Artist Jaco Putker is based in the Netherlands and works with a type of printing that, honestly, I had to google. Photopolymer etching is a solar based etching that allows the artist to capture almost photographic detail in their images. Using this technique, Putker has created a very strange, light-hearted but slightly dark, never told book of fairy tales.
Victorian children alongside large predators seem made for printing. It’s slightly absurd, a tiny bit surreal, a touch unnerving, and yet seems oddly normal. Of course, these small children with bows in their hair have wild raptors as pets. And of course, rhinoceroses were clearly a staple childhood companion for the growing Victorian boy. Minute tweaks to the past are almost a genre of its own in literature and art and these prints are no exception.
The printing technique rendering the images so accurately for an antique photo only serves to bolster this believable story. Collage, mixed media, etching, call it what you will, this fairy tale is one I’d like to be a part of.
Check out more of Jaco Putker’s work on his Instagram.
