Experimental Digital Printmaking

Since digital photography has taken a firm hold of the medium, photographers have been searching for more traditional techniques for making prints. What used to take hours or days in the darkroom takes only seconds in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. The tangible, hands-on approach to photography has been replaced by instantaneous sharing in a strictly digital space.

While these modern tools have confined most photographs to digital purgatory, modern tools have also allowed contemporary artists to combine traditional techniques with digital technology, and to venture like never before into the world of traditional artistic mediums, such as drawing, painting, and printmaking.

For five days, Cotton guides your exploration of experimental printing processes. Together we push the boundaries of what photography can be as we learn to print on materials other than traditional inkjet media, such as metal or glass, and discover how to transfer images using solvents, acrylic mediums, heat, and pressure. In this workshop we will utilize the power and language of digital printing, not only for the purpose of imitating digital predecessors but also using the medium to explore what might be uniquely digital characteristics. Combining technical pre-visualization to identify strategies for workflow, along with discussions of various substrates both traditional and non-traditional, participants will change the way they think about printing, and consider new ways for the creation of the handmade in the digital age.

You come away with new ideas, broadened perspectives, and the eagerness to approach photographic printmaking in innovative ways.