DIASEC PROCESS

This involves a permanently elastic, smooth fusion of a paper print or slide transparency and acrylic glass. This process was developed in the 70s by the Swiss chemist Heinz Sovilla-Brulhart. Using a special adhesive, an air-tight bond is created, fixing the photopaper to the back of UV-resistent acrylic glass. The point of this is that when the light penetrates the layer of acrylic glass the light refraction on the surface of the photopaper is completely different from the effect when a photograph is framed with a passepartout and ordinary glass. Even matt photopaper will diffuse the light to a greater extent than a diasec-mounted photograph. In the latter case there is less diffusion because of the largely homogenous quality of the acrylic glass. As a result the colours seem deeper, sharper, more brilliant and more immediate. Furthermore, the traditional method of framing a photograph with a passepartout and ordinary glass creates a greater distance to the viewer's eye which is not only perceived spatially but which may also be apprehended as an emotional, intuitive or semantic distance. The way a photograph is presented - its surface, its materiality and its optical distance - plays a significant part in the specific form of the meaning which then derives from the image.