Photographic print by Eduardo Paolozzi for an etching in the 'Cloud Atomic Laboratory' series. Great Britain, 1971.

These prints were created as source material for the photo-etchings suite of 8 plates entitled 'Cloud Atomic Laboratory. Science and Fantasy in the Technological World'. To create these images enlarged photographs were made of the source material. These were painted over with an airbrush and by hand. The resulting images were then rephotographed for lithographic plates, which in turn were printed onto the prepared etching plates for the final images.

Given by the Artist in 1971.

'For the etchings in the Cloud Atlas Laboratory (Circ.666 to 675-1971) and the Conditional Probability Machine (Circ.543 to 572-1971) the technique used was as follows:
The artist selected the images, often in pairs, from amongst his source material, - old photographs, magazines, trade journals etc. He then had made a ‘soft bromide’, an enlargement, usually 10” x 8”, of the image in slightly soft focus and light tone. On this bromide the air-brush art-work is done. The artist closely and precisely controls what the air-brush technician does with the print, but the technique is the technician’s own, and it produces the particular quality required by Paolozzi for these images. Some details are done by hand with a brush. Some areas are outlined, or have their tone changed overall; some areas are left entirely as on the bromide. The technician uses card templates to isolate large area, and produces hard and soft edge effects by moving the card close to or away from the work. The complete image is then made into a photo-lithograph printing plate, in negative, at the correct scale for the final print. This plate is then used to produce the etching plate, the white areas being those etched away. The depth of the etching is strictly controlled, to achieve precise qualities of tone. The ink is wiped out of etched areas to produce the ‘solarized’ effect (see Circ.559-1971). When transferring the image onto the plate, differing screens were used, of differing dot size. This gives a varying tonal quality. The object in some cases was to interfere as little as possible with the original source photograph, and the quality of that photograph was allowed to appear on the final plate, including its original dot size. In others the dot size was completely masked by the intervening processes of air-brush and etching, and the quality of the print changed.’ [Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1971]

CIRC.702-1971