The term Chlorophyll print appears for the first time associated with the work of Binh Dahn that, combining photography with plant photosynthesis, made photographs printed on leaves using the sun.
“…after observing how grass changed color under a water hose that was left on the lawn. Soon after that, I was making chlorophyll prints.
In my work, photosynthesis is used to record images onto leaves using only chlorophyll and light: the life source of plants and, consequently the Earth. The leaves are then cast in resin, like biological samples for scientific studies.” (Binh Danh)
(Immortality, The Remnants of the Vietnam and American War http://binhdanh.com/Projects/Immortality/Immortality.html)
To me, it all started before 2015, but always without success ...This was a facebook post posted by a friend of mine on my site, already at that time :-)
The idea was abandoned for a while, and in June 2017, based on articles that I had read on the Net (especially the site "Alternative Photografic Processes" of that I'm a follower), I started new attempts.
And on June 10, 2017 I got it!
This was my first chlorophyll print with quality!
exp 3 hours (UV 8)
It was the first lesson that chloropila print taught me: patience. Nothing is achieved in this technique if we do not have all the patience of the world.
We can try the same species of leaf several times, and never get any image and, on a different day, the image will reveal itself; we can try different plants on the same sunny day, and we can not do anything; we can try on the same day leaves of the same plant, simultaneously exposed to the sun, and in some leaves the image develops, whereas in the leaf next, nothing appears or the leaf is burned before the image develops; We can also expect time of exposure of days, and the image develops in hours, and vice versa.
It is the magic of chlorophyll print, the challenge, the notion that we can only have the technique, but Mother Nature has the gift!
Material that we will need:
•Leaves
•Positive transparency
•Sheet of glass and Styrofoam plate (same size as glass)
•Scissors
•Lotting paper
• You will need a way to provide the leaf with water. I use small plastic containers of physiological solution, whit water (similar to florist stem water tubes).
1. To begin, we need sheets. What leaves? We can try the ones we have around, in our garden, on the road ...The flatter, softer and less fleshy, the better results I've gotten.
As I have already erred many times, I know the plants that, where I live, with the sun exposure that I have (I live in Portugal, at 1000m altitude), give me better results: in the winter, I have the Gerberas. In spring and summer, the leaves of the Hosta planttaginea, and the Hedra helix, are almost always faithful to me. Sometimes I have good results with linden leaf.
We should only cut the leaf when we want to make the chlorophyll print (that is, we should have access to previous weather, to know if it will be worth sacrificing a leaf, if time will not help us ...) and we have all the other material already available for its execution.
I cut the stem at an angle, leaving as much of the stem as possible, and immediately I place the end in bag or bottle of water.
2. Positive transparency - we can make chlorophyll print of a drawing, a photograph, letters ... This technique works best with clear, high-contrast images. The prints will be pretty low contrast so subtle shades of grey will probably get lost. Do not forget that this is a technique that uses contact with a positive image
3. Sheet of glass – no not thin enough to break, not thick enough to crush the sheet ... (I use a 3 mm thick glass
4. Styrofoam plate (same size as glass) and lotting paper- in the styrofoam plate, I apply the absorbent paper over the top, and make small notches in its edges, where the small bottle of water will fit, attached to the stem of the sheet with adhesive.
Now just put the acetate with the image on the sheet (the face printed up, otherwise it can happen to dirty the sheet with the ink) - of course here we can play with a lot of our imagination, like overlapping 2 acetates with different images; in general, the acetate must cover the whole surface of the sheet, otherwise we can get an image of its edges, which can be unaesthetic.
Above, I apply the glass with caution so that the image does not move from the place. Then I attach the glass to the styrofoam plate with glue tape.
And the sandwhich is ready to be put in the sun!
The "best" sun is the one that fits in with the lowest temperatures (beginning and end of day), because the possibility of baking the leaf is lower.
In order for the sun to perform its function with the greatest fidelity possible (image whit great detail), it is necessary to be careful and to turn our sandwich so that it forms a permanent angle of 90º towards the king star.
And finally, we must be attentive to the formation of the image ... less time, the image remains to be done; time more completely burns the sheet and nothing appears ... to complicate, we should not try to open the sandwich to see if the image is well, because if you open the frame and move the transparency, it’s very hard to put it back in exactly the same spot. If your image is not ready yet and you accidentally move the transparency, you might create a blurry image.
The exposure time can take from 3 hours to days and, due to the difficulty presented and the waiting time, it isn’t surprising that when you get a chlorophyll print, it’s a huge joy!
We must therefore safeguard its preservation. Or we keep it hidden in the sheets of a book, or we preserve it like botanists do. I have chlorophyll prints with almost 2 years, in the non-direct light of my house, without any alteration.
Here is how I preserve my chlorophyll prints, in this article published on the site Alternative Photographic Processes:
My album on Flickr:
These are the most famous chlorophyll prints that I have been, requested by Haute Horlogerie magazine. "Spiral of Time", EdT66 | Spring 2019
I am also proud of this one, chosen to the world's best photos of chlorophyll :-)
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