Other Darkroom Experiments

Further Paintings with Developer

I am intrigued by the connection between the superimposed 'bubbled' images and the water in the images.

Painting with Dad

In the darkroom paintings with Dad experiments, I started by selecting an area in the enlarger. I then explored the idea of layering by exposing two images on the same paper.

I painted in a selected area of my Dad after the first exposure, I then re-exposed the image again with the bikes and then painted them in. I think this has created quite an interesting effect.

I then went on to expose the image of my Dad and the bikes and again paint in the selected area. I then exposed a wedding photo of my parents and painted this in. I think that because I had too much developer on the brush, the third image didn't come through very well and its hard to see what the image actually is unfortunately.

Painting with Mum

More experiments exploring and experimenting by painting with the developer. I started by selecting a small section. I developed this by revealing more of the image. I like the brisk strokes created in the second image. I then developed this idea by layering other images, and exposed the image of a sign over the top of the image of my Mum, accidentally upside down. I like the connection between this images and the images created by the artist, Mimmo Rotella. I am interested by the interplay between the layers, and the build-up of sea- to sky- to land.

Lines

Carrying on from the work I did from which I was inspired by William G. Larson. I wanted to play around further the idea of lines and I started off photographing a telegraph pole, similar to Larson. 

I then played around with trying to draw lines with the developer. i also experimented on a test strip and liked the mixture of the vertical and horizontal lines.

I really like the effect created in the left hand side of this image, which was a result of me leaving the paint brush on the image, revealing the bristles which I think is quite interesting.

Anna Barriball

Anna Barriball uses old found photos and then manipulates them. She uses soap and ink to blow bubbles on the photographs creating some really interesting effects.

I fell in love with an image of two people standing together, Barriball had then blown a ink bubble around their heads, reminiscent to me of astronauts or aliens. I really liked the idea of playful manipulation and making an image appear in a different way. 

The images below are from old family negatives. I played around with the developer to create the effects. The first image is on slightly fogged paper, but I felt this gave the image a sort of sepia look. I smeared, splashed and painted with the developer exploring the different effects that could be created.

This is something I want to play around and explore further.

Photo Joinery

I came across Reed Estabrook's 118 North Main Street, Providence, Rhode Island. 1969. Where Estabrook explores the idea of making images in an unorthadox manner, challenging conventions of an image being comprised of many frames, instead of one. Estabrook photographed a room and then pieced it together with the negatives. I loved this idea and it reminded me of David Hockney's Joiner series.

Due to me using old equipment, this meant that quite a lot of my images didn't materialize the way I had planned. For example I tried out Estabrook's method at an abandoned TV/ Scrap yard and the negative was out of date, so the images didn't come out. I did manage to get a few images out that I had on another negative.

I also became inspired by William G. Larson's Small Talk, 1971. I loved the lines in the imagery, and the way it connected one image to another. I also like the play on viewpoint, as the images start from a low point, and then move to a high point, as though the photographer has grown, reflecting childhood to manhood. 

I wanted to play around with this idea of lines making the images work cohesively, as though its a panoramic image. The four images on the negatives are of different areas of flat land, but I felt they joined together quite well by the horizon line which is almost running straight through the images.

New Directions

Over the Christmas period, I brought my Mum a digital photo frame. I spent hours sorting through old family photographs and came across this interesting looking photo. At first I thought that the image was damaged, but as I looked closer I was surprised to see the image of a snowy house imprinted over the top- probably an error caused through processing.

I really liked the accidental effect and decided to explore this idea further. I started off looking through hundreds of my Dads old photography books looking for photographers, methods and inspiration based around manual photo manipulation.

LJMU Freelance Event- 12th Jan

At first i was a little reluctant to attend the freelance event as at the moment I plan to go into teaching, so felt that the event wouldn't be very beneficial to me.

I found it really interesting listening to the guest speakers and hearing back their experiences and tips of how to get your work out into the public, as well as how to approach companies etc as a freelance artist. It became clear that this advice was invaluable and could be applied to my current module 2003 in the way of trying to get your own work into a gallery.

One thing which I plan to look at doing from the meeting, is create my own website. It was suggested that by having a website, it makes it easy for you to be contacted, as well as a way for galleries, employers, the general public to view your work. This is something I plan to look into further over the next few weeks.

Semester Review- 10th Jan

I'm quite glad with how the assessment went and received some really useful feedback. The idea of displaying a range of ways in which to display my final idea was quite interesting i.e. larger scale, light boxes, projections etc. at first I didn't intend for all the 'try outs' to be displayed together but when re-looked at there was a really interesting link between the pieces i.e. one example being the image in the foreground of the box-frame and the other, being in the background. It was also picked up the interesting effect that had accidently happened when printing the lasertran for the glass piece where it had left printing lines, which could be related to the lines and grains in the found piece of wood.

I really like my idea of using the frosted perspex to obscure the image slightly, and would like to play around with a number of ways to subtly obscure the image further.

Box frames

As suggested from one of my critiques, I took apart my box frame canvases which i had used in my experimental stage, and placed a few of my favorite images in. I didn't initially think this would work as well as it did, but Im quite pleased with the outcome. I like the way in which the images can be arranged,  but after working on it I feel that this is the best layout.

Final Image

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1.Whilst I was looking trough all my collected images i came across this image which before i had overlooked as a 'dud' image. When I looked at it again I found it to have beautiful textures and colours, but in a more subtle way than my images which I had focused on before.
I love the abstract qualities in the image, as at first you don't really know what it is, but as you look closer it reveals that its a view through a window. I also felt it had a universal feel to it, as its not clear, like most of my other images that its in Cyprus.
My favourite part of the image is the left hand side. It reminds me of old damaged sepia photographs. I just love this image and don't mind that other people don't see it in the same way that I do!
2. I looked at placing it in the box frame made from pieces of wood that I had found. I quite like the outcome, although I don't feel that there is much connection between the two.
3. I wanted to play around with enforcing the idea that its a view through a window, so I used lazertran and transfered the image onto glass. I think this works quite well and I am pleased with the outcome.
4. This piece to me represents the project and having confidence in myself. The found piece of wood, I feel proved pivotal to the whole project and pushed me into having confidence in my photographic work. I wanted to display them together to remind me of how the whole thing came together. I think the way its displayed works really well.
5. I wanted to play around with maybe having all three images together, but I don't think it really works that well.

The absurd

A small collection of my absurd images. I think I enjoy these pictures because they have character, and all relate a feeling of home to me.

Trios

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I wanted to play around with the layout of these images. I feel these images work together well and have a theme running through them i.e. three objects. I wanted to display them similarly to how Kirchherr had, in the way she had a constant theme running through her images in order to group them. My favorite composition in number two.

Experiments

Images of experiments:

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1. I started off my project photographing objects and places of interest. Cypriot doorways have always been an interest of mine, as they remind me of home and my childhood of my dad painting these doorways. To me, I've always like the textural qualities in the images and this is something I used as a starting point. I started building a doorway of my own, but abandoned it early, as I felt it I wasn't achieving the qualities which interested me.

2. I experimented further with card, weaving and playing with different materials, yet again I wasn't pleased with its outcome.

3. I found a piece of driftwood and tried adding textures to it with wax and sticks. In hindsight, I preferred the wood as it was.

4. I started looking at my images of the car doors and really liked the abstract qualities, and the way they seemed almost like a painting. I wanted to explore trying to create some of the effects of the metal. I felt that wax had quite interesting possibilities and played around with layering it over paint.

5. I really liked the idea of layering, so I placed coloured tissue paper in between the layers of wax to see what would happen. The process reminded me slightly of the work by Chris Ofili in the way his work is built from layers.

6. I played around with stenciling a piece of found wood, and then pressed it onto bits of wax I had coloured with powder paint. I felt the outcome wasn't that good, so I abandoned this idea.

7. Using the car doors as reference I was trying to achieve the surface textures of the metal. i used powder paint, and liked the way it had dried so I used a spray varnish to keep it in place.

8. I really liked the textures in experiment 7 so pushed the idea of wax, working on a larger scale. The car doors abstract qualities reminded me of Mark Rothko paintings and used this as a reference when making this piece.