palladium and platinum with nickel. The fabric is light weight charmeuse silk.

BACK COVER: Brushed Aluminum