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Pigment Over Platinum - A New Photographic Medium

By: Dan Burkholder

Dan Burkholder is introducing an exciting new photographic medium as he combines the beauty and permanence of the hand-coated platinum print with subtle color pigments digitally layered onto fine art paper.

After more than two decades of working exclusively in black and white, Burkholder began working with archival color pigments in 2001. These new pigments bring color permanence to a level never before available in traditional color photography. Using both the traditional wet darkroom for the hand-coated platinum and the digital lightroom for applying the color pigment, he controls the tonal depth and color in ways not possible in years past. Burkholder registers the two image components-platinum and pigment-discovering an exciting way to combine the old with the new.

Dan Describes his New Work

"As a passionate advocate of the handmade print, I worked to discover a way to combine my renewed interest in color with the platinum process. When I finally conquered the technical hurdles, the final pigment-over-platinum print captured the beauty of the two processes with a fresh sensitivity that was at once new but still anchored with the traditional photographic disciplines of craft and beauty."

Dan Burkholder is recognized as one of contemporary photography's pioneers, first exploiting digital technology in 1992 to make enlarged negatives for platinum/palladium printing. His award-winning book, Making Digital Negatives for Contact Printing, is now a standard reference in the fine-art printmaking community.

Dan has taught at the International Center of Photography (New York), The Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego), The School of the Chicago Art Institute, The Royal Photographic Society (Madrid, Spain), and with many other organizations. His prints are included in private and museum collections internationally.