Art & Creativity: Stories, Tutorials & Expert Advice

Mario Del Curto’s photographs and the work of the Mordache Association together form a dynamic archive of how images can capture, explain, and preserve cultural practices that might otherwise fade. Readers searching for specific guidance on visual storytelling will discover practical lessons in the way Del Curto composes a single gesture or records the texture of a wall. The Mordache Association extends this approach by combining archival prints with community workshops, turning private observation into shared skill. This article charts the methods behind both bodies of work so that photographers, curators, and educators can apply them directly.

Historical Printing Processes That Maintain Subtle Detail

Fibre-based papers stay central because their baryta layer receives selenium toner free of the micro-cracking visible on resin-coated surfaces past twenty years. Del Curto’s favourite emulsion is a chloride-silver mix that reaches maximum density at grade 2½ under a cold-light head. When the same negative is printed on a grade 3 paper, shadow detail tightens by two zones on the Zone System scale, an effect he uses only when the subject holds specular highlights that would otherwise block up. The association’s darkroom log notes exact paper batches and developer dilution, enabling future printers to duplicate identical tonal values.

Spotting is carried out with a 000 sable brush and diluted watercolour in place of dye-based retouching colours. Watercolour stays matte under raking light, whereas dye reflects and pulls attention to the correction. Trainees practise first on discarded test strips until the repair is undetectable at 50 cm. The association reckons that a skilled printer can spot an 8×10 inch fibre print in forty-five minutes once muscle memory is established.

Teaching Observational Drawing to Improve Photographic Judgments

The Mordache Association runs a parallel drawing course that meets every Tuesday evening. Participants allocate twenty minutes sketching the same still-life before grasping a camera. The exercise drives attention to edge relationships that photographs often compress. After six weeks, students state that they pre-visualise cropping lines more accurately, reducing the number of exposures needed on location by roughly thirty percent. The association tracks these metrics through negative counts submitted with each assignment.

Drawing materials are confined to graphite and a single sheet of 300 gsm cotton paper per session. No erasers are allowed; instead, students must modify value by varying pressure. This constraint reflects the irreversibility of exposure and fosters decisive mark-making. Several graduates have noted that the same pressure control later converts into more consistent burning and dodging under the enlarger, because finger sensitivity has already been calibrated.

Constructing Narrative Sequences from Individual Images

Del Curto infrequently exhibits standalone frames. In contrast he builds linear sequences in which each photograph supplies missing context for the next. In a project on seasonal cattle drives, image four displays only a cow’s flank and a hand gripping a staff; image five expands to reveal the mountain path and the length of the herd. Viewers reconstruct the missing geography because the earlier close-up has already established scale. The association prompts emerging photographers to test sequences on a wall at actual print size before finalising order, because screen thumbnails compress spatial cues that become decisive at 40×50 cm.

Captions are written after the sequence order is fixed, never before. Del Curto dictates factual details—breed, date, altitude—while an editor verifies against meteorological records and village chronicles. Discrepancies are highlighted in red on the print verso so future researchers can trace the correction. This two-person verification loop is now mandatory for any portfolio that receives association endorsement.

How the Mordache Association Turns Archives into Workshops

The association keeps a physical study room in Lausanne where thirty thousand negatives are stored at 16 °C and 35 % relative humidity. Researchers need to reserve a slot forty-eight hours in advance and are permitted to request no more than twelve folders per visit. Each folder comes with a printed condition report noting scratches, silver mirroring, and previous retouching. These reports turn into teaching material: participants gain skills in reading deterioration patterns as evidence of earlier storage failures rather than artistic intent.

Workshop modules last three consecutive Saturdays. On day one the group examines contact prints under daylight-balanced LEDs; on day two they load 4×5 film holders and replicate Del Curto’s exact tripod height for an assigned interior. The final session is a group critique in which every participant must justify one cropping decision using the original negative as reference. Attendance records indicate that eighty-four percent of participants later organize at least one exhibition within eighteen months, implying the structured comparison accelerates curatorial confidence.

Picking Projects That Reward Long-Term Observation

Del Curto rarely begins with a predetermined narrative. Instead he pinpoints a location where daily rhythms remain visible for at least three seasons. One such site was a chestnut-drying shed whose roof beams had not been replaced since 1893. By returning every fourteen days he recorded the incremental replacement of each beam, the arrival of new tools, and the gradual change in workers’ clothing. The sequence now functions as a timeline that historians cross-reference with municipal carpentry permits. Photographers considering similar projects should plot access permissions and seasonal light angles before committing to the first roll of film.

Funding for extended fieldwork often comes through the association’s micro-grant programme. Applicants send twenty images and a one-page calendar rather than a written proposal. Grants extend from CHF 1 200 to CHF 2 400 and must be spent on film, chemistry, or travel within nine months. Recipients present work-in-progress at the association’s annual open house, where peers flag factual inaccuracies before prints reach the archive. This peer checkpoint cuts later caption revisions by roughly half.

Exploring Mario Del Curto’s Characteristic Photographic Language

Del Curto constructs each series around a narrow technical constraint that pushes attention onto subject matter as opposed to equipment. In one project he limited himself to a single 50 mm lens and natural light for eighteen months, documenting daily rituals inside alpine farmhouses. The resulting contact sheets reveal how consistent focal length alters spatial relationships: door frames squeeze into graphic lines, while faces gain proximity without distortion. Viewers come to understand to anticipate where the next frame will fall because the photographer’s stance stays predictable. This self-imposed rule demonstrates that creative decisions often anticipate camera settings.

Colour in Del Curto’s prints is not decorative. He combines his own selenium and sulphide toners, transitioning cool shadows toward aubergine while leaving highlights neutral. The process requires three separate fixing baths and a final wash of forty minutes; any shorter and residual chemistry creates a green cast within five years. Workshops hosted by the Mordache Association now instruct the same toner formulas, allowing participants to copy the hue shifts on their own fibre papers. The measurable outcome is an rise in perceived depth, because the altered blacks distinguish more clearly from mid-tones under gallery lighting.

Managing Colour Shifts Over Multiple Print Runs

Although negatives stay stable, paper emulsions alter over decades. The association preserves a reference set of Del Curto prints made between 1987 and 1994, each matched with a spectrophotometer reading of the maximum black. New prints are calibrated to within ΔE 1.5 before they exit the darkroom. When an older paper stock is no longer available, the association releases the exact filtration change required under the enlarger so that subsequent printers can adjust without guesswork. This documentation prevents the cumulative drift that can separate an exhibition set from its archival reference within five years.

Digital scans intended for exhibition catalogues are generated at 800 dpi on a Hasselblad scanner rather than a flatbed, because drum scans introduce Newton rings on fibre texture. Colour profiles are built from a custom target reproduced on the same paper batch employed for the final exhibition prints. The resulting ICC profile is saved alongside the negative so that any future catalogue can be made without re-scanning. The association reckons that preserving these profiles contributes CHF 180 per exhibition but eradicates colour-correction costs at the printing stage.

Lighting Techniques for Indoor Cultural Venues

Several subjects Del Curto photographs cannot be moved to a studio https://mariodelcurto.ch/. He therefore carries collapsible 4×8 foot black flags and a single 200 watt-second battery pack. In a low-ceiling kitchen he sets the flag to cut bounce from a whitewashed wall, reducing the ambient level by two stops while the flash, gelled to 3200 K, records the colour of a copper pan exactly. The ratio between key and fill is assessed with an incident meter rather than trusted to histogram peaks, because JPEG previews often clip specular reflections on metal. Members in the association’s lighting module replicate the same measurement sequence until the ratio stays consistent across three different rooms.

Window light alone can be enough when exposure latitude is favoured over colour temperature. Del Curto’s series on bread ovens was shot at 1/4 second on a tripod, employing only north-facing windows at 10 a.m. The resulting negatives hold texture in both flour-dusted hands and charred oven mouths because the contrast ratio never exceeded 5:1. Students are asked to calculate the same ratio on their phones using a reflected-light app before triggering the shutter, coaching them to anticipate tonal compression without a meter.

Appraising Exhibition Spaces for Peak Perceptual Impact

Del Curto’s prints are regularly shown at 1.5 times the diagonal of the negative. An 8×10 inch negative therefore produces a 15×18 inch print, a ratio that preserves grain structure while allowing viewers to stand at conversational distance. When the association installs work, it gauges lux levels at 50 lux for black-and-white fibre prints and 80 lux for toned prints, the latter offsetting for the slight absorption of selenium. Labels are set at 120 cm from the floor so that readers do not need to stoop; font size is 18 pt Helvetica Neue so that the same label remains legible at two metres. These specifications are released in the association’s technical rider so that host venues can reproduce conditions without negotiation.

Transport crates are lined with archival foam that compresses no more than 3 mm under the weight of a framed 30×40 inch print. Each crate holds a data logger that records temperature and humidity every fifteen minutes. Upon arrival the receiving venue must download the log and verify that fluctuations stayed within ±2 °C and ±5 % RH. Any excursion initiates an acclimatisation period of forty-eight hours before unpacking. The protocol has lowered visible print cockling to zero across twenty-three touring exhibitions since its introduction in 2016.