Lith printing is a technique which I use to give a different tonal perspective to conventional black and white printing. It also has, for me the huge advantage that I can use old, out of date, printing papers which may be fogged or unusable in normal processes.

The name “lith” is misleading as it is not a lithographic process. The name is used as it utilises developer formulas originally created for lithographic work but which are highly diluted. The developer expires very quickly and only one or two prints can be obtained from a printing tray of developer.

It is a challenging printing process as it is best done in complete darkness and each print can take 15 to 20 minutes to develop. It is only possible to inspect development with a very dim red light for a few seconds during this period. The big difficulty is not sitting listening to music in the complete dark, but when the development starts, it accelerates like a crazy roller-coaster and the print has to be snatched from the developer and into the stop bath in a matter of seconds. Estimating this in complete darkness when your mind is entranced by La Boehme or Suzie Quattro is the magic trick of lith printing.