Article for Obscura Craft Magazine May 2025
I am a photographer based in South Wales, UK, and my main speciality at the moment is making palladium toned kallitypes.
I was introduced to alternative printing processes in 2019 by Ken Keen FRPS, particularly salt prints and cyanotypes. Although Ken didn’t teach me how to do salt prints, he encouraged me and pointed me in the right direction. It wasn’t until 2020 that I first started making salt prints of my own. Initially I was scanning 5×4 film and making digital negatives, but soon acquired a 10×8 camera so that I could use film negatives, and also moved on to making kallitypes.
The kallitype printing process was first used in 1889 by Dr W W J Nicol. A solution of iron salt (ferric oxalate) is mixed with a solution of silver nitrate and coated on to the paper – I prefer to use a brush for this. When dry, the negative is laid over the paper and exposed to ultraviolet light, which can be daylight or UV lights.
After it has been exposed to ultraviolet light there is a faint image on the paper. Developer is poured on and the print instantly appears. Various different chemicals can be used for the developer, I use sodium citrate.
The print is then cleared in a solution of citric acid. At this stage the print can be toned, usually with a noble metal, such as gold, platinum or palladium – I mostly use palladium. Finally, the print is fixed and washed. The process is very similar to platinum/palladium, and a palladium toned kallitype will be almost identical to a palladium print, but it is a much cheaper process because the amount of palladium used in the toner is considerably less than would be used in the sensitiser.
My camera is a Deardorff V8, which I absolutely love. It’s one of those cameras that is a privilege to own and use. I have settled on Fomapan 200 as my film of choice and develop it in 510 Pyro which I make myself from raw chemicals. I find that this combination gives me perfect negatives for the kallitype process.
A project that I have been working on for the last two or three years is kallitypes of churches and cathedrals. I am not remotely religious myself, but I feel drawn to photographing religious spaces and trying to capture their atmosphere and ambience. To quote Frederick H Evans, who made palladium prints of churches and cathedrals in the late 19th and early 20th Century, ‘Try for a record of emotion, rather than a piece of topography.’ I actually came across that quote when I was already well underway with the project, but it encapsulates exactly what I am trying to do.
I like to incorporate modern elements in the photographs as far as possible. I like the contradiction that the church buildings have usually been unchanged for hundreds of years but they are still very much working spaces and have modern touches such as chairs, plastic tubs, light fittings and so on.
Fomapan may not seem an obvious choice for photographing dimly lit church interiors due to its extreme reciprocity failure for exposures longer than one second. Quite often exposures need to be between10 and 20 minutes to get sufficient detail in the darkest areas. This is particularly true for kallitpes which need reasonably dense negatives. I like the results that I get with Fomapan, though, so I’ve learned to be patient when taking photographs! One advantage of the long exposures is that in a busy cathedral people are rendered invisible. If you look very closely at some of the prints you may sometimes see ghostly figures that have remained still long enough to be registered on the film.
I do photograph other things, of course, but churches and cathedrals have dominated my kallitype output over the last couple of years.
Why make kallitypes in a digital world? I’m not sure if it’s an age thing (I’m 65), but I have a burning desire to create things by hand – not by a computer or machine. I don’t have any aptitude for woodwork, metal work, gardening or whatever, so hand-made prints are my outlet for creativity.
Published in Obscura Craft Magazine Issue 10, May 2025