A collective of alternative photographic process created works that challenge the ideas of the photographic impacts on the environment as well as what people are doing to change their personal impact through the way that they work.

As the need to be more environmentally friendly when it comes to creating and printing photographic material and creating art, photographers and artists have been creating alternative processes techniques for almost as long as photography has been around. Caffanol, cyanotype, argyrotype, salt prints, albumen print, anthotypes, and chlorophyll prints, are some to name a few of the main process now known. With organisations such as The Sustainable Darkroom taking the research lead into newer sustainable processes, including creating developers out of seaweed and pelargonium prints.

Alternative Processes

Anthotypes

Anthotype prints are made by using natural pigmentation within plants, flowers and food products, such as grass, tulips and turmeric to create emulsions that can be applied to a surface. Then objects are placed on top to block out parts of the prepared surface and protect it from the bleaching process caused by the UV light from the sun.

Caffenol Developing

Developing using caffenol does not use harmful chemicals that harm the environment, in fact it is made up of mostly household items : instant coffee, vitamin c and crystal soda.

Fixer suggestion - Eco Zonefix (Zone Imaging)

Chlorophyll Printing

chlorophyll printing originated from Sir John Herschel's chlorophyll research but was adapted by Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey which allowed them to print pictures on grass canvases using negative images on a projector. It was Binh Danh who recently used similar methods to allow him to print these images onto the smaller surfaces of leaves by using only positive on acetate and the sun.

Cyanotype

Cyanotypes printing involves 4 easy steps:

1. mixing the solution (jacquard cyanotype set provides pre-mixed A and B solutions).

2. coating the canvas by either dipping it in the solution or brushing it on.

3. exposing with compositions of objects of negatives on top of the coated surfaces.

4. washing the finished exposure to fix the image and turn it blue.

Lumen Prints

lumen printing is a camera-less process involving black and white photographic paper. it is essentially a solar photogram that uses the sun/Uv light to create an impression of the subject onto the paper. Organic material is the most commonly used subject matter but it is also possible to print man- made objects too.

Pinhole Photography

A pinhole camera is a simplified camera that does not require a battery or electrical components. It is essentially a light tight container with a small hole (the lens) that allows light in and projects an image using the camera obscura phenomenon. this image can be captured by using darkroom paper, but it will appear as a negative so will need to be inverted digitally.

These processes are the ones that artist that are included in the is project are working with, for a wider range of processes check out AlternativePhotography.com, which has a wide data base on the majority of alternate processes, but keep in mind they might not all are sustainable.