The Weight of Light
Printmaking as Documentary Act
the mfa|EDA thesis exhibition of mort O’Sullivan
The Weight of Light: Printmaking as Documentary Act
My work begins with a simple question: What changes when a photograph becomes a physical object, something printed, handled, and encountered in real space?
For this thesis, I print the same photograph across a range of historical and contemporary processes—from albumen and platinum-palladium to cyanotype, carbon transfer, photogravure, risograph, inkjet, and wet plate collodion. Each version originates from the same digital file, yet its material form shapes how it is read. Differences in surface, tonal range, scale, and texture alter the image's presence.
Rather than treating printing as neutral reproduction, I approach it as interpretation. Each process carries its own history and expectations around permanence, labor, access, and authenticity—and these shape how the resulting image is received. Why does a photograph rendered in platinum feel more authoritative than one produced by risograph or inkjet, even when the image itself is unchanged? The method of printing doesn't just affect appearance; it constructs credibility.
In a world of frictionless digital images, this is easily overlooked. By holding the image constant and changing only the process, I make visible how material influences what we see, what we value, and what we trust.
Photography has long been associated with truth and evidence. Rather than rejecting that history, I examine how it operates—how certain materials come to feel like proof while others don't, even when they originate from the same source.
Printing, for me, is where meaning is worked out. Repeating the image across multiple processes becomes a way of thinking in material terms. The labor and constraints of each process are not obstacles—they are the substance of the work. Shown together, these prints make the case that photographs are not just images but objects, and that their material form is inseparable from their meaning.
Technical Details
Images included in the exhibition:
Luta in Cyanotype, 10 x 12.5 image on 14 x 17 Arches Platine Lightweight
Luta in VanDyke Brown, 10 x 12.5 image on 14 x 17 Hahnemuehle Platinum Rag
Luta in Color Carbon Transfer, 10 x 12.5 image on 14 x 17 Fabriano Artistico 640 gsm
Luta in Duotone Carbon Transfer, 10 x 12.5 image on 14 x 17 Fabriano Artistico 640 gsm
Luta in Risograph, 10 x 12.5 image on 12 x 15 French Paper Co. Pop-Tone
Luta in Color Photogravure, 11.75 x 14.75 image on 14 x 17 Hahnemuehle Copperplate
Luta in Albumen, 12 x 15 image on 16.875 x 21.25 Arches Platine Lightweight
Luta in Platinum-Palladium, 12 x 15 image on 16.875 x 21.25 Arches Platine
Luta in Chroma-collé, 14 x 17.5 image on 16.875 x 21.25 Gampi on Rives de Lin
Luta in Wet Plate Collodion, 16 x 20 image on 16 x 20 Aluminum
Luta in Gelatin Silver, 16 x 20 image on 20 x 24 Arches BFK Rives
Luta in Screenprint, 16 x 20 image on 20 x 24 Arches 88
Luta in Piezography, 22 x 27.5 image on 24 x 30 Awagami Mitsumata Double Layered
Luta in Photogravure, 26 x 32.5 image on 27.875 x 34.5 Hahnemuehle Copperplate
Luta in Archival Pigment Inkjet, 40 x 50 image on 42 x 52 Arches BFK Rives