The Invisible Sea 1979
In the late 1970‘s the artist began to spend time in Leucadia, California (now Encinitas) along the north coast of San Diego County. Part of the experience of observation was the invisible presence of the sea, the fragrance, the humid heat, the radiant light. He began to work with Kodak infrared film and began developing a printing technique for this purpose. Choosing Agfa Portriga photographic paper with a textured surface, the artist exposed the print to the negative for seven minutes and developed in Edwal Platinum developer for another seven minutes until the print was black. Then, after the image was processed, proceeded to bleach the print back from black with concentrated potassium ferricyanide, then plunged into a solution of Kodak Selenium toner at a high 1:3 solution. The result were images with three tones: neutral black, reddish purple mid tone shadows and highlights in the brown-amber range. The prints were not repeatable, meaning that each image had different characteristics.