My first encounter with cyan fogging happened during my fieldwork at the Bayeux photographic laboratory London when a large-scale white piece of matte photographic paper showing a cyan ray of light in the most minimalistic vibrant way was shuffled around on the big working table in the basement room.
Next thing to happen is the image technician reaching over the large paper veil with a cutter knife ready to cut it into pieces. “Please, no’ I sigh contorted with pain.
The image technician pauses, looks up and across the table with a questioning expression. I explain how I am fascinated by the minimalistic subtle lightness presented here, that I would love to preserve and understand what it is, how it happens and so much more.
I will learn then that what I laid eyes on is called cyan fogging, done by Chromira – the printer – emitting unintentional light onto the paper roll rebate[1] that sits tensioned in the printing machine.
Cyan fogging is treated as an error in the printing process of the photographic laboratory with the exposed paper being discarded. I hear the facts but fail to see a cast-off but smooth and subtle artefact – an aesthetic quality, I wish to understand.
This is where my inquiry into cyan fogging takes off and will be supported by two image technicians who I task to collect all cyan fogging happenings over the course of a week.This will give me access to eight more pieces showing cyan fogging as well as to having many more conversations with the image technicians about this aesthetic event.
[1] In photographic terms, rebate is the edge of a roll of film, from which no image can be developed.
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Here you can listen to a conversation I had with an image technician at the photographic laboratory Bayeux about Chromira and cyan fogging.
The image to the left shows ‘ZBE Chromira', also referred to as printer, machine, printing machine, RA4 printer, LED printing machine or as I prefer, Chromira.
Chromira is an optical printer mostly home in the backrooms of high-end professional photographic laboratory settings due to his value and expansive gestalt.
Chromira has a blue-coloured body, being 224cm long, 152cm in height and 91cm on their side, weighing an impressive 418kg - a heavy weight in the world of photographic printing next to laser printing rivals such as Durst Lambda or Océ Lightjet.
Notes on title and framing of 'Light kissing'
Due to total darkness encapsulating the moment when Chomira’s sensor exposes red light onto the photosensitive paper skin, the human eye cannot but imagine the magic happening which shall appear as a subtle cyan mark on a lush expansive white paper veil.
The descriptors used by image technicians to shed light on that which cannot be seen, were light hitting, shooting and emitting onto photosensitive paper. All three descriptors carried a notion of a forceful, quick encounter somewhat harsh and almost violent.
All three were far from describing that which leaves a subtle, soft cyan mark. I imagined the two elements of warm red light entering a soft white cloud of ‘sensitized’ photographic paper with both elements transforming into something new.
I believe that the subtle soft cyan mark standes in to show how much the two most essential photographic forces of light and ‘sensitized’ material need one another - a relational dependency that has the power to generate something new in every encounter of the two.
To imagine such encounter involving shooting, emitting or hitting would, next to the harshness and violence, carry a single sidedness that predominantly charges the light with power to enter the ‘sensitized’ photographic paper, as passive surface.In arguing for both photographic elements being equally active, involved and transformed in each encounter, I wondered how both elements met.
I looked elsewhere and referred to one of my earlier body of works titled ‘XA’ that has set this whole research project in motion. ‘XA’ equally inquired into the aesthetic event of fogging that is produced in the process of inserting a roll of film into the camera body with light permeating through the felt lips attached to the film roll canister when entering the sensitive surface of film material which leaves a unique mark on the leader of the film roll. It is through the re-imagination of the XA encounter involving the soft felt lips of the film roll canister, that I arrive at the notion of kissing for the two photographic elements to meet in the aesthetic events of cyan fogging.
In kissing, two elements touch and in doing so, create something new in togetherness. I felt the title ‘Light kissing’ would give agency to these encounters exquisitely and afforded a framework from which the working out of the display for the body of work emerged.
The framing was guided by the fact that cyan fogging pieces sit on the rebate, a designated area outside the centre of the image which is exactly the perimeter where the frame would sit.
Thus, the framing of ‘Light kissing’ had to deviate from the common function of a frame as providing a border for the photograph within.
The framing of ‘Light kissing’ had to be a borderless no-nonsense solution breaking away from generating artificial borders, flattening out prints and sealing them off behind glass. The subsequent solution was a three centimetres thick clear acrylic batten clamp that would sandwich the fogged paper pieces only at the top end from where the body of the artefact would flow waterfall-like upwards giving free rein to the natural bend of the paper. Clear acrylic has been chosen for its unintrusive elegance and by having two slim acrylic battens enclosing a minimal strip of each piece, the paper is once again ‘kissed by acrylic lips’ as a scribbled down note from one of the conversations wwith the artisian framer, Daniel Rapley of Perimeter framings, reads.