Artist Sara S'Jegers uses cyanotype process to create stunning art in Mallorca
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- Artist Sara S'Jegers stumbled on the old photographic 'cyanotype' process as a way to capture her love affair with nature in stunning images that tell the story of her itinerant life.
See Sara's work here: www.sarasjegers...
Filmed and directed by Laura Caldés in Mallorca in March 2020. www.lauracaldes...
MUSIC:
Låpsley, 'Painter'
Martina Topley-Bird, 'Baby Blue'
Rising Appalachia & The Human Experience, 'Sunu'
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Disclaimer: the cyanotype process is NOT toxic. Read more about that in Mike Ware's dissertation on cyanotypes: www.mikeware.c...
You are an inspiration, Sara! I love seeing you and your art evolve. XO
Thank you, Sara! So much love to you!
what a good work Congratulations from ARGENTINA
Thank you so much! I hope it inspires your own art and life! x
So beautiful!
Muy hermoso 💙
Beautiful work!
Thank you!
I think that the chemicals can pollute the enviroment if you wash them in the sea
Hi Sara, thank you for taking the time to leave this comment. One of the reasons that I got into cyanotype making is actually that it is NOT toxic and NOT harmful to oceans and rivers. I made sure to research this before ever rinsing my art out in natural bodies of water or even in the sink.
To be absolutely sure, I contacted an expert in alternative photographic processes, Mike Ware, a chemist who has written a detailed dissertation on the cyanotype process (which you can read for free here: www.mikeware.co.uk/downloads/-Cyanomicon.pdf).
Unlike many historic photographic processes, which are silver-based and highly toxic indeed, cyanotype is based on iron. The English scientist and astronomer John Herschel came up with the formula in 1842. To make cyanotype solution, all you need is ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.
Mike Ware has this to say about the toxicity of the cyanotype process:
“The constituents of Herschel's cyanotype formula are pretty benign:
The ferric ammonium citrate is not poisonous (it is taken medicinally, and used (E381) in a Scottish soft drink), and its components - ferric ion and citrate ion - are widely naturally-occurring.
Once washed out into the environment, the ferricyanide would quickly be reduced to ferrocyanide, which is almost non-toxic (it is a permitted food additive (E536) - used to keep salt free-running). The cyanide is not ‘free’ (which would be very toxic) but strongly bound to iron, just as it is to cobalt in vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamin) or vitamin B17 (amygdalin), present in many fruit seeds and stones. Dumping apple cores in the lake would be just as damaging!
The image substance, Prussian blue, itself is highly insoluble and non-toxic - it's taken internally as an antidote to certain poisons.”
To read more, check out Mike Ware’s dissertation and read §7.8, pp. 255-6, about the ‘hazards’.
Sara, you are super! A pure inspiration for me.
Cool little video.
Hello Sara, were you doing a residency in Mallorca? I’m a Fine arts university student looking for a residency or immersive experience with Cyanotypes. I love this video and seeing your process with this magical medium.
Hi Carrie, I always create my own 'residency' experience by moving to a place and just creating a project there on my own, independent from any institutions. I went to Mallorca to make this video (the photographer I wanted to work with lives there) and then right on the heels of that got stuck there for 4 months for the pandemic lockdown!!
Awesome 💙
J’adore
have you try to shoot film have it made into a digital neg and then use cyanotype as contact printing that way
Hi! I have not, but this is definitely a way to use the cyanotype process.