Reticulation

I was digging through portfolios and boxes looking for a specific set of prints when I came across some prints from my alternative process class I had completely forgotten about. One of the processes we learned early on was film reticulation, a process in which you subject the film to drastic temperature changes during processing in order to stress the film. There are several things that can happen including the silver halides can pool together and the emulsion can crack, basically all the stuff you typically try and avoid when processing film. I believe when we developed our film we did the developing step normally but then used a stop bath that we had chilled in an ice bath, then normal temperature fix only we omitted the hardening agent in the fix, then a 5 min wash with hot (not boiling) water, then normal perma wash, then 10 min ice cold wash. It was a little nerve wracking, altering all these temperatures when for years I had always been so careful developing film, yet it was also liberating to just let go and go for it. After all was said and done we had to be extra careful while the film dried. Since we used a fix without the hardener, the emulsion was incredibly soft and susceptible to damage. At this stage though if you wanted to could mess around with the emulsion, squishing it up, removing chunks, really the options are endless. Once the film was dry, we were given the option to further distress the negatives by what ever means we felt appropriate. I burned/melted some of mine (like the door and pole picture below) and on the shoulder and buttocks images I used a pushpin to poke the negatives and a sharpie to draw dots. I really love the texture that comes through on the skin, that is where the silver halides have pooled together. This is another one of those underrated processes that can create beautiful images.

All Images © Kristin Buck Photography 2011-2015