Paige Billin-Frye

Printing a perfect photographic print is less interesting to me than how I can enhance and play with the print. Each becomes a one-of-a-kind piece as I tone, bleach and sometimes hand-color the images with watercolor paint or pastels, drawing on painting skills from my experience as an illustrator. Exploring cyanotype and salted paper printing, two historic photographic printing processes, has brought me to the intersection of photography, digital art, and chemistry. I'll tone my cyanotypes with botanical matter, often harvested from my yard. The tannins in the plant toners react with the iron in the cyanotype emulsion to change the Prussian blue color of the prints to other colors.