Keep your hand sanitiser at the ready, because not only is this about to get messy, but hand sanitiser is actually really good fun to use in chemigrams!
In one afternoon, I created all of the following prints. To be honest, I hadn't planned it out, I just got a few bits and pieces to try out as resists. Aside from developer and fixer (check out my chemistry post to find stockists and recipes) everything was readily found at home: hummus, cooking oil spray, furniture wax, and copious amounts of hand sanitiser. I used generic black and white photo paper for the darkroom, and brought along some fresh flowers and leaf skeletons for good measure.
Important note: If you try this, be careful with the chemistry. Consider wearing gloves to protect your skin, and wash your hands thoroughly and regularly. Ensure plenty of ventilation.
With the lights on, I started by dipping one hand in developer and the other in fixer, and placed them onto the paper. I then carefully dabbed the opposing chemical around the hand prints. As you can see, there is not much contrast in the first image - I should have left it to develop for a little longer, especially on the dev-print. The outline around the fix-print piqued my interest, and I decided to do a full sheet with a fix-print (though I actually had a bit too much fixer on my hand and it's more of a splodge). To make it a little more interesting, I covered the paper in hand sanitiser before putting the fixer and developer on. This created a beautiful swirl of tones as the alcohol evaporated away and the chemicals made contact with the paper. I knew I had to continue experimenting with this.
The third image was made in a similar way, but with my hand coated in cooking oil before being lightly brushed over with fixer. The resulting hand print became more difficult for the developer to penetrate through, yet gave the print a more definitive, detailed outline. Against the mysterious background created by the hand sanitiser, it could almost be the hand of God reaching through the depths of the galaxy - you know, if God had short, stubby hands like me.
It was time to bring in the flowers! While using a mixture of hand sanitiser and cooking oil spray on the backgrounds, I dipped some flower heads into the fixer and developer. Unfortunately, the petals of the flowers weren't all that suited to this and created large blotches on the paper. I tried dabbing the excess developer off, but those prints are equally hard to recognise as flowers. Next time, I'll use a variety of flowers and petal shapes - perhaps fewer, more distinct petals would work better.
The first image was an interesting experiment - you can see the tiny spots of oil, and the darker patches where the developer was able to wear through the oil at different rates. The oil certainly made a good resist, but finding that sweet spot for developing time was difficult.
My favourite images from this set, however, are the final two where I used leaf skeletons. Both prints had a background of hand sanitiser, and the leaves dipped into the fixer, but one was developed in the light, and the other in the dark. The image with some pink tones was created under the light, which was able to react with the paper during the developing process, whereas the monochrome image had no light to react with. The fix soaked into the veins of the leaf skeleton, leaving behind a beautifully eerie ghost. The monochrome image in particular shows the intricacies of the leaf's venation pattern.
This is where I began further experimenting with the oil, as well as the hummus and wax. I was going for something abstract, just to allow the chemistry to do what it wanted with the resists. While this was great fun, I can't say I'm particularly thrilled with the results. The first two images (using oil and wax respectively) have some great textures, but otherwise they are quite... underwhelming. I didn't get the colours that other photographers had managed, and I felt quite disheartened.
Something I found even more devastating is the effect of hummus on a couple of beautiful lumen prints. I hoped to create a beautiful textured frame around my rose and fern, but I ended up destroying two perfectly good lumens. Note to self: hummus prints are not the way forward!
However, take a closer look at the middle of the first image. Some hand sanitiser over the lumen print created another stunning galaxy.
It may not have been a rousing success, but my day of oily, waxy, hummus-y chaos was definitely fun. I'd love to experiment more and try different resists, and am determined to find out how other people achieved such detailed, colourful results. If you have any luck or know where I went wrong, please let me know, and I'll be sure to try out your suggestions.
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