I became interested in encaustic painting and its photographic ties by reading about it on a blog. You can, for example, combine a photograph with encaustic medium and paint. Encaustic medium is beeswax mixed with damar resin.

In one application, you print an image on non-glossy matte paper, and the photo is subsequently brushed with or is dipped in a pool of melted encaustic medium. Much like a traditional encaustic painting, you can then add color, incise or cut lines in the wax for filling with colored paint or add materials to create a collage.

Encaustic medium can also make a photo, the paper it’s printed on, translucent. In one application, you sandwich two identical photos treated with medium. The combination is subsequently back rather than front (conventionally) lit to see the image. Depending on the photos you use, the combination can have added depth, density and luminosity—it pops.

An excellent resource for materials, including safety information, is R&F Paints at http://www.rfpaints.com.

The shots depict:

1. A shot of encaustic medium on paper. It gives you an idea of what encaustic medium looks like after it has been melted and applied on paper (dipped in medium in this case).

2. This treated photo has a wide border (area in white) with an off-white mat in front. The shot was taken in natural room light. Since the light level was pretty low, the off-white mat actually looks brown. But the image and white border still appear brightly lit because of the backlight.

3. This is a sandwich of two photos—a B&W photo in the front and an identical photo, in color, in the back. Without backlight, it looks like a B&W photo (image left). But when you add the light, the color shows through (image right). When placed in a location with changing light, the image will transform from B&W- to color-back to B&W as the light fades out.

4. A way to hang the photos so they’re hit by backlight.