A few years ago I started playing around with alternative development processes to find replacements for the chemistry used to develop film. In that study I came across recipes that use tea and coffee as developers.
At the same time, I also followed another path, that explored anthotypes.
An anthotype (from Greek άνθος anthos “flower” and τύπος týpos “imprint”, also called Nature Printing) is an image created using photosensitive material from plants under the influence of light (e.g. UV light, rays of sun).
An emulsion is made from crushed flower petals or any other light-sensitive plant, fruit or vegetable. A sheet of paper is covered with the emulsion, and then it is dried. Some leaves, a transparent photo positive or other material is placed on the paper; and then it is exposed to direct full sunlight until the image part not covered by the material is bleached out by the sun rays. The original color remains in the shadowed parts depending on the exposure. The paper remains sensitive against such rays. It cannot be fixed.
Wikipedia
The emulsion I made was from raspberries, and the transparency was made by printing a digital image of some dried flowers onto a transparency.
Looking closely at the picture on the left, one can discern a faint image of the dried flowers shown in the picture on the right. Needless to say, the results fell modestly short of spectacular.
However, all was not lost: I always liked the painted background itself. I find the randomness and imprecision of its edges soothing.
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