Costa Rica's coffee artist. (photographer Saul Bolanos uses coffee as pigment for his photographs)

Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, January, 1993

Costa Rica's coffee artist

SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA-coffee growers, distraught over the lowest world prices for coffee beans in 30 years, could take a lesson from Saul Bolanos: if you can't sell 'em, turn 'em into art.

Bolanos, a determined, 40-year-old San Jose photographer, has perfected the art of "cafegrafia"-- the use of powdered or liquid coffee as a pigment to make up the tones of a photographic image.

"Any coffee will do, though right now I'm using Costa Rican coffee," says the soft-spoken artist, who runs a research lab in Ezcasu and claims to be ...