Catherine Rogers' photography encompasses digital resources and technologies, as well as conventional, and non-conventional (non-commercial) analogue or photographic-based media and equipment. The photographs are made with a variety of imaging technologies from commercially manufactured cameras, to self-made pinhole (lens-less) cameras, to photographic image-making without using a camera. Most of the images, however, are made with cameras using old fashioned, light sensitive films. And most of the prints are digitally made using a variety of digital technologies.

Rogers makes all her own digital and 'alternative processes' prints, and still does darkroom work such as film processing.

'Alternative processes' are an important part of her photographic imaging work. Just like contemporary digital printing, for which there are a vast range of papers available—with differing outcomes—'alternative processes' are highly paper-sensitive. These seemingly disparate photographic imaging means of analogue to digital, also influence each other in different ways—practically, conceptually and visually. Outcomes can be both modified and manipulated simply by the use of different papers, for example. The other feature of 'alternative processes' is the range of colours and qualities that can be produced according to the process employed. Similarly, sophisticated ink technologies used in digital printing—such as Piezography inks (K6, K7, Quadtone)—show paper sensitivity, and with some manipulation offer wonderful colour and tonal possibilities.

A LITTLE ABOUT 'ALTERNATIVE PROCESSES' AND THE CYANOTYPE

The Cyanotype still life images shown on this site were made on sheets (56cm x 76cm) of watercolour and printmaking papers (predominantly Arches Aquarelle, Fabriano Artistico, Rives BFK) with objects such as cups and saucers, plates , fruit and vegetables, placed directly onto the papers coated with the iron-based, cyanotype solution. Cyanotype is often referred to as an 'alternative process'. 'Alternative processes' is a term generally used to distinguish a wide range of ultra-violet light-sensitive based mixtures and processes—usually self-made—from standarised, commercially available, manufactured darkroom materials. Just like traditional darkroom photography work with manufactured papers and chemicals, 'alternative processes' are also procedurally dependent. 'Alternative processes' cover a wide range of light-sensitive solutions made with a sensitiser (such as ammonium dichromate), a metal (such as iron, silver, gold, palladium or platinum), or paint (such as watercolour—replacing the metal component) and a binder such as gum (used with paint or coloured pigments, for example) among other chemicals or binding compounds. The various components may be mixed together and applied to an appropriate media such as paper, cloth or timber, and exposed to ultra violet light through a film or digitally made negative or other object (such as leaves). Often there are many steps in the preparation of the paper prior to its image-creatng exposure to u.v. light.

While some processes are procedurally complex most 'alternative processes' are flexible and able to be manipulated for different photographic effects and outcomes. Many 'alternative processes' were developed in the mid to late nineteenth-century. The cyanotype process was invented by Sir John Herschel around 1842. Herschel developed a range of photo-processes from 1839-1843, making over a thousand experiments on light sensitivity, testing everything with photo-chemical potential from plants to metals. Herschel developed at least four versions of the cyanotype, including a reversal process. The first half of the nineteenth-century was a time when experiments were conducted on practically everything. Herschel, like his colleagues, also drew on the discoveries of others to develop his cyanotype recipes. His own experiments conducted with thiosulphates, some 35 years earlier, meant that Herschel himself could make a critical contribution to WHF Talbot's development of his practical negative/positive photographic process. Herschel had come up with the solution for 'fixing' the silver image to make it 'permanent'.

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT 'ALTERNATIVE PROCESSES', DIGITAL PRINTING AND HYBRID PHOTOGRAPHY

It is impossible to create a series of exactly repeatable images using the sun as the source of u.v. light. Conditions outside in the elements are naturally variable and uncontrollable. It is also next to impossible to exactly reproduce a digital 'photographic' image over and over. There are too many variables in both 'new' and 'old' photography—such as the climate which changes through the year, the weather which changes over the course of a day, the time of day as the sun gains and looses intensity, the paper itself according to its manufacture or composition, and (also naturally) unreliable human interventions. In addition, the new digital technologies—many of which are not transparent, and are therefore not comprehensible to most users—also break down, wear out and are superceeded (and therefore unsupported) all too frequently.

Elsewhere on this site there are images of digital prints which were made on Arches Aquarelle paper. These are of a series of flower still life arrangements. The flowers pictured were old—some over 12 years old—and much of the colour has faded out of them. They were commemorative flower arrangements sent on the deaths of members of the family, and on the death of close friend, which were stored for future 'use'. Watercolour paper, like Arches Aquarelle, is not made for the ultrafine pigments in liquid digital printing inks and, as a result, print a subdued, muted colour image. This paper tends to act like blotting paper as well as printing a very restrained and reduced colour gamut. The overall outcome is vastly different to the same images printed Innova soft cotton which is used to print the majority of the digital images on this website. This work with the dry, old, brittle flowers is an example of the influence of one form of photographic image-making—'alternative processes' and digital—on another. At the same time it must be remembered that the new digital printing technologies are not based on photographic principles, but on commercial printing where printers create images using coloured (cmyk) inks, a process which has nothing to do with a chemical reaction caused by exposure of a substance to light—the basis of photographic image making.

ABOUT SOME OF THE OTHER IMAGES ON THIS SITE

Landscape images of the land, sea and sky form the basis of Rogers' work with both photographs and drawing. The images of the oceans were commenced in the Mediterranean Sea in 1978, have been steadily accumulated ever since, and exhibited at intervals since 1981. There are now many hundreds of images of various oceans on file covering 30 years of the sea. Most images are of the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea, and the oceans which surround Australia—including the meeting of the Indian and the Southern Oceans at the southern point of Western Australia. This is a never ending project, the sea is an ever-changing mass, just as the sky is forever changing.

Thirty years of photographic work has documented moments in the history of Sydney, Australia. In 1987, for example, many many old buildings were entirely demolished and the area now known as Darling Harbour was almost entirely obliterated. Darling Harbour was the point where train lines from the west, and up and down the east coast of Australia all converged, bringing to the port, primary produce such as coal, ore, wool and wheat for shipping to the other side of the world. Images of this destruction of Sydney's history can be seen on this site.

Sydney suffers from a lack of historical buildings—unlike Melbourne where those in charge have understood and valued the psychological, visual and practical, commercial values of preserving history. From the 1960s developers have been permitted to cut vast swathes through the history of the city of Sydney, encouraged by greed and the conservative adage that 'newer is better'. The net result is that a perfectly wonderful geographical site on the finest harbour, features an ugly, unimaginative city which is the product of greed. Sydney is also the location of the dullest shopping precinct in the country, being filled with boring chain stores which are replicated in almost every suburb. 1987 was also a moment when, due to the extraordinary amount of development taking place then, there was a glut of office space. The new office buildings were not economic in that financial climate. Many of the demolitions paused (the World Tower site in George Street remained a hole for nearly 20 years) and city visitors could see many vast excavations over the entire city. Sadly, a very dreary streetscape has been the product of all that activity.

FOOTNOTES

1. See Ware, M., (1999). Cyanotype; the history, science and art of photographic printing in Prussian blue. London: Science Museum and National Museum of Photography, Film and Television See also Schaaf, L. J., (1992). Out of the shadows: Herschel, Talbot and the invention of photography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press
2. For information on alternative processes see publications by Christopher James The Book of Alternative Processes; Christina Anderson's Experimental Photography Workbook, and Alternative Processes Condensed; and Judy Seigel's brilliant World Journal of Post Factory Photography, with its specialist contributions on many many alternative processes from around the world.