Tuesday 17 November 2009

Emulsion Lifts- Results

After my previous post on emulsion lifts I started to play with this deceptively simple technique. I began by simply placing the photographic-membranes onto pieces of water-colour paper, as this was the most absorbent and sturdy canvas for these sorts of images (below) but I felt a little dissatisfied with the results. The images, though somewhat more washed-out and wrinkled were not the radical results I was hoping for. The subject I felt would be appropriate for this technique shifted somewhat in that I began to think about limbs and fabrics, more specifically lace and the intrinsic link between women and flowers. In this the limbs and previous photographs of flowers become intrinsically linked, each a metaphor for the other.

The transparency of the emulsion lifts began to interest me, they seemed almost like over-sized projection slides and I began to experiment with the idea of projecting them. I affixed one image to a sheet of acetate as can be seen below. I plan to attempt this with a few other emulsion lifts and look at the results of projecting them using an OHP. They take on another quality once the light shines through them, harkening back to stained-glass windows, whilst still holding onto the fragile, brittle and low-tech elements which I have continued from my previous work. My next use of the emulsion lift was to place the image onto a glass jar. This continued from my previous ideas about the transparency and the way the light changed the image as it shone through it. I chose to use a glass jar because of the transparent and fragile qualities as well as the idea of preservation, historically in towards the end of summer and the beginning of autumn families would preserve food, jams, fruits, vegetables, in glass jars as foods through the winter. As well as this there is the idea of preserving collections, such as insects, behind glass. In a museum we begin look at tableaus of dead animals, stuffed and arranged behind glass.


There is also the brittle quality which glass has, particularly in sheets, which I feel resonates with this work. Showing this work in the tutorial suggested some ideas about where to take this work next, which also tied into the fast shutter-speeds used in my early attempts at the video work. The smashing of glass in slowmotion may be the next direction which I take this work in. An influence which has leant quite heavily towards this idea as well is the ending of Zabriskie Point in which explosions and destruction are played in incredibly slow-motion, creating images which almost resemble Philippe Halsman's Dali Atomicus. (both below)

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