Taras Perun - An Image Built Layer by Layer
Taras Perun - An Image Built Layer by Layer
On colour gum bichromate, the materiality of photography and the contemporary life of a historical process
Contemporary photography functions primarily as a digital image. It is created in a camera, appears on a screen and can be reproduced almost endlessly. A physical print is now only one of many possible forms in which a photograph can exist. At the same time, photography is increasingly discussed not only as an image, but also as an object, a process and a cultural phenomenon. Geoffrey Batchen has drawn attention to the material dimension of photography and the changing identity of the medium, while Elizabeth Edwards has emphasised the significance of photographs as objects whose experience extends beyond looking alone.[1][2]
Taras Perun's practice occupies an interesting position within this context. The photographer does not regard the negative or the digital file as the photograph itself. For Taras Perun, a photograph comes into being only when the image has been printed and has become a material object.[3] It can be held, framed, stored and viewed again years later. This position does not stem from a rejection of contemporary technology. Taras Perun works on film, often uses pinhole photography, and historical and alternative processes form the essential basis of his practice.[4]
When discussing what initially attracted him to these processes, Taras Perun mentions the visual result, the physical nature of the work, its slow and often meditative character, its historical context and the possibility of controlling the image at successive stages. What matters most, however, is the uniqueness of each print.[5] This is where his practice begins to differ from the logic of digital reproduction. Prints made from the same source do not have to be identical, and differences between them are not regarded simply as imperfections.
From the negative to the print
Taras Perun describes the negative as “a kind of sketch, a plan of the photograph”.[6] It is an apt description of the role the negative plays in his practice. It remains important, but it is not yet the final image. Different photographs can be produced from the same negative, depending on how the print is made. The final appearance of the work is therefore not entirely contained in the negative itself.
This becomes particularly clear in bromoyl and gum bichromate, where successive prints may differ in colour, contrast, density or tonal character. The photographer does not aim to produce identical editions and admits that, when looking at his own prints, he sometimes cannot decide which one is the best. Each has its own characteristics, strengths and imperfections.[7] Hand printing is therefore not primarily about repeatability. The individuality of the print becomes part of its character.
The development of Taras Perun's work with multiple layers is even more revealing. In 2013, he made a monochrome gum bichromate print from a single negative using five layers.[8] Later colour works use CMYK separation and likewise rely on a multilayer construction of the image.[9] These two stages should be kept clearly separate: the five-layer work from 2013 was monochrome, while the later works develop the same basic principle in the direction of colour. In colour gum bichromate, layering is no longer merely a technical solution. Colour is divided into successive operations and rebuilt on the paper. Each layer interacts with those already present, and the final image is the result of the entire sequence of decisions. The photograph does not come into being at a single moment. It takes shape gradually.
The technical sophistication of Taras Perun's work is impressive, but that is not in itself the most important point. More significant is what this precision makes possible. Multilayer gum bichromate presents photography as a process of constructing an image in which colour, pigment, paper, light and technique remain directly connected. This corresponds closely with contemporary discussions of photographic materiality. Elizabeth Edwards has pointed out that photographs also function as objects whose meaning depends on their physical form and on the ways in which they are experienced.[2] Taras Perun approaches this issue from the position of a practitioner. He speaks about the weight and resilience of paper, its texture, the possibility of bending the print the sound of the support and even the smell of paint or chemicals.[10] Materiality is therefore not an addition to the photograph. It is part of its very nature.
Taras Perun's attachment to the physical print does not mean rejecting digital tools. He scans images, makes tonal corrections and prepares digital negatives. In colour gum bichromate, he uses RGB or CMYK separation.[11] He also stresses that contemporary technologies have given historical processes an important new impetus by making the preparation of negatives and the control of the image considerably easier.[12]
He sees no contradiction in this. From his perspective, the digital stage is simply a tool, while the character of the photograph is determined above all by the final result - a material and unique print.[13] In this sense, hybrid photography is not a compromise between analogue and digital methods, but a natural way for a historical process to function under contemporary technological conditions. This approach corresponds to a broader phenomenon described in recent research on alternative photographic practices. Orlando Torres Canela and Natalia Gurieva discuss forms of photographic practice in which digital preparation can coexist with manual and material forms of image making.[14] For Taras Perun, however, this is not a theory adopted in advance. He uses technology when it makes his work easier and sees no reason to reject a contemporary tool simply because it did not exist when the historical process was first developed. He takes a similar approach to the history of photographic techniques. Taras Perun believes that their basic principles and historical context should be understood, but he sees no need to reproduce older procedures literally. Contemporary materials and tools can be used when they facilitate the work without changing the essential character of the process.[15] History is therefore a point of reference rather than an instruction manual that must be followed without deviation.
This makes it more accurate to speak of adaptation than reconstruction. Gum bichromate remains a historical process, but its contemporary form does not have to reproduce the working conditions of nineteenth- or early twentieth-century photographers. It can involve computers, contemporary papers, new materials and modern methods of preparing negatives while retaining the characteristic relationship between light, pigment and the image layer. Unpredictability is equally important. Taras Perun stresses that some degree of control is necessary, but that the variables involved in the process cannot all be controlled. Temperature, humidity, paper, pigment, chemicals and exposure conditions all affect the outcome.[16] The photographer does not regard this as a problem that must eventually be eliminated. On the contrary, he considers unpredictability one of the advantages of a handmade print. Multilayer gum makes the relationship between control and material particularly visible. The more complex the process becomes, the more decisions have to be made, yet the final appearance still depends on the behaviour of the materials. The photographer can carefully plan the sequence of operations but cannot predict every result. This is one of the reasons successive prints remain different.
Authorship and the material construction of the image
Taras Perun does not try to build an elaborate theoretical programme around his practice. Asked whether a historical process means continuing a tradition, reinterpreting it or using an old technology in a contemporary way, he simply answers that he likes both the process itself and the result.[17] This directness is characteristic of his statements. His understanding of photography is not presented as a manifesto, but emerges from many years of practical experience.
The same applies to authorship. Taras Perun sees authorship as extending from the initial idea and exposure to the final print, while recognising that the way the print is made can influence how the image is perceived and can introduce additional meanings.[18] At the same time, his response to a follow-up question concerning other people's photographs provided an important clarification. When one person creates a photograph and another makes a handmade print from it using a historical process, the author of the source image remains, in Taras Perun's view, the author of the photograph. The person who makes the print may contribute to its appearance, but does not thereby become a co-author. The photographer believes that a publication should nevertheless acknowledge who made the print and which process was used.[19] This distinction is important. A material realisation may require considerable knowledge, experience and many individual decisions without necessarily leading to divided authorship. In Taras Perun's understanding, responsibility for the image and responsibility for its material execution remain separate categories.
A particularly clear example is a work made from a photograph by Anastasia Perun. The source photograph was taken in Senegal in 2017, while Taras Perun produced the gum bichromate print in 2024 with the photographer's permission.[20] The example is significant because the image passes through a substantial process of material transformation without losing a clearly defined authorship. His position on the value of technique is equally clear. In his final response, Taras Perun states that if an image has little to offer in itself, printing it in platinum, palladium or another prestigious process will not make it better.[21] This places a clear limit on the importance he assigns to technique. The process matters, but it does not replace the image. For that reason, the multilayered structure of Taras Perun's colour gums should not be reduced to a demonstration of technical skill. Its significance lies in the way it makes photography visible as a material process in which the image is not simply recorded, but gradually constructed. Within the practices considered in this research, Taras Perun therefore occupies a distinctive position. It is not enough to describe him simply as a photographer who uses gum bichromate. More characteristic is his treatment of colour gum as a multilayered way of constructing the image.
Aleksander Mitka directs attention towards the reactivation of a historical image, while Denis Lebioda expands the range of what can be understood as photography. Taras Perun, by contrast, shows how a photograph can be constructed through successive material actions.[22] These are not completely separate fields. All three approaches involve an interest in process, materiality and the contemporary use of historical techniques, but the emphasis falls in a different place in each case.
In Taras Perun's work, two conditions often presented as opposites meet within a single workflow: digital preparation and handmade printing, precision and chance, historical processes and contemporary tools. The photographer does not need to choose between them. They can coexist within the same photographic practice. This is why his work is better understood not as a simple return to analogue photography, but as a contemporary development of material photography. A digital negative can lead to a handmade print; a contemporary paper can become the support for a process with nineteenth-century roots; and successive pigment layers can transform photographic information into a physical object with its own visual and material character.
This is also why colour gum is so important to understanding Taras Perun's practice. It is not simply one of many processes he has learned over the years. It is a space in which image, material, technology and authorial decision come together. The negative provides the starting point, digital tools can prepare the material, successive layers build the image and the paper receives the final result. There is room for control, but also for the behaviour of the material and for chance. The final print is one of several possible realisations of the image, yet it remains an object that cannot be reduced entirely to its source negative.
At a time when much of photography never leaves the screen, this position is remarkably current. It is not a rejection of digital technology or a nostalgic longing for older methods. It is a belief that photography can still be a thing - a material object that carries the trace of its own making.
This is where Taras Perun's practice becomes particularly relevant. Its significance lies less in the age of the technique than in the fact that an old process can still be made to work on a contemporary image. The historical process survives here not as a museum relic, but as an active photographic method.
Notes
Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Elizabeth Edwards, “Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image,” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 41, 2012, pp. 221-234. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145708.
Taras Perun, Responses to the author's research questionnaire, 2026, questions 4-5. Unpublished research material.
Taras Perun, Responses to the author's research questionnaire, 2026, question 1. Unpublished research material.
Ibid., question 2.
Ibid., question 4.
Ibid., question 8.
Taras Perun, documentation of a 2013 work: monochrome gum bichromate, 25 × 25 cm, Saunders Waterford HP 356 gsm, one negative, five layers.
Taras Perun, documentation of later colour gum bichromate works using CMYK separation and a multilayer process.
Taras Perun, Responses to the author's research questionnaire, 2026, question 6.
Ibid., question 9.
Ibid., questions 9-10.
Ibid., question 10.
Orlando Torres Canela and Natalia Gurieva, “Alternative Photographic Printing Techniques: Body, Materiality, and Learning in the Digital Age,” Índex, Revista de Arte Contemporáneo, no. 21, 2026, pp. 34-45. DOI: 10.26807/cav.v11i21.669.
Taras Perun, Responses to the author's research questionnaire, 2026, question 14.
Ibid., question 7.
Ibid., question 3.
Ibid., question 13.
Taras Perun, supplementary response to a question concerning authorship, correspondence with the author, 2026.
Taras Perun, documentation of a gum bichromate print made from a photograph by Anastasia Perun, 2024.
Taras Perun, Responses to the author's research questionnaire, 2026, question 17.
See the author's comparative analysis of contemporary alternative photographic practices, 2026.
