Making camp – Wade's mistake, NSW
While Micky Allan is now better known as a painter, she was an extremely influential photographer during the 1970s. Allan’s photographs were usually hand-coloured, initially with coloured pencils and watercolour and later with oil paint, and many were presented in series. In this way, she rejected the conventions of fine photography, which favoured fine printing and the single, iconic view. Allan’s hand-colouring also recalls the nineteenth century practice of tinting and over-painting photographs, which was often executed by women.
This work is part of Allan’s series, Travelogue, which records a trip taken through the north of New South Wales and up the Queensland coast as far as Yeppoon. This series also includes one image from Victoria and several from Mountain Lagoon, New South Wales. The negatives were taken over several years. The work is typical of Allan’s hand-colouring technique and ironically recalls nineteenth century popular visual culture, when pictures of male pioneers making camp were common.
(2014)
Gelatin silver prints are black-and-white photographic prints that have been created using papers coated with an emulsion of gelatin and light-sensitive silver salts. After the papers are briefly exposed to light (usually through a negative), a chemical developer renders the latent image as reduced silver, which is then fixed and washed. This technique was first introduced in the 1870s and is still used today. Most twentieth-century black-and-white photographs are gelatin silver prints. They are known for being highly detailed and sharply defined prints with a distinguishable smooth, even image surface.
