When light is liquid
A pot of liquid emulsion that I was given had sat in a darkroom drawer for ages. On the one hand I didn’t want to waste it given the high risk of mishandling it having never used it before. On the other hand it was just languishing further and further beyond its expiry date. Put simply, liquid emulsion is simply the light-sensitive jelly-like gelatin silver emulsion in a pot, rather than precoated onto darkroom paper. It opens the exciting opportunity to coat onto any surface and process and image in the darkroom. Any type of paper could be coated, or any other surface that might survive immersion in darkroom chemicals and wash water. Concrete, woods and metals, or whatever.
Looking around for a workshop that could give me some expert guidance I finally found one I could get to, at Darkroom London under the expert guidance of Catriona Gray.
I took along a range of papers I had collected on my travels, a piece of driftwood and some embossed copper provided by the silversmith Vanessa Sharp. The whole process was great fun. Warming the emulsion so that it could be brushed on to the various surfaces it quickly emerged that the coating itself is an important part of the artistic decision making. Those students more used to painting would adopt a painterly approach, using quick brushstrokes across the surface, whilst others would try to coat the surface carefully and evenly.
Khiva. 2026. Printed on handmade mulberry bark paper
My first lesson was that it was very hard to guess the durability of a paper from first impressions. A stiff and rough handmade paper produced from mulberry bark in Uzbekistan became like the most fragile and thin silk as soon as it was wet. The corners just pulled off when I tried to hang it to dry. Once home I had to put in straight into a frame to protect it from falling apart. Nonetheless it produced my favourite image from the day.
The second lesson was that adding some personal flair in the coating of the surface can hugely enhance some prints, both showing the emulsion brushstrokes for a painterly effect and allowing the underlying surface to feature as part of the final product.
Woodland shade, Transylvania. Printed on art paper. 2026
My third lesson was not to believe what I saw in the developing tray. The images on copper and wood looked amazing, with fabulous contrast in the developer. The image all but washed away in the fix, as the highlights were stripped away to leave the darker underlying surface. I then just had the dark image from the most exposed silver on a dark background. This was a little reminder of how the chemicals work, with the fixer working to remove the unexposed silver halides from the surface. Clearly, the trick seems to be either to choose a lighter surface material or to coat the surface with a light-coloured ground of some sort. This was one of those darkroom disappointments where excitement turns to complete dismay in the space of one minute.
Liquid emulsion on embossed copper
The mix of joy and disappointment has only served to goad me into keeping at it with these exciting experiments. I now have that same pot of expired liquid emulsion to play with and a fresh pot to use as the errors hopefully decline and the successes increase.
