Nadja Kuznetsova’s printing techniques

"I am often dissatisfied with the redundant realism of a photographic image. I change the image in a way which corresponds to my inner vision.
It is quite hard to find the essential, to remove inessential details, to leave only the necessary.
This is the same problem which an artist confronts while painting or drawing from nature.
For each series, I use a special technique of a complex manual printing or its variation.

There are three different variations (or techniques):

1) Printing with a partial development (“Wet city”)

2) Printing through a special raster (or filter) made for each series (“Silver rule”, “Journey to the north”, “Letters without words”, “Portraits”).

3) Printing from a handmade negative (“Mastering the space”, “Amsterdam”, “Cheshire Landscape”).

It is always difficult to produce a raster (filter). A raster is the level of generalization and intonation I’m searching for in my series. Making a raster can take up to a year. Complex manual printing often complicates or avoids replication - a lot of works have only one or two copies (i. e. the works from the series “Wet city”, “Photocalligraphy”, “Portraits”). A handmade negative, however, can be reproduced. But even in this case, the quantity of copies does not go beyond 10 to 15 prints."

(Nadja Kuznetsova)