Paper Neg: Port Oneida

View in all its largeness.

I picked up a quirky little book at last week's Crappy Camera Club
meeting: Picture Making with Paper Negatives, by Nowell Ward, first
published in 1938. I read it in bed when I got home and got thoroughly
inspired. The process outlined in the book is basically very simple,
though long-winded, and I followed it pretty closely to make this
picture:

1. The negative was made with a Yashica Mat 124G, Tri-X, red
filter. Developed in HC-110. This was taken back in my artist residency
last summer.

2. I made a paper positive with the enlarger, on expired Kodabromide,
projected like a regular print, but over-exposed by about a stop.
Developed in expired (and pretty oxidised) Dektol.

3. Then I made a paper negative by contact printing the paper
positive. Exposure time was about a minute, using the enlarger as a
light source, lens wide open. Same paper and dev.

4. The final print made by contact printing the paper negative, this
time the exposure was just 15 secs. Same paper and dev.

Each step is dependent on getting exposure right on each of the
previous steps, so it takes a bit of experimentation and luck,
especially to tame the crazy contrast (which I mostly failed to do).

Oh yeah, and there's some paper kitchen towel action going on in there too...