Making a cyanotype yourself is as complex as rehearsing ballet choreography and at the same time quite simple. Two chemicals are dissolved in water and spread on paper. Sunlight creates a light imprint on the dried paper - like a sunburn, but in blue. The cyanotype is then washed with water. A deep blue emerges; a blue-white image.
Many intermediate steps have to be carefully threaded together until the picture emerges. Orchestrating this choreography requires patience and precision. But it is a process that offers countless starting points for learning something about yourself and the world. The coordinates for this are play, enthusiasm and chance. Like an empty flower vase, the cyanotype is a vessel and open to any subject you may care to name!
But something is missing. Put some leaves, twigs, weeds, your sunglasses, yourself on the cyanotype in the sun. No matter what you put on it, a picture emerges. But it always looks different to what you thought it would. And it is exactly here, between expectation and coincidence, that the cyanotype unfolds its creative dimensions.
In my workshops, the cyanotype can serve as a starting point for a larger project, or it can function as a sketch and be part of your project. But it can also simply be about the cyanotype itself: about observing the wonderful properties of chance and what it triggers.
And guess what? I can bring my mobile cyanotype studio to wherever it is you are!
