One of the attractions of the platinum/palladium method of printing over a traditional darkroom is that the process isn’t sensitive to low levels of tungsten room light. I find it fascinating to hand craft an analog platinum print, ultimately seeing the latent image on the exposed paper pop out when I pour the developer over the image. I consider myself a decent, though not necessarily expert inkjet printer, but after 10 years of digital experience, I find that my process, taking place as it does entirely in the digital realm, feels a bit cold and sterile. In addition to the points made by Arentz (only one of which resonates with me), I have to add an increasing interest in the hands on “craft” of making a fine art print. Ultimately, I’m compelled by the visual “ feel” of a platinum print. While a platinum print can certainly be “sharp”, the tonality gives it a certain attractive softness. A platinum print seems to me to be more “photographic” and has a sense of depth and richness lacking in all but the rarest inkjet prints. But let me try, perhaps comparing to an inkjet print will help. While the 2 previous points are more or less objective, this characteristic is entirely subjective, and consequently difficult to describe. So that leaves the final point: aesthetics. Similarly with dynamic range modern technology and technique can give us all the dynamic range we want (and then some). In the larger scheme of things the difference between 100 years or more for an inkjet (some archival BW inkjet prints are pressing towards several hundred years) and 500 or more for a platinum print doesn’t grab me, but it may some. With respect to the first point, while platinum prints will last as long as the paper they are printed on, modern developments in inkjet printing have rendered that distinction somewhat less compelling than it would have been even 5 years ago. When compared to modern inkjet prints the story is a bit different. I should note that his discussion is in the context of a comparison with silver gelatine. In addition to being of historic interest these can be summarized: In his book Platinum and Palladium Printing, which I highly recommend, Dick Arentz lists several reasons why platinum prints are of special interest. These are not digital images toned as platinum they are scans of “the real deal”. Finally, when viewing the images illustrating this article, I ask the reader to appreciate that a platinum print is even less well served when making the journey to a web image than is a a digital image. So if you’re looking for a way to distinguish your work, this might be an option. Having said that, the quality of a well executed print certainly stands out in comparison to the vast number of inkjets on display today. It took me about 6 months and almost 100 prints to get the technique down to where, 4 times out of 5, I could get a decent print. It’s truly a craft that has to be learned by experience. Second, there is no silver bullet for learning the process. I estimate that exposing an 8×10 negative and printing on 11×14 paper runs about $12 – $13.
A 25ml bottle of platinum solution runs about $200. Compared to inkjet (or even traditional darkroom prints) a platinum print is relatively expensive.
I think 2 factors contribute to keeping platinum printing at its current level of (un)popularity. Today it remains consigned to the relative obscurity of an “alternative process”. Then beginning in the 1970’s creating platinum prints using the traditional methods was re-established by a small number of specialists. As the price of platinum soared during WWI and WW2 the process drifted out of practice. From the mid to late 19 th, through to the early 20 th century one of the popular photographic printing processes, even predating silver gelatine, was the platinum print.
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