Hamish Stewart
Hamish Stewart has been making photographs since the early 1980s. He began researching 19th century photographic processes during graduate studies in the mid 1980s. Although he has experimented with a variety of historical photo-processes he chose to concentrate on gum bichromate. It offered a means to explore colour, but also provided a printmaking aesthetic most removed from the dictates of ‘straight’ photography with which he was then familiar. It was like a transition from simple short sentences to complex, multi-layered phrases. He is dedicated to promoting the continued practise of 19th century techniques in an era dominated by commercial, mass-market technology. Since the mid 1990s he has worked exclusively with gum bichromate, exhibiting gum prints in Sydney, Paris and London. He currently lives and works in London UK