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Hunter, Frank Iowa Signs # 39 Platinum Palladium Print 20-1/2 x 25 inches Edition of 21

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Frank Hunter
contemporary

Photographer Frank Hunter is justly celebrated for his subtle and expressive Platinum Palladium prints, which are formed through a 19th century photographic printing process that is painstaking and unforgiving, but creates images that are incomparably rich and nuanced. Hunter uses his medium to produce deeply poetic, haunting, and timeless landscapes and still-lifes through this complicated process not for its own sake, but to express fully his visual perceptions.

In a career spanning more than three decades, Frank Hunter has published nearly 400 images, of which we show only a small selection here. All reflect Hunter's unique combination of technical virtuosity and aesthetic profundity.

Hunter has been the recipient of three Georgia Council for the Arts grants and has garnered wide esteem for his work, which is represented in private, corporate, and museum collections, including Atlanta's High Museum of Art. He currently teaches at Duke University.

Frank Hunter was born and grew up in the desert southwest. His awaking to landscape came early in life in the form of four-day car trips made each summer from southern New Mexico to his mother's family home in Northern Michigan.

Hunter received an MFA in photography from Ohio University, where he was the John Cady Fellow. He later received grants from the Bernheim Foundation, the International Polaroid collection, and Light Works at Syracuse University. He began to develop his large-scale platinum/palladium work in the early 1990s in Atlanta, Georgia, through generous support from the Fulton County and Georgia Arts Councils.

Frank Hunter's work is in numerous public and private collections, including those of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Denver Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Art, the Polaroid International Collection, the Elton John Collection, etc.

Platinum/Palladium Printing

Platinum/Palladium printing, the preferred method of Frank Hunter, is a late 19th century process in which iron salts are combined with precious metals to create images that have the widest tonal range of any photographic process. The photographer coats archival drawing or watercolor paper with the platinum/palladium solution, which soaks into the paper's fibers. A negative the size of the resulting image is then laid on the paper and exposed to light. The result is a photograph known for the depth and richness of its tonalities as well as for its longevity. Though favored at the beginning of the 20th century for its uniquely beautiful qualities, platinum/palladium printing gradually fell into disuse because of the expense of the precious metals and the mastery required to print a negative. Frank Hunter has used the medium since the 1980s and is an important figure in its revival.