Last Updated on 05/02/2024 by Chris Gampat
“The use of golden ink is, for me, a way to express the magic of the process of taking pictures,” says photographer Sandra Cattaneo Adorno to the Phoblographer in an interview about prints she’s made using gold ink. “I am not able to identify exactly the reasons why I frame a particular scene the way I do, but I am fascinated by how this gesture that appears almost automatic is deeply connected to my life and experiences. The immediacy with which the eye, the heart, and the finger align in a split second is, for me, still a big and wonderful mystery.” This is a process that Photoshop simply cannot do because it’s done in the printing stage. For people to truly experience the grandness of these images, they have to be seen in person — and that’s an inspiring thing for photographers of all types to remember.
All images by Sandra Cattaneo Adorno. Used with permission. Please visit her website for more. You can see it at the European Cultural Center until November 24th, 2024.
Sandra used gold ink to play on the idea of the golden times we all look back on fondly in life. Often, it’s with rose-colored glasses — especially because many of us cannot live in the moment and simply just be happy. Beyond this, the Brazil-based photographer used it because it reminded her of the golden paint used by dancers during Carnival. “Through the golden ink, I wanted my pictures to convey a similar effect of wonder, enchantment, and beauty,” she tells us.
Looking through the photographs, one could mindlessly think that they’re staring at a special type of sepia combined with an embossed visual. But that’s not the case. These images are prints and Sandra wasn’t even sure how they’d come out because it was totally an experimental process. “I couldn’t tell what the photographs would look like on paper before actually printing them,” Sandra shares with us. “Additionally, for the book, I decided to invert some of the images to make them look as if they were photographic negatives, thus expressing their double nature as representations of reality as well as of dreams and memories. This, too was, however, quite an unpredictable effect.” She picked a final selection of 250 images for her book, 10 Years. These images are more abstract in Sandra’s eyes — which is an effect she really liked.
The experiment yielded several surprises. It was incredibly difficult to predict what would happen. But in the end, Sandra feels that the images she selected feel more mysterious and engaging while also being aesthetically pleasing to her.
The addition of gold really helped Sandra make the images her own by adding a subjective reality to them. While gold stands out as a dreamscape of sorts, the black paper that the images are printed on adds an extra layer of abstraction. “As the scenes unfolding in front of me merged with my memories, reality seemed to acquire a more personal and abstract tinge, that I felt I could appropriately express through this printing process,” Sandra tells us.
Sandra Cattaneo Adorno first got into photography when she attended a workshop with her daughter Gwen. This wasn’t any workshop though, it was done by Alex and Rebecca Webb. Sandra was also turning 60 — and so is a late bloomer to photography. When she started shooting, she felt the shutterbug bite. Of course, the duo is more specialized in documentary work. But the influence is clearly there — even if Sandra has made it her own and into fine art.
The idea came to Sandra when she was printing another book of hers. “Back then, I wanted to convey in printing the shimmer of light that fascinated me when photographing on Ipanema Beach, and that brought me back to the childhood days I spent in Rio de Janeiro,” she tells us. “I then started exploring the possibilities of using metallic inks of different colors.” She used gold and blue inks, as well as silver.