My Favourite Print Experiments

In my previous post I mentioned that I had got 4 photographs of each person printed. Out of those 4 tests I decided to choose the ones I liked the most. I then scanned them in and fine tuned them on Photoshop, getting rid of dust etc.

More Print Experiments

I decided to order some prints online and have a play about with them using bleach like I had done before. I knew that I did not want to wash them under the tap as this had completely washed away the bright colours and I thought this would be an important feature in my work. I got 4 copies of each and spent quite a while doing the first and second lot as to develop a certain technique that I was happy with. I used a mixture of different sized paintbrushes as I had found that tissue or cloths didn't work very well and immediately put them in the print drier to ensure they kept their colour. The photographs that are more red and don't have much colour in were my first proper attempts at bleaching (aside from the test run I had done before on old prints). You can see that I developed a technique and found a way not to wash off the majority of the colour.
Below are some of the test runs I did.

Image-Music-Text - Roland Barthes

I have been reading Image-Music-Text by Roland Barthes recently and found that it has provided me with an new insight into how people represent themselves. He says that "representation is not defined directly by imitation: even if one gets rid of the notions of the 'real', of the 'vraisemblable', of the 'copy', there will still be representation for so long as a subject (author, reader, spectator, or voyeur) casts his gaze towards a horizon on which he cuts out the base of a triangle, his eye (or in his mind) forming the apex."

In the book he also talks about 'the pose' and what it signifies. "Consider a press photograph of President Kennedy widely distributed at the time of the 1960 election: a half-length profile shot, eyes looking upwards, hands joined together. Here it is the very pose of the subject which prepares the reading of the signifieds of connotation: youthfulness, spirituality, purity. The photograph clearly only signifies because of the existence of a store of stereotyped attitudes which form ready-made elements of signification (eyes raised heavenwards, hands clasped). A 'historical grammar' of iconographic connotation ought thus to look for its material in painting, theatre, associations of ideas, stock metaphors, etc., that is to say, precisely in 'culture'. As it has been said, pose is not a specifically photographic procedure but it is difficult not to mention it insofar as it derives its effect from the analogical principle at the basis of the photograph." This relates to my work as the subjects within it are posing, be it in their own non-directed way. There is evidently a stereotype that all people are guilty of following and letting it influence their style and the way that that we hold ourselves.

Research - Curtis Mann

Curtis Mann is an artist who takes existing photographs and bleaches the prints to create obscured scenes. He paints varnish onto the prints to keep certain parts. I had seen this technique in a YouTube video the other week but having experimented with my own prints I decided I liked the fact I had no real control over what the bleach was doing if I accidentally moved or touched it.

Research - William Miller

William Miller is an American photojournalist who creates experimental images using negatives and a scanner. I think that the negatives he has manipulated have been folded, amongst other things being done to them and then scanned in. The last 5 images he took using a broken Polaroid camera which he has apparently been able to use the settings to create more experimental images. I love that each is different to the last, yet all have a dreamy feel to them and appear to be of landscapes.