Juxtapositions

In my previous post I mentioned how I had attempted to photographs limbs, mostly arms, to attempt to create a parallel between them and the plants, I did not feel that this comparison was clear, despite using the same medium and lighting them similarly. To try to draw out the parallels, at first simply in the aesthetics, I began to place them next to each other, to juxtapose. The images seemed to highlight the similarities of the images, the leading lines in each images matched fairly closely, as can be seen in the image below, but I began to realise that, whereas the photographs of flowers trailed off quite organically into the darkness, it was far more difficult to apply this to limbs, which lead to the edge of the frame cutting off the arm at some point.

I felt that the more I experimented with placing these arms next to the flowers the more macabre and tense the results. The framing of the arm and the way the edges cut the limbs began to look more like dismembered limbs and the reaching fingers, instead of looking like fronds of a tree or blades of grass, began to look like the searching hands of zombies from some Romero film. As well as this the tension between the two images, particularly above, wherein the left contains quite a powerful and forceful image and the right contains a low-key and quite calm image (when viewed on its own) further added to the idea that these two images had come together and created a third meaning.

Weed Scans

Following somewhat in the vein of Denis Doran again I began to think about using the scanner to create some work. Unlike his work in Common Grounds, I am not tied to a particular location or space, therefore the collection of ephemera would be a process which would add little to my work, as well as this the idea of collecting objects which exist already in a physical capacity would not fit with my concept.

Instead I chose to scan in the plants themselves, this is also to do with the inability to reproduce Doran's technique of a portable flatbed scanner which he brings to the environment, however should yield similar results.

I began by quite simply placing the dried plant onto the scanner, using a black background so as to make it more like my previous work and to avoid the sterility created by an intensely white background. The scanned images can be seen below, however I didn't feel that this quite fitted with my other pieces for several reasons, the image did not have the same 'trailing off' that previous images taken with the polaroid had, the way they gradually faded out into the dark background. They also lacked something compositionally, not containing the quite intimate compsotions previously but looking very clinical and detached. One of these scans can be seen below.

I began to crop the image down into smaller pieces of detail which I felt matched my previous work much better, compositionally and from the aspect of lighting too. This meant that the images did require some work in Photoshop, changing the brightness and contrast, as well as some other simple filters to remove dust etc. As with any scanned images these scans have a very shallow depth of field, yet I feel this adds to these pieces, picking out high-detail and contrasting it with out-of-focus midgrounds and backgrounds. This lends a dream-like quality to the images. Some of the better crops can be seen below.

Polaroid 600 Film- Weeds

As I began working in polaroid I felt that I couldn't continue a project rooted in instant film without atleast experimenting with the iconic 600 film format. The shape is immediatley recognisable, despite the end of production by the polaroid company in early 2009. I began to make photographs using my slightly modified SX-70 Alpha Model 2, which is an SLR polaroid, allowing for more control over the polaroid image. (below)

The interesting thing I noticed about the 600 film is that it is an integral film, in that the chemcials are all contained within the photograph, as opposed to the peel-apart films I have been using previously in this project. Integral films do not expose the surface of the image in the same "naked" way that that peel-apart films do, in integral film the image is always separated from the viewer by a sheet of clear plastic. I felt that this reflected the relationship between the viewer and a display cabinet. I felt it also linked to the artist Arman, who would create collections or "accumulations" and place them in glass boxes called vitrines for exhibition, a more modern equivalent might perhaps be Damien Hirst's Tiger Shark, preserved in formaldehyde, behind a pain of glass. (both below)

I think the images I created, in some way, continue this tradition of preservation behind a transparent material. My subjects for this work were again, flowers at night. I feel that the transparent yet physical material establishes a certain distance between the viewer and the object. We see the image but we cannot touch it and the glass or plastic implies that we must never try to touch it, lest the preserved object break, crack or in some way become compromised by our involvement in its history. Once an object is preserved it is outside of history, up until that point it has existed freely in the world, changing with its environment, once it is taken out of that situation and placed behind glass it becomes valuable and completely unattainable. It becomes an object to view but never again to touch.

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)

Video- Fast Shutter-speeds and the Hotshoe Flash

After the first presentation and feedback on my work I started to think about the ways that I could combine my photographs and video. My first thought was to attempt to transfer the look of my polaroid images onto film, using similar lighting techniques, thereby drawing an instant parallel and link between the two media. I then began to think of a single shot from the opening of the film The Watchmen. The scene is of a crime scene, a murder, around the 1930s or 40s, the thing which really interested me was the way the slow-motion seemed to near freeze the action, slowing everything down so much that even the flash of the camera can be seen in every stage, as it begins to glow dimly, before increasing in intensity and fading out again. I wondered whether this effect could be applied to my own work, so I took out a video camera and began to experiment.

So as to have the smoothest footage once the shot was played in slow-motion I increased the shutter-speed to 1/1000th of a second, turned off the lights and began to flash my hotshoe on different objects. The problem I encountered with this was that, without the editing software on-camera I couldn't see the results properly until it had been edited, which meant it was particularly difficult to see which shots were working. Once i got the footage into the edit suite I found that there was only a single shot that worked in the way I had hoped. This is below.

There are far better examples of this on youtube, as the links at the end of my short film will no doubt show, however I have learned several things from this experiment so as to improve my work in the future. I intend to retry this piece, using either two flashes or a single flash and reflector, as well as revisiting my original subject, flowers, more specifically weeds. I want the visuals to appear out of obscurity, the darkness, be lit as in my previous images before disappearing in the white flash and falling back into darkness. The sounds I feel should come in waves to accompany the images, rising and peaking at the point the flowers are washed away by the white light. I feel the next step is to film the visuals in the studio and then begin to work on a soundscape.

Denis Doran- Common Grounds and Weeds

Doran's work deals with the autobiographical as well as the natural world, through his studies of flora and the allotment. His work Common Grounds focuses on a specific goegraphical space which is rooted in the contextual background of the working class North East, I felt that this has another level of significance for myself, having been born and raised in the same region. His work Weeds links more closely to my work in its aesthetic approach, photographing detailed close-ups of flowers against a dark background. There is a transcience to these photographs which I feel resonates within my own work on more than the visual level, the flowers being captured at a decisive moment, at the peak of their beauty, before they whither. (below)

In Common Grounds, Doran "assmebles ephemera" and "aids to memory" which are "echoes of significant locations". He often juxtaposes his images which are taken using a flatbed scanner placed directly onto the ground next to the scans of his collected "ephemera", this creates connections between the scraps of items found in the area with the "'virtual' cast of the ground at (our) feet". (below)

Polaroid Techniques- The Emulsion Lift

The second technique unique to this kind of polaroid film, which I alluded to in my previous post, is the emulsion lift. This technique lifts the very fine layer of chemicals from the backing paper, leaving a thin membrane with the original image still on it, which can then be affixed to a multitude of surfaces. The instructions for this technique can be found at the following link:

http://www.alternativephotography.com/process_emulsionlifts.html

This technique may be particularly useful for my project, dealing as I am with the idea of the fragile and the solid and conflating these oppositions. I plan next to photograph something particularly solid, for example, a brick wall, and then attempt an emulsion lift, again playing with the idea of the solid and the fragile. As with the image transfer, this technique is not particularly reliable, the results given can very wildly or fail to work at all. Another drawback of this technique is that images with large areas of black can be very difficult to "lift" from their backing, which means it is unlikely that I can use this for many of my photographs at night. This may take my project in a different direction entirely as I may have to rethink the way I photograph the objects, or begin to look at alternative subjects which are still linked to my original idea.

The image can also be distorted when placing it onto a different surface, either purposefully, placing it onto a textured surface such as a rock, or accidentally, as the membrane tends to shift and dry differently. The images below are two examples of this taken from the websites http://www.polanoid.net/ and http://http://www.alternativephotography.com// . The images yielded often look similar to the work of the painter Francis Bacon, distorted and twisted, particularly with human subjects. This may be an interesting subject to study.