Introducing: Katsudon Experimental Press

I used to have a darkroom. It was pretty fancy, a sealed off room in my basement, an old coal storage room, with a couple of high-end enlargers I had gotten for free because digital was the future. I used to spend Saturdays in there making silver-halide prints, some of which still hang on my walls. After a year or so, I had a daughter, and my priorities shifted away from spending time in there. For the last few years I’ve been sending digital files out to Whitewall to be printed. And the results are good, really good. But something feels…off? Missing? I don’t have the same connection to my prints as when I made them myself.

A couple of years ago while on vacation in Tokyo, I took a printmaking workshop at Mokuhankan, where I learned about the process of ukiyo-e woodblock printing from end to end, and had the chance to make a print of my own. I didn’t appreciate how involved the process is, but I really enjoyed the intricacies of inking up plates, mixing colors, and impressing not just the ink but the texture of the plate itself into paper. As you can see above, my first print was not great but the experience planted a seed.

About the same time, I got a message out of the blue from an old friend I hadn’t talked to in ages. In that message he casually mentioned that he had taken a workshop on photogravure, and was setting up a studio. I’d never heard of that process before, but when I looked it up, I knew that I wanted to try this out for myself.

Photogravure is a 19th century printmaking process in which you etch your image into a copper plate, ink it, and press it onto paper. The results have a tonal depth and a surface quality that can’t be replicated with darkroom enlargement techniques or modern inkjet printing. Or so I’m told. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a photogravure print. But if it’s anything like a fine ukiyo-e print (which I have seen and held), I can well imagine. I’d like to do more than imagine.

Now that my daughter is leaving for university, I’ve decided to return to making photographic prints. I’m putting together a studio for exploring photogravure printmaking. The process seems straightforward enough, but I’m not so stupid as to think I’m not facing a steep learning curve, especially as I’m going to be teaching myself from scratch through trial and error. The plan is to work toward producing editioned photogravure prints from my photography and my friends’ too.

So, I’m launching Katsudon Experimental Press, my printmaking studio, where I can do silly experiments, and learn how to make prints.

But I want to do more than just photogravure. My friend Jarred is into 3d printing, and we’re already starting to talk about how we can leverage that technology to make plates, to make art beyond just photography. I’m calling my first project “Futura, Deconstructed”, and you can read about it in more detail at that link. The short version is that we’re going to make interlocking relief printing tiles derived from the geometry of the Futura typeface that can be arranged into aperiodic tilings. It’s a different direction from photogravure, but it’s the same underlying impulse: Playing with ink and paper, making prints by hand, getting away from purely digital art, embracing how to use digital tools to create analog objects.

I’m excited about what lies ahead!