There’s something about cemeteries in the South. I don’t know if it’s the Spanish Moss. Or all the Angel statues. Or just that feeling of being in the South. But in the past few years, I seem to be spending more and more time photographing in cemeteries – particularly in the South.
Graveyard Angel, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia. Palladium Toned Kallitype. © 2017 Patty Hankins
My cemetery photography started on my first trip to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah and has led me to cemeteries in places like Hartford, Connecticut, Albany, New York, Washington, DC, Richmond, Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina, and of course, New Orleans, Louisiana. And as I photographed, I kept learning more and more about the rural cemetery movement in the mid-nineteenth century and why these magnificent cemeteries were where they are, and why they have the statuary I’m fascinated with.
Grave Lined Path, Unitarian Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina. Palladium Toned Kallitype © 2017 Patty Hankins
But there was just something about my photos I wasn’t happy with. The printed color images just seemed too modern. I tried printing them as black and white photos, but they still weren’t right. Recently, Bill and I have started printing photographs as kallitypes – a late nineteenth-century photography process. And suddenly I was happy with my photos and realized that I’d figure out how I wanted to print them!
Graveyard Angel, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia. Palladium Toned Kallitype. © 2017 Patty Hankins
Kallitypes are a contact printing process where I create black and white image from my color photograph, invert it to create a negative image, print the negative image on a film transparency – so I end up with a digital negative I can use for printing contact prints. We then coat the paper with a mixture of silver nitrate and ferric oxalate on a sheet of cotton rag paper and expose the negative and the treated paper to bright lights. Once the paper is exposed, we develop it in a chemical solution and tone them with palladium to get the final image. Each image made with the same negative is slightly different from any other since the emulsion never goes down exactly the same way, and the developing and toning is a little different each time.
Gracie Watson Grave, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia. Palladium Toned Kallitype. © 2017 Patty Hankins
I end up with a one-of-a-kind printed photograph usually taken in a cemetery established in the nineteenth-century using a nineteenth-century photographing printing process. And I get to photograph all those wonderful graveyard angels. Talk about the way to make a historian, a photographer and a Doctor Who fan extremely happy!
Graveyard Angel, Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia. Palladium Toned Kallitype. © 2017 Patty Hankins
I’ve been getting a great response to the images as I’ve shared them on social media. So I’ve decided to offer them as one-of-a-kind photographs on my website. You can see the ones that are currently available at https://beautifulflowerpictures.com/store/kallitypes-2/
If you’d like to see my kallitypes in person, there are several framed kallitypes on exhibit (and available for sale) at HairLab Studio, 1701 Rockville Pike, Suite B20 #6, Rockville, Maryland. I’d like to thank Marty Thompson of HairLab Studio for giving me the opportunity to display my kallitypes at his salon.
I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my latest photographic adventures. Don’t forget to check out all the kallitypes on my website at https://beautifulflowerpictures.com/store/kallitypes-2/