Yesterday I went into the Letterpress room to print some quotes from the audio interviews with the miners that I had selected. I want to use these quotes as an additional element of the portraits I am creating, giving them such context.
I chose to do this through letterpress instead of digitally because of the imperfections that you can get that are impossible to recreate digitally to the same standard. I feel these imperfections give the text a grittiness and realness that suits the themes I am exploring very well.
When left in black the letters give the impression that they could have been written using the soot of the mine where it looks patchy which I think is a really interesting touch.
The final image here is my first attempt to incorporate the type into a portrait. I am not completely satisfied with the out come of this but I think this is because the image itself was not designed with the text in mind, the text was simply added to an image I had already created. Next time I will construct the image using the text as a design element from the start.