By Judy Parady 

Frank Hunter prints his photographs using a technique that is all but forgotten. The art of platinum palladium printing is painstaking and unforgiving, but rewards the artist with images that are alive and rich with nuance. For Hunter it is the only medium worthy of a subject he regards as sacred. He spends several weeks each year alone with the landscape he is drawn to depict, returning repeatedly to capture the magic he finds in rural Appalachia, a lake in Michigan and the low country of South Carolina.

Hunter learned much of the technical procedure he now employs at Ohio University where he received an MFA in photography. Hunter says he came to photography late, having already earned an undergraduate degree in political science. Yet a picture of him at five shows a camera strung around his neck. The introspective nature of his subject matter leads one to believe he has been thinking about images a long time.

JP: Why do you photograph?

FH: I believe places have spirit. We think of people as having souls. To me, places have souls. I grew up in the desert southwest, so I’m sensitive to landscape in a different way than most people. There is a quality of early morning and evening light in the southwest which is like nothing I’ve experienced anywhere else. It opens me to the spirit of that place. I think  that’s what landscape photographers are: they’re sensitive to the spirit of places. As an artist I see myself as a kind of channel. Things in the world are out there and the come though me. I don't see myself as the ultimate maker. I feel things come though me- sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. When my wife was pregnant, for example, I would photograph her (which is what you do when your wife is pregnant). Its a wonderful shape. That spring I went up to Ohio to photograph in a cave called Rock House. In this cave there were openings shaped by the wind over centuries. At one point I was standing inside the cave simply lining up one side of the cave wall with the other side. Lining them up in the frame made a very lyrical movement. I tripped the shutter and went on. When I got back to the darkroom and processed the film I immediately recognized what I had seen, but had not been consciously aware of, which was the shape of a pregnant woman in the negative space. It is extremely detailed in the shape of the body with the breast and a nipple, pubic hair and the shape of the pregnant belly. I’ve been back to this remote place since and if you stand a foot to the left or a foot to the right, that shape is not there. When things like that happen you realize how much your subconscious is taking in the information for you.

JP: Why are you interested in platinum palladium printing?

FH: The print, because it is tangible and visual, is the ultimate expression of photographic ideas. Platinum palladium printing is a form of printing which is very subtle. It can communicate as much or more than any other process I’ve ever seen. It has a tonal range which greatly surpasses silver prints. Silver prints, to me now, look very hard in terms of the contrast. Platinum palladium prints have a much greater range on both ends, and I have developed a particular technique for making the emulsion which allows me to have what would be the equivalent of a zero paper for the highlights and a number five paper for the shadows  in the same print.

It’s important for people to know that work done in an alternative processes is not the result of just a lot of technical labor. From my point of view, the only reason anyone would want to print in an alternative process is to express a particular visual idea. It’s only the idea that counts, and I bring as much technique as I need to that idea, and no more.

Before I started graduate school I worked with the El Paso Public Library printing from their glass plates. 19th century photographers had an entirely different contrast range than we have today. The plates were very dense. I realized I could not print from these plates on conventional paper, so I learned about an alternative process called studio proof, which portrait photographers used to make portraits proofs. The print is toned in gold chloride to fix it. The gold chloride gives the print a wonderful lavender tone. But I could not control the process. I would get one print that looked good and ten that did not. Kodak did away with the paper, which I now look at as a blessing. But I liked the tonal range that gold produced. That’s what led me to platinum printing.

JP: Describe how you make a picture.

FH: I go out in the field and look at a scene. I’ll read with my meter the different intensities of light. In my mind’s eye I determine how I want the photographic print to look. Do I want it to look kind of dark and heavy with highlights that sparkle in different places, or do I want it to look open without much darkness, without much contrast. I jot down exposure and development notes in a book I carry with me. Each photograph I make has a different exposure and a different development. Keeping them straight is hard because I’ll be out for a week in the field, and I mostly camp out. I download my film at night and  mark the film before I put it in the box so I will know what the development will be. Using scissors I cut the film on the edges, so in the dark I can tell what it is and what kind of development I need to give it. I have a little code: if it needs plus development I cut off the upper corner where the film notch is, that is for plus one. It works. When I get home I don’t want to spend days figuring out what’s in the box. When I develop the negatives, nine times out of ten they are close to where I wanted them to be. I’m getting fewer and fewer mistakes.

JP: How do you make a successful negative?

FH: When I first started photography, I would overexpose my negatives and then overdevelop them so that I would have something. So I had these very dense negatives and I would spend hours burning and dodging and fussing with the print to make it work. After my son was born, I had a couple of years when I didn’t do any field work . I used that time to learn how to expose a negative and how to develop it.

The equipment that counts for me when I’m making the picture is a very good light meter. I use a Pentax modified Zone VI spot meter. Apparently a normal spot meter reads certain greens in a way that does not work for black and white, so they modified it by putting in a filter that makes it more accurate.

I’ve experimented with different developers and different techniques. Currently I’m using the Pyro PMK developer. It was formulated by a photographer in California, Gordon Hutchinson, who generously published it and doesn’t get paid for its use. I make it myself from chemicals, but it is commercially available as well. The particular developer actually stains the negative. If you hold the negative up to the light it looks very thin, very yellow. That yellow stain on the negative actually prints as density. There is no density there, but because the materials we use are blue  sensitive, the yellow stain creates contrast. This developer allows you to overcome a lot of the technical problems you have with contrast. Because there isn’t density in the negative you can get an enormous contrast range and still print it because it isn’t all blocked up with silver.

I also have a Zone VI compensating timer for my tray developed negatives. A sensor sits in the tray and it compensates for any changes in temperature by adjusting the time. If it’s hot, it speeds up, cold, it slows down. It’s hard to make a bad negative.

JP: What camera and equipment do you take into the field?

FH: I have an old Kodak Commercial 8x10 camera. It was probably built in the 1940’s or 50’s. It’s made of aluminum which makes it reasonably lightweight and sturdy with a lot of flexibility. In some ways I would prefer a Dierdorff because the bed of the camera allows you to shoot close up without attachments. With my Kodak you have to put on attachments to get close up, but it’s been very good to me. Over the years I’ve bought a number of them from KEH.

I’ve pretty much stuck with the Nikkor lenses. I have a 300 f9 which works really well, and I have a 450 telephoto which I don’t use very much. I also have a Fuji 240 which I use quite a bit.

I calculate the exposure with a device that Calumet makes. You stick it on the thing you’re photographing and measure it on the ground glass. It tells you how much extra exposure to give. My exposures are often two or three minutes long.

I use TriX black and white medium speed film. It works real well with the developer and has a reasonably good grain. 

JP: Describe your platinum palladium printing process.

FH: All my technical work has a visual basis. I print so that the unexposed film edges turns black. I’ll pick a middle contrast and make a contact proof print. I can recognize from that contact print whether I need more exposure or less exposure, more development or less development. If it’s looking too hard, I will pull back on the development, and if it’s looking too soft, I will increase the development. These are things that take experience. I try to make a contact print that is pretty much what I saw when I was making the photograph. I use a modified form of the zone system. I do very little burning and dodging. If I really like the photograph I will work with it, making as many as ten or fifteen prints, continually working with it and keeping notes on the print as to contrast and time so that I’ll remember the next time I print it.

JP: Do you proof on silver paper?

FH: No, I do everything on platinum. You can’t judge a proof unless it’s on the paper you’re going to use. It’s expensive, but I buy my chemicals in bulk. I do everything in bulk so it’s less expensive for me to make a platinum print than it is for some people to make a really fine silver print. It takes less time for me, too. I can coat the paper, dry it, and within an hour have a print.

I currently use an Arches paper that is made for this process. I’m praying that they don’t do away with it. Once I bought $500 worth of Strathmore Bristol drawing paper and found they had changed from an acid process to an alkaline process, and instead of getting a beautiful warm print I was getting yellow highlights!

I coat the emulsion on a big piece of paper and use a  vacuum frame. I once used a large contact printing frame but it didn’t hold the negatives flat. So I built my own printer with a black light and a vacuum frame. It very easy to use. I use black lights because they have the most UV light which is in the range of the paper’s sensitivity. The exposures are in the five to eight minute range with some longer.

I try to buy equipment that will help me in this process. I have a wonderful timer called a Metrolux that has a photo cell that’s attached to the vacuum frame and compensates for the fluctuation in light. I score the prints in increments of time as set by this timer. That is how I can get such consistent results and it means I don’t make as many mistakes. This saves a lot of time and expense. Of course every print you make with this process is unique. Even with the precision of the light source, the emulsion and the paper and the effects of relative humidity have some influence on the outcome. That's why I like the process. It’s as close to a handmade thing as photography provides.

JP: After the paper is exposed is the rest of the development similar to silver?

FH: Somewhat similar. You put it in the developer, but it develops instantly, as opposed to silver where you can manipulate the development process by contracting or extending time. You do have some control over the print in platinum palladium. By using different developers and by heating some developers you can affect the tonalities. There are some platinum printers who use the developer as their source of contrast control. I’ve used the clearing bath to reduce the overall darkness of a print but this is problematic because it is like bleaching a silver print, most of the time it doesn’t produce the best results.

JP: Your gallery prints are larger than 8x10. Are they also  contact prints?

FH: I make 20x24 inch contact prints. There is more of a market for these than there is for the smaller contact prints. I make an inner negative, actually a contact positive from the original negative- this is the technical part- I have to get this right or it won’t work. I have a densitometer to get the density right so the next stage will duplicate the original negative. I take that 8x10 positive and enlarge it onto another sheet of film to make a 20x24 negative. My criteria is that the copy negative and resulting print have the same look and feel as the original contact print. If it doesn’t I won’t print it.

JP: What is the difference between platinum and palladium?

FH: They are similar metals. Palladium gives the warmer tones to the print and platinum gives the colder tones. I use the platinum in the print for contrast primarily in the lower darker tones. I use hydrogen peroxide in my formula to activate the platinum and make very black blacks. The palladium is not affected by the hydrogen peroxide, so I get very low contrast highlights. In this way I greatly extend the tonal range of the print.

JP: What are your thoughts and experiences marketing fine art prints?

FH: The process I use is already an anachronism, nobody but artists use it. It is like the difference between a machine made and a handmade object. People who appreciate the quality of handmade furniture will appreciate the quality of platinum palladium prints. There is always some imperfection in what I do.

Currently there really isn’t much of a venue for prints, most work today is seen through books or other reproductions. I’m sure that  will be even truer in the future as digital images become cheaper and easier to make. I think the digital revolution is probably a wonderful thing because it eliminates all the really difficult things that give me a headache in the darkroom. It will free people to concentrate on the visual. What it’s finally all about is what is genuine. If it’s genuine for you , no matter what it is, no matter how it comes, it will be recognized at some point. That’s what I trust.

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