Yesterday at an exhibition, the tour guide said something that stuck with me: for this particular artist, chance wasn’t just tolerated—it was deliberately woven into the process. Because ultimately, what matters is what the viewer sees. The picture interacts with the observer, and only then does it become art.
That idea shifted something for me. I found myself looking at my latest failed plates differently.
What a mess I’d made. All because I was itching to experiment with new chemistry again—or not quite new, since I was missing half the kit. Take glass plate printing, for instance. You’re meant to use very specific chemicals for that. Instead, I raided the kitchen cupboard and grabbed regular gelatin. Hardly surprising it didn’t work.
But when I scanned the plate anyway, something unexpected happened. Colors I hadn’t anticipated flooded the image. And suddenly, despite everything, I found it beautiful.
I keep writing about mistakes lately—about how they’re really just happy accidents in disguise. Maybe that’s because the best moments in my practice happen when control slips away and something unplanned takes over.
Next time I’ll share something I can properly explain, backed by solid technique and decent photographs. But honestly? These silly little experiments are too much fun to give up.
I also made a close-up of each of the cyanotypes so that you can see the details better. However, the dark ones are not cyanotypes, but wet plates with a positive developer (which I obviously didn’t get right either).
