Black Heart Press

PROGAMER
Little do most of you know, but this weekend Shanghai hosted the “2012 Battle.net World Championship” where 18 year old Korean player Won “PartinG” Lee Sak took first place in Starcraft2, winning a whooping $100.000 in prize money. And that’s just the tip of the E-Sports ice berg that is emerging in Europe and North America at the moment (Korea had like a 10y head start).

Berlin-based photographer Valerie Schmidt and yours truly are following the professional Starcraft2 gaming scene since more than a year, photographing backstage at events, capturing portraits of the players. Right from the beginning, when we got together and started talking about the project, it was clear that we wanted them as photogravures, as a kind of an analogue counterweight to the digital world these athletes compete in.
Now, about a year in the making we’re finally at a stage where things start manifesting in the printshop - I’ve spent some time at Trykkeriet in Bergen, Norway, producing the first 17 photogravures of the project, and am now back in Helsinki, pulling prints.

For those of you who work with copper plate photogravures that etch through a sensitized gelatine resist the video linked above might be a bit long-winded and overly descriptive (and, I’m beginning to fear, it might also demand a lot from the supposedly faster-wired attention spans of the gaming community), for those new to it or not in the know, I hope you’ll get something out of it.
I very much prefer to print my photogravures en collé on fine gampi or other Japanese and Korean papers (some woodblock papers work surprisingly well) - the results are far superior to pulling a print on mould made paper alone - the gampi especially gets all the information in the plate.

Am currently trying to get sponsorship for German mould made paper to use as backing paper, and would love to get some fine silk to pull a few prints on. The prints will be exhibited in Helsinki in February, but I’ll post about that in due time.
Anyway, promised myself I wouldn’t write a three page essay for once, so keeping this one short and sweet. 

Further reading:

The usual suspects:
Valerie Schmidt - http://valerieschmidt.de/
Patrick Wagner - http://nymphomation.de/PRO.html

Interview from back in the day, when we were shooting at Assembly in Helsinki: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJFtKnEYvGM

The Battle.net World Championship:
http://us.battle.net/bwc/en/

Working on a project like this it is crazy to think how many people I owe thanks to already - David Stordahl for all his photogravure excellence, all the players that were kind and understanding enough to participate despite the stressful conditions at the events, the event admins and staff from Assembly in Helsinki and Dreamhack in Stockholm, Trykkeriet Bergen, KUVA Helsinki, and many more.
How’s that for the stereotype of the grumpy printmaker that likes to stay and work on his or her own? ;)
 

Sneak Photogravure Peek

Yours truly is back in Helsinki after almost two weeks spent at Trykkeriet in Bergen, working on a series of photogravures, a collaboration with the amazing Valerie Schmidt. It was a great pleasure to work in that space. Trykkeriet staff David and Daniel are running a well maintained shop

(they can also be seen here, printing a ridiculously large photogravure leporello - http://vimeo.com/42069623 - the video also shows off the truly one of a kind view the printshop offers. I posted the thing some months back, and it only got one like - I hope it gets more attention this time!)

and I managed to produce and proof 17 plates, putting the project on very solid feet.
I’ve had mixed feelings about photogravure for a long time, only resorting to it when absolutely neccessary - maybe tired of seeing too many uninspired photographic prints using photopolymers / imagon or other “quick and easy” methods. But making these copper plate photogravures, etching through sensitzed gelatinem I really got into the skill needed in judging the development of the image in the various ferric baths, and the level of control one has over the outcome of the etch.

Further reading:

Can’t get enough of David?
Thought so - here’s the man himself printing at New World / Old World: Mid-America Printmaking Conference. Starts at 0:47
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA1iilvkEjw

Usually I link a semi-random music video that either completes or juxtaposes the ramblings above - for this post I’d like to instead share a book I’ve read while in Bergen: Le Clézio’s “The Book of Flights”. BHP approves and recommends!

Oh, alright :) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpn8MANhdLU 

Darth Lips
Asbjørn Hollerud from Trykkeriet in Bergen hooked me up with this beauty of a photograph, taken today after a t-shirt printing course with high school kids in their printshop.

Black Heart Press approves!
Share for printmaking love and check Trykkeriet on Facebook <3

Further reading:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga7LdrIdXOI 
 

Feast your eyes on this beauty of a movie:
My buddy David Stordahl and Daniel Persson from Trykkeriet in Bergen, Norway working on a leporello of photogravures for Romanian artist Dan Mihaltianu.

The press is a huge Sjöström press from Sweden, the green billiard felt pure eye candy, as is the view from the printshop windows.
 

Further reading: 

Give Trykkeriet some love on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/166454083415019/ 

The final version of Dan’s book can be seen on:
http://trykkerietbergen.no/ 

Because it’s Mother’s Day today, at least in Finland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bPSU5WMrdw   Oh, Mama. 

Mounting of the “Behemoth” class press in Trykkeriet Bergen, Norway.
(I had the dimensions written down somewhere. I think the table is 180x350cm or so.)

I have this love/hate relationship with presses from Ateljé Sjöström; they are definitely built to last, they run super-smooth, in short: it’s a pleasure to work on them - I just wish they weren’t so damn ugly. In this enourmous incarnation it actually looks okay (sort of like a Leopard II tank looks “ok.”), in smaller variants they just look clunky.

Yeah, I know, complaining about a certain lack of style in otherwise perfect presses is a first world problem, but I’m having a most frustrating day anyway, so bear with me.

As usual, some links for your further reading pleasure. Like and Reblog for printmaking love.

Trykkeriet
Website: http://trykkerietbergen.no/
on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/166454083415019
Twitter: @Trykkeriet1

Ateljé Sjöström
custom made intaglio presses from Sweden. They’re good for you.
http://www.ateljesjostrom.se/

Leopard II
Sjöström-press sized tank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_II