Anthotype: photographic printing process

• Grant number: 11/03421-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2011
• End date: February 28, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Plastic Arts
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Guimaraes Monforte
• Grantee: André Leite Coelho
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The anthotype is a photographic printing process created on the nineteenth century by the scientist, chemist, astronomer and mathematician John Herschel. Due to its inadequacy to the scientific and technological intentions from this period, this process was pratically forgotten by the history of photography. As the name indicates (ánthos = flower, tipus = printing) the anthotype uses the flower's photosensitive properties to produce photographic printings. The main interests that Herschel had on this tecnique was to obtain colour images and to study how the different light wavelengths affected organic compounds. The anthotype, therefore, holds many characteristics still to be studied and that enable a better understanding of the photographic media which, according to Vilém Flusser, presents on a germinative state all the qualities of the technologies that were born from the nineteenth century onwards. The historic moment we live in defines itself, in a communicative sense, by the broad use of technical images on the mediation between man and its environment. The limits between subject and context, observer and observed are questioned as the informatical systems subverts the notions of time and space. This paradigm shift makes a reflexion on the status of the technical images something urgent. The statute of this kind of images can be acessed through the history of photography. The creation of an artwork originated from these reflections will enable an aesthetic questioning about the imaging techniques and also a critique of the relationship and uses that the contemporary socio-cultural context gives to these images. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

COELHO, André Leite. Antotipia: processo de impressão fotográfica. 2013. Master's Dissertation - Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Instituto de Artes. São Paulo São Paulo.