Mark Strizic is well known for his long and
significant career as a documentary and commercial photographer. However, in the late 1960s he began to experiment with colour and photographic manipulation. He developed a special technique, which he called ‘photochromes’. This technique was similar to the printing process used for making colour posters, which dropped out certain tones to give a flat, graphic effect. Sometimes Strizic would draw or paint on the negative as well and this technique became common in the many corporate and institutional murals he produced around Australia. Some of these photochromes were included the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition Frontiers (1971), which featured the work of five Australian experimental photographers.
(2014)
Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.