Artisanal Emulsions - Text 1
Artisanal emulsions, by Charles-André Coderre
Micro-laboratories appeared in the late 1960s, but truly began to develop in the 1990s and today are experiencing a real boom, particularly in Europe and North America.[1] They promote cinema on film stock, seen as an obsolete practice in today’s industrial production chain, and contribute to the rediscovery of often forgotten photographic technology.
From this perspective, there is a true craze for (re)creating light sensitive emulsions. Approached from outside a commercial logic, handmade film stock becomes a new way to think about cinema, even though this is, for the moment, essentially limited to experimental cinema. Artisanal emulsion has a sensitivity equivalent to 3 to 16 ASA, depending on how it is prepared. At a minimum, it is composed, for black and white emulsion, of gelatin, potassium bromide, silver salts and distilled water, making it similar to a high-contrast film stock such as Kodak 7363. It is much more difficult, if not impossible, to create colour emulsion similar to commercial film stock given the patents safeguarding various manufacturing secrets, the chemical complexity of the emulsions and the costs associated with such an enterprise. Filmmakers must thus use their ingenuity, for example by applying colourants to black-and-white film that has been developed, or by exploring bygone techniques such as autochrome, the first industrialized colour photographic technique, dating from the early twentieth century.
What may appear to be a technological “backwards step” is thus a fascinating rediscovery of the film material. In the hands of artists, artisanal emulsion offers new opportunities. By using a toothbrush, paintbrush or paint gun to apply the emulsion to the base, it becomes possible to create unique textures and to play with the visibility and elements of the image. Hand-made film stock, which is fragile by nature, deteriorates very easily. It can thus fade or quickly crumble, but it is also well-suited to new chemical alterations, or to temperature extremes which make the emulsion on the base retract (reticulation). Experimental filmmakers can thus work the surface of the film stock by creating effects which would be impossible to carry out on commercial film. They also manage to turn the irregularities of artisanal film stock to their advantage by transferring these friable images by means of contact or optical printing.
