Not long ago, I had the immense pleasure of working on a project created together with Alexandra Patova, as part of the De Vita Solitaria festival. I couldn’t be more grateful for the trust she placed in me — handing over her negatives and giving me the opportunity to work on the series “On Wandering” — photographs made between 2007 and 2017, images that have left a mark on the creative development of an entire generation.

For this project, I worked with Ilford Multigrade RC Deluxe Pearl variable-contrast paper and the corresponding red safelight. Each negative was carefully placed in the enlarger — the machine that projects the image from the negative onto the paper. Before that, I meticulously cleaned each negative of dust and other artifacts. The enlarger allows me to adjust the scale of projection and create prints in different sizes.

Then comes the moment of development, when the silver halides in the paper’s emulsion transform into metallic silver and the image becomes visible to the eye. The processing unfolds through a sequence of chemical baths. In this case, I used D-72 developer (1+1) for two minutes at 20°C — to make sure every exposed halide would reveal. Next comes a stop bath — 15 seconds at pH 3 — which halts the action of the developer and draws a line between what must remain and what must never appear. After that, two fixing baths, two minutes each — to ensure there’s no going back. Finally, a 15-minute wash — so that only the silver remains on the paper, precisely where and how I want it.
Every print goes down this road.

Three Questions for Happiness

Before beginning the actual printing, I had to consider a few important things. Since this was not my own photography exhibition, I needed to minimize — or better yet, completely remove — my personal interpretations of the images as they emerged in print. From experience, I know that there are images we’ve learned to live with. In my own archive, I have negatives I scanned ages ago and then tucked away in some box, untouched ever since. I have no recollection of what adjustments I made to the digital versions, or to what extent they reflected the information on the negative. But that doesn’t matter — that photograph lives within me in that very form. That is the image.

I had no idea if that was also the case with Alex’s work, and it felt trivial — even inappropriate — to ask about her editing process. But since the final selection included frames taken from publications over a decade old, I decided to follow the visual character of the digital images — with the full awareness that every device we view them on likely renders them differently. It was my responsibility to translate Alexandra’s photographs into their analog form — in the way she had seen them, and in the way we all have come to know them. The degree of deviation between each photograph and its negative was something I would have to discover along the way.

The greater challenge, however, was harmonizing the prints for the exhibition format. These photographs had to work together — to sound in unison. There’s a delicate balance between how much one can “nudge” a print so it sits comfortably among the others — in terms of contrast and tonal weight — and how subtle that adjustment must be so that each image still speaks in the author’s visual language. There, perhaps, you can find my small lie within the exhibition.

Another consideration was that I was used to seeing these images on light emitting screens, where brightness and dynamic range define their rhythm. Now I had to translate them into the language of paper — a medium that doesn’t emit but reflects light, and carries its own internal dynamic.

And finally, I had to think about the chronotope of the exhibition — the specific space and the time of day, with its particular lighting, in which the works would be seen.
And to indulge myself completely, I asked myself one last question:

“These images will not remain in this space eternally. They’re going to take on a new life elsewhere. If I wish to be genuinely happy, they must appear every bit as captivating there as they are now. How do I accomplish this?”

The Printmaker’s Experience

If I said that printing photographs by hand isn’t a solitary pursuit, I’d be lying. And since I’ve already lied about something else, I won’t say that.

Apart from being time-consuming, the silver-gelatin process is also rather expensive in terms of materials. I was determined to minimize the number of trials needed to reach the desired look for each image. It was clear that every final print in the exhibition would be in edition of one — but how many test prints would it take? Ideally, as few as possible.

The exhibition includes four print sizes — 13×13 cm, 20×20 cm, 30×30 cm, and 40×50 cm — made respectively from two negative formats: 6×6 cm and 4×5’’. The smaller ones, naturally, would be printed at full size. For the larger prints, however, I couldn’t afford to make test copies at actual enlargement — not only for economic reasons, but also for practical ones. Large prints require larger trays, more chemicals, and more room to maneuver sheets of paper the size of small tablecloths. The standard practice is to make test prints in a smaller size and then recalculate the enlarger settings for the intended enlarement. But I had deadlines didn’t allow for that approach, so I decided to enragle them directly, starting with the smallest and gradually scaling up.

Since most of the photographs are square and photographic paper usually comes in rectangular sheets, I knew I’d be cutting it down. I decided to use the leftover strips for test prints — choosing, for each frame, the most representative area to testprint. The goal was to work with fragments that could represent the tonal range of the whole image — my own version of an inductive–deductive approach. Once I nailed a convincing positive representation of the negative, I had to ask myself: does it reflect the author’s interpretation of the scene? Is this the image we all live with? If not, how do I adjust the contast and the exposure?

That’s precisely why I chose variable contrast paper for this exhibition. I wasn’t sure whether the more traditional techniques — dodging and burning, which also work with fixed-grade papers — would give me enough flexibility to reach the visual identity of Alexandra’s photographs. Variable contrast papers, on the other hand, allow far greater control over local contrast. The enlarger’s light passes through color filters of varying wavelengths (in my case the enlarger has built-in LED head with contrast control), which shape the tonal distribution and local contrast of the print. Exposure time is then calibrated according to the filtration, and often one resorts to what’s known as split grading — combining different contrast filters during the exposure of a single print.

Using these methods, I made a series of local test prints — sometimes more than one for a single photograph — each representing a crucial section of the image. Once I was satisfied, I applied those settings to the whole image.

And no, I’m not claiming that every full-scale print came out perfect from the start — especially when compared with the others, or once it was hung on the wall where it would be exhibited. Minor adjustments were often needed, prompted by all the factors I’ve already mentioned. But still, quite a few prints reached their final form on the very first attempt. Naturally, there were also the occasional failures — a speck of dust on the paper, a forgotten wide open aperture on the enlarger, a poor choice of test section, or other small acts of mischief. If so, I’d start the whole process from the scratch.

Perhaps now, the phrase “a solitary pursuit” carries a little more weight.