Mordançage is a photo printing technique that renders images with shadows that seem to glow. It's an obscure process dating back to the late nineteenth century. Initially it was designed to be used on film negatives as a method of reversing a negative image to a positive. Back then it was known by a variety of descriptive names such as bleach-etch, etch-bleach, gelatin relief, and reverse relief. In the 1990's French photographer
Jean-Pierre Sudre coined the term "mordançage" when he revived the discarded process for manipulating his black & white prints.
Mordançage involves dissolving part of the silver image with acid copper bleaching solution. The dissolving occurs proportionately to the darks — the darker the area, the more dissolution. The result is an image that is part negative and part positive. Often the print is then tinted.
I stumbled upon Sudre's process quite by accident while online. It doesn't surprise me that there don't seem to be many current practitioners; for "anolog" photography mordançage is difficult and extremely hazardous. Jean-Pierre Sudre is now deceased, and as far as I know the only American artist of note who does it is Elizabeth Opalenik (opalenik.com).
I have developed a method of achieving the same effect digitally, without a darkroom and chemistry. (And no, Bunky, this is not done with a quick, easy, cheesy Photoshop filter.) For my digital mordançage images I work with color photos rather than the black & white for which Sudre's chemical bleaching method was designed. I find it creates a more interesting look, sometimes similar to mordançage with hand tinting, but more often not.
As a digital imaging expert (I've spent some years doing high end commercial retouching and color correction), I knew at a glance that I could duplicate the look with digital photography. So I'm rather surprised that I haven't been able to find digital mordançage in a Google search. Anyway, I lay no special claim to it. Anybody with professional digital post processing skills can figure it out so I won't be surprised if somebody else besides me already has or soon will.
To that person, whoever, wherever you may be, I raise my glass and say here's to us and up the digital revolution!
