"Les Fausses Archives" with Lionel Pralus

During a three-day workshop led by Lionel Pralus, two 7th-grade classes from Bellimont Middle School in Pernes explored various photographic archives to create new images. 

The “  Fake Archives  ", enlarged photographs from the students' family archives, were displayed in various locations throughout the middle school to surprise their classmates, teachers, and school staff. These bluish or coppery images are the result of recompositions, photomontages, and combinations created using the cyanotype and Van Dyke* photographic processes.

*The Van Dyke process is an old photographic process that produces a direct print; in other words, the image forms during exposure without passing through a developer.  This process uses iron citrate, which is also found in the cyanotype process.