Image: the public-domain reference file. Your print is a hand-made interpretation of it, produced at the studio in Platinum-palladium — its matter and tonality are its own.
Heinrich Kühn · c. 1906
Walter und Hans (Platingummidruck)
- Year
- c. 1906
- Original process
- Platinum-gum print (Platingummidruck)
- Held at
- Galerie Maier, Innsbruck
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- c. 1906
- Original held at
- Galerie Maier, Innsbruck
- Public domain
- Since 2015 (CPI L.123-1)
- Printer
- Maison Picturale — Paris 20e studio
- Lead time
- Hand-made · 3 to 5 weeks
Maison Picturale reinterpretation in platinum-palladium
About this work
Platingummidruck variant of the celebrated 1906 double portrait of Kühn's sons Walter and Hans, this print is the canonical example of the gum-over-platinum process that Dr. Heinrich Kühn (1866-1944), Austrian-German pictorialist and trained physician, invented in his Innsbruck atelier. Kühn first laid down a platinum-palladium image, then overprinted one or more layers of gum bichromate in pigment, fusing the cool tonal precision and archival permanence of platinum with the painterly mass and chromatic depth of gum. Held by Galerie Maier in Innsbruck, this version differs from the single-process Walter and Hans Kühn print at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: where the MoMA sheet is pure pigment on paper, the Platingummidruck reveals a luminous platinum substructure beneath the gum layers, a hallmark of the technique and the proof that Kühn's contribution was a synthesis rather than a mere variation. As a co-founder of the Wiener Kleeblatt (Vienna Trifolium) with Hans Watzek and Hugo Henneberg, and a close correspondent of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, Kühn used such hybrid prints to argue that photography could rival painting on its own terms. Stieglitz published Kühn in Camera Work pl. 18 (1905) and pl. 33 (1911), cementing his international standing. Process Transposition Maison Picturale: the Platingummidruck is transposed via platinum-palladium MP printing overlaid with an Aquaprint MP layer (Maison Picturale's non-toxic Vision Picturale gum bichromate reformulation), preserving the dual-layer logic of Kühn's invention without the historical dichromate hazard. This work is studied at the Maison Picturale Paris atelier as the reference case for layered platinum-and-pigment printing. Kühn entered the public domain in 2015.
Reference file : Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
Procédé Transposition
Print like Heinrich Kühn today — without the toxics.
Each Maison Picturale print is a material reinterpretation of the image. Three readings of the same work — the original, its closest transposition, and a creative transposition into another procédé.
Noble metals — platinum and palladium — on 640 gsm cotton paper. The longest tonal range in all analog photography.
MP procédé — reformulated non-toxic chemistry, signed by Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour.
View the procédéHistory of the process
The platinotype was invented in 1873 by the British engineer William Willis, who patented the process that same year under the name Platinotype Process. In 1879 Willis founded the Platinotype Company, which sold platinum-sensitised papers across Europe for several decades. Palladium was introduced in the early twentieth century as an economical variant, giving nothing away on tonal quality.
Platinum-palladium quickly became the process of choice for the masters of fine-art photography. Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Frederick H. Evans made it their signature process, and their original prints held at the Royal Photographic Society in London, at George Eastman House in Rochester and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York still testify to platinum's tonal perfection. Stieglitz wrote that platinum offered a wider scale of greys than any other process.
Our approach
Every platinum-palladium print made at the studio at 1 passage Dagorno is a unique piece in a very limited edition, intended for serious collectors and institutions. The cost of platinum and palladium salts — noble metals whose prices follow the financial markets — makes this our premium process. Each print is prepared, sensitised and developed by hand by our master printers.
Our 640 gsm 100% cotton satin watercolour paper suits platinum-palladium particularly well: its pure cotton fibre, free of optical brighteners and alkaline additives, lets the metal salts embed deep in the paper, and its satin surface fully reveals the process's unique warm tonality and exceptional tonal scale.
Inside our studio
1 Passage Dagorno, Paris 20e. Each print is hand-crafted by Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour, using Vision Picturale's reformulated non-toxic chemistry. Limited edition, signed and numbered.
Commission this print
- Hand-printed and signed by Tristan Sidem & Raphaël Lebas de Lacour
- Reformulated non-toxic chemistry (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Limited edition, numbered, certificate of authenticity
- 1 Passage Dagorno studio, Paris 20e
- Delivery 3 to 5 weeks · ships worldwide from France
Formats and prices
- ProcédéPlatinum-palladium
- Coquille44 × 56 cm200 €
- Jésus56 × 76 cm400 €
Firm prices: they follow from the procédé and the paper format, as on our Process pages. 100% cotton paper, 640 gsm, deckled edges. Which formats are offered depends on the resolution of the reference file we hold for this work.
Contemporary print after a work in the public domain (CPI L.123-1, 70 years post-mortem). Hand-crafted reinterpretation by Maison Picturale's master printers — this is not an original vintage by the master. The mention 'after [Master]' is systematic on the print and on the certificate of authenticity.
