John Bladen Bentley
John Bladen Bentley makes photographs. Old school. Real photographs. Photographs that cannot be willed or invented. He is drawn to the world seen from the side of his eye – fleeting ephemeral spots of time and colour. His photographs make visible a world hidden in full view.
Bentley prints his large-format film-based view camera images with the methods that were used in 1869 to produce the world’s first colour photographic print. Carbon printing, a separation and assembly process, is the rarest and most permanent of prints. Bentley is one of less than a handful in the world, the only one in Canada, that has resurrected this 19th century colour printing process that had virtually lain in the dustbin of photographic history. Colour carbon printing is an exacting ultra-laborious process. After Bentley has made all the materials, it takes five days to make one print.
Bentley’s extraordinary work has been shown by Beckett for over two decades.
Click on the artwork below for details.
No Place Special Series
(Museum Custom Framed)
No Place Special Series
Man over Time, Time over Man Series
John Bladen Bentley
“John Bladen Bentley: Double Transfer Colour Carbon Printing Process” - Silvershotz Magazine
"Patient Process" - Short video
"Colour Carbon Transfer Process" - brief explanation
“John Bladen Bentley: Archival-Prints Charming” - Canadianart
“The Magic of Colour Carbon Transfer Printing” - The Hamilton Spectator
“The Last Colour Carbon Transfer Printer in Canada” - Harrowsmith