For this stage I unfortunately didn't document everything but I do have a few work in progress images. The process honestly went by incredibly fast for me though.
I had started out trying to emulate a frankenstein poster and struggled to find an image of jk rowling, so I had to edit one myself to give it more of a Holywood lighting. I also looked at a lot of images of electroshock therapy to try and fit in the image. When doing this, it really felt like the poster was getting muddied and less clear. I had tried to maybe even incorporate images from the day the Supreme Court had passed the law on gender identity as this was fresh information as I was working on this, and it was incredibly relevant. But I was really struggling to cut them out correctly, I also just couldn't get the feeling of the poster to work it was just all over the place, and I felt stuck.
This was the last save i had of this progress, and it just felt ugly and terrible without a clear message. I'm sure it could have been developed further, but I decided to take a step back and look at what interested me originally as I got too focused on one aspect of what drew me to this idea.
I also spoke to a friend about the project and the ideas I had. They helped me sift through my thoughts of what I wanted from this image. We agreed that the 'evil people' in the image kinda made it less appealing and not about the community but rather ended up being more about the forces against the community and that if anything we need to spending less focus on them and focus more on the community itself and celebrate it.
Sophie Xeon, trans woman from Glasgow who passed, is a pillar in the trans community across the world. She had a profound influence on the music industry that is now only being totally expanded on and explored by other artists like her good friend Charlie xcx, whom she worked with on many projects. So, i wanted to capture her importance to me and the community in this image. I really wanted to communicate the idea of freedom, beauty, femininity with her. I also really wanted to just get the idea of blooming and transitioning as a beautiful process regardless if you medically transition, if you 'pass' asceticly or not as these things shouldn't matter to society as a whole just to people as individuals and what they want for themselves not what others want for us.
This was the end template I ended up with before I messed around too much with the colour of the image as I still felt very visually impressed with the screen prints i had saw online but it wasn't a process I had access to so I decided to get inspired by it instead.
On the top, we have Sophie front and centre around moons and doves. To me, they represent her feminity, power, and how free she really looked to me.
The message government will never define gender in response to the Supreme courts ruling, I've never really been great at tag lines, but I wanted text and was happy with this.
On the bottom, we have an image of someone with top surgery that I got online as a royalty free image as I didn't want to just take anyone's image online and use it for my poster. It felt like the most ethical thing I could do for an image as vulnerable as this second to getting permission from a trans masc person who has had top surgery for a similar photo but I think this is effective enough. Next to them we have Zephyranthes, they are there to represent rebirth and new beginnings. I wanted something that wasn't over done like a phenix or a butterfly but to carry similar meanings. And on the bottom probably the imagery I'm least big on being the bridge. To me I've put this here to represent the journey on transitioning and getting to the next stage in life.
Here is the final image, the previous one I flattened to make it a single thing and opened a new page on Photoshop. From here i edited it with the camera RAW filter to make the image B&W but also to mess with the contrast a bit. I then added a smart filter to give it that dotty texture you might get from a printer and put a solid pink layer over the top of the image. The final stage to give it more of a tactile feeling I found a photocopy texture online and messed with the transparency of it until it felt natural over the image.
For the award Submissions i have chosen to submit images to,
CEWE
SHUTTER BUG
MONOCHROME AWARDS
My reasons for picking these awards is that they fitted the images i planned to submit and weren't too costly as I'm a student and I'm always struggling for money!
The Cewe photo awards, "Our World is Beautiful," is an open submission for anyone and any photo to be entered looking for global diversity. I used this as an opportunity to share a portrait I took of someone who I recently developed a deep friendship with, Juda. If the competition is about celebrating life and the world, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to show off this newfound friendship. Juda also comes from Lithuania and I felt like this adds to the message of what they are looking for in submission also for it to be a connection between people across the globe.
This the portrait i took of juda that was taken on a 35mm camera, the film used is almost definitely kodak gold 400.
For both Shutter Bug and Monochrome, I submitted the same image for each of them for similar but not the same reasons.
The Monochrome awards are focused on b&w images, but that's it. The rest was up to us and chose what we submitted. I took a photo on a pinhole camera earlier this year that I'm still very proud of as it was a payoff for my efforts of teaching myself to shoot 5x4 with a pinhole camera, both I had never done before. So I'm incredibly eager to show it off. Even if it doesn't win anything, I'm excited at the prospect to just show it off and to get it seen by notable judges.
Shutter Bug in were also allowing people to submit whatever they wanted, and again, I really wanted to show off my image i took earlier this year. Shutter Bug also seems like a very high-end competition as it's well known in the photography community, and being a be part of the competition is exciting for me to be evaluated by my peers. This one was also only £10 and again cost is a big factor for me because money very tight for me at the moment and I couldn't find any other ones that were free and applicable to images that i had shot recently that I also have a strong sense of accomplishment with.
The process for submitting to these competitions was fairly easy, I just needed to look up competitions that were still taking applicants and look at the themes and previous winners to get the idea of what might win. The website are straight forward. I also emailed the Shutter Bug as I was struggling to get my application through, and the reply was incredibly quick and helped me sort out the problem I was having. Knowing that is it really that simple to apply i hope to keep an eye out going forward and to apply for further awards or competitions! Wining prize money would be lovely but just getting the work seen is an honour enough, I don't want to have my work hidden away for my full life and become one of these many artists who's work only gets found after their passing.
For this project, I would like to look at a wide variety of work.
Josh Mcphee's image "Hands off the trans kids" is the perfect example of what I'm interested in. It's striking and simple, and he has mass produced the image for either selling for folk to have in their homes or for protests. The bright bold colours are very eye-catching. The image has simple but powerful imagery that is incredibly easy to read at a glance, and that's what you want out of activist work. Similar to the Gran Fury's " The Goverment had blood on its hands" with the clear consise imagery with a powerful message behind it.
JOSH MACPHEE 2022 HANDS OFF THE TRANS KIDS
GRAN FURY 1988 THE GOVERMENT HAS BLOOD ON ITS HANDS
While doing research I came across a poster by the See Red Women's Workshop. An image they had created called Black Women Will Not Be Intimidated 1980 really caught my attention. The image is incredibly striking, I'm now noticing that I'm very interested in the aesthetics around screen printing. The image is relevant to my topic in the sense that it's roots are in feminist activism but for cultural reasons its not an image i can look to draw too much from meaning wise but visually it's incredibly striking. I particularly like its use of photography and how it's a clear collage of images from protests pulled together to create one larger image to show solidarity and the struggles the black community was and to some extent still is facing while being a rallying cry for people also. It unites the people affected by the message and brings awareness to people who might not be aware of the struggles.
See Red Women's Workshop 1980 Black Women Will Not Be Intimidated
If I went down the route to create a poster inspired by old Hollywood posters i would look at the 1931 Frankestein poster. I'm unsure who created it unfortunately as I get mixed results when researching but the posters are in the public domain now. The specific poster I'm interested in shows a frankenstein in his lab experimenting on someone while frankensteins monster looks over watching. This is the type of poster I would like to emulate if I went down this route, I think it could be very on the nose and a bit comical while also commenting on political points. I think this would be tough to achieve but I'll attempt it as it was my first clear idea.
For this project, my group has agreed to work on a project with the subject of " man in a woman's world" as the idea. The proposed idea chooses to subvert the patriarchy and put women as the gender with the most privileges. For my approach to this subject, however, I plan to take a step back as I don't fully agree with the plan and would like to look at gender equity rather than equality. For this, I'm very interested in critiquing the current political climate that seems to love to target trans people.
I am particularly interested in making a satirical poster about JK rowlin and her other publishing name being Robert Galbraith. The initial idea I had with this was to make an old holidaywood inspired poster like frankenstein type poster. To draw the very clear parallels between frankenstein and his monster, the elctro shock therapy that the real robert Galbraith done to gay men along with other methods of torture that he committed to try and cure homosexuals and the monster would be JK rowling and her big transphobic takes. To keep it on theme I would also be interested in looking at old woman suffrage posters to see if there's anything I can take from them and to look at general protest posters as I'm hoping to create the image to look like it has been printed many times and is easy to print and copy for mass production to be used at a real life protest.
This is a final mini post i would like to make dedicated to the ideas I had whilst doing this project. Usually, from mistakes I made, I took them as a chance to mess around with some of the prints.
One of my first prints came out absolutely wrong. It was lifting around the image and just peeling away. Something about this seemed really fun, though, considering the pose of the person inside the frame! It really made me feel like they were trapped in this crumbling mirror.
So I took this as a chance to experiment a little. I used a wet paper towel and gently wiped away the gelatin that was surrounding the subject. I thought this came out very fun. The blues made the image seem ghostly like they're trapped in the mirror. Not something I think would be applicable for this project but something I would love to mess about with and take photos with the intention to make mirrors like thisn instead of happy accidents!
Another attempt with playing with my work was partially destroying destroying them. In the top image I ran the image under a hot tap for a brief while before it destroyed the full image.
In the second one, the print had come out wrong was full of too many blemishes, and the face was barely visible unless it was at the right angle. So I decided to try and make it a bit more uneasy , remove the face, and lightly wash some of the image away. I don't think either of these would make for a final image but I would be interested in getting digital scans of prints like this, I think it could make for an interesting poster with some graphic design elements to compliment them and then further printed onto paper of some sort.
In here, i will talk about how I felt the project has gone, things I enjoyed about it and what I would do differently.
So, overall, I am happy with the project. I think the biggest thing that has let me down, however, is the lack of time I allocated to this project. I had a good few months of total burnout that I felt absolutely unable to work on absolutely anything for uni and the stress of not doing any work fed back into me feeling paradised and unable to do anything. I did finally have to pull myself out of this rut but I really wish I had managed it sooner as I would have loved to have done my original idea or for this to have been a bigger project. Another thing that did really hold me back, though, was the cost. I bought the cheapest mirrors I could find for this project, and they were all the same from flying tiger for £5. Charity shops didn't have any mirrors when I went looking, unfortunately, but again, if I had given myself more time, I might have found the mirrors i had wanted. I think a variety of mirrors would have made the project more visually appealing on top of if I had more of them. More mirrors mean more portraits. More portraits mean more work to be looked at. The acetate prints themselves were also really expensive considering. They were £40 for 6, so on top of that, the mirrors and all the utensils i needed to create the mixture i had spent nearly £150. I know in the grand scheme of the world that £150 isn't a whole lot, but I'm not really able to afford typical life at the moment, but that's a whole other circumstance that's not too relevant to this project.
Things that did work for me though is the process, I really really enjoyed teaching myself a new skill to have under my belt. Sure, I haven't mastered the skill yet, but it's now something I'm incredibly confident in doing again, and i plan to do it again for the previous project I had planned and hopefully others. I think it's been really nice working with images provided by friends it's a way that makes the project collaborative, and i always enjoy when the work when other people are involved even slightly.
The project, amongst others this year, has also taught me not to be so precious about my work. There's something about literally washing away a print and just trying again that is very cathartic that I'm not able to typically do. You can delete a file from your computer and then upload the file back on, I guess, but it's not the same as physically just rinsing the image myself in the sink.
I know i complained about not having enough mirrors and wishing I had more to do with but a big positive that did come from the smaller mirrors was that they were very accessible as a way to teach myself the process without causing too much of a mess. The floors in my flat didn't constantly get big blue marks all over but I can only imagine that'd be exacerbated with even bigger mirrors and I would have had to use like my bath to wash the mirrors.
A final thought, i guess, is that i really do hope to attempt the original idea. I shelf far too many ideas, and as much as I try to tailor my assessments around what I would like to do, none of the projects feel like mine by the end of it whereas the rare occasion when I've done something in my own time, for myself the work has turned out better than I could have hoped and the sense of accomplishment sits with me for a bit longer. When it comes to assessment time, I think I really struggle to fully open up and get the work done. This honestly might be what causes burnout, but I'm really hoping that in my 4th year, I'm able to apply myself better and to create work that I really feel proud of and manifesting far less burnout for myself next year.
In this post, I plan to share the resources I used to help me develop my workflow and process. Youtube videos, online posts etc.
This video above was particularly helpful as I think he was the only person who i came across who was using a premade cyanotype mixture rather than one that someone had made themselves and I found this encouraging because I wasn't sure if I was able to make my own mix. He was also just working in an environment that just seemed more realistic as I don't really have a big lab at home or my own studio. There is the college space, but I'm more comfortable working in a familiar space.
This video is the one that goes the most in depth into the process and teaches me nearly everything I know about it. If I did have to make my own cyanotype mixture, this is the video I'd have used as he's just incredibly clear and concise with every step.
I did come across this video. It is, unfortunately, mostly AI slop but I guess it goes over some interesting applications that you could do for glass prints.
Again one of the many videos I had watched just to see other people's workflows to give me the confidence to attempt it myself.
This video I've watched a few times just to see what interests me. Toning a cyanotype is something I'd love to attempt in the future.
Finally, I also took to reddit and asked if anyone had advice. Expecting absolutely nothing, I got incredible feedback from many people on how the process should go. I'll link the actual form below.
Overall, I think i managed to incorporate most of these sources into my workflow. I didn't take just from one of them i think that most of them at the very least I found very encouraging but the one by Joseph J McAllister and Jacob C arts and the reddit post were the most insightful in terms of approaching the technique.
Initially, for this project, I had planned to shoot a mirror point of view from people's homes and then do cyanotype print onto mirrors. The idea was to capture the person's personality and environment through the mirror to make it like a portal into their lives. The reason I want to use mirrors is that they have deep roots in art. People like Claude Cahun, who has work using mirrors and self-portraits to explore gender identity. Carrie Mae Weems "Not Manet's Type, 2010" is also a series of images i found inspiring for this idea, that project was more focused on critiquing the male gaze of black woman in art history however. So, not necessarily the message behind her project because that's not a subject for me to explore, but it doesn't mean I can't feel inspired by how she shot this work.
Claude Cahun
Unfortunately, however. Life got a bit in the way, so I have had to shelf this idea for a project for the time being and have had to adapt my idea a bit as the deadlines were building up and I was feeling stuck. I brought in my one test print I had done into class as a proof of concept and went over my idea but also mentioned I hadn't had a chance to shoot anything and that I was feeling overwhelmed and hadn't got much work done. During this class crit, we talked about how I might be able to adapt the idea. The new plan that I had landed on was to ask people I know for pictures of themselves that they feel like they look good in, either selfies or photos taken by someone else as long as it was a picture of them picked by them. The idea for me is to use these images and to put them into mirrors. The message is still about identity and a celebration of one's self. We are told narcism is a bad thing, but i feel like this isn't entirely true as it's very important to appreciate yourself in life. Yes, narcissists absolutely exist, and there are people who love themselves far too much. I'm not saying these things don't happen, but for this project, I'm interested in exploring the healthy appreciation of one's self. Photos that aren't too serious. One's that you might just like how you look in, one that you might be totally unserious and just wanted a silly picture or maybe an image from a moment that you felt proud of accomplished in.
For the new idea, the artists I had looked at previously are still relevant! I also remembered the work of Vivian Maier when trying to adapt my work. She had a very fun, casual approach to capturing images of herself in mirrors and reflections. Her work is the perfect example of what I'm interested in, actually. Her work is very much her very interested in her own form as a person and clearly was fascinated with taking photos of herself but also these photos weren't for the general public, she took them all for herself and her photography, to me, really pushes to redefine what narcism really is especially in this modern era of social media were people are constantly taking pictures of themselves and sharing them online more often for engagement from others more than as a way to appreciate yourself.
Vivian Maier
As for the medium I want to use, being gelatine Cyanotype, im partly doing this to push myself to try something new as I have been doing with most of my projects this year, it's also a progression from maybe the first project I done this year for the cameraless project. This year has also really taught me to take a step back from digital photography as it's really not been inspiring or enjoyable for me lately, but I have absolutely fallen in love with how tactile physical art is as someone who has nearly exclusively worked with digital mediums. I'm also incredibly interested by collodion wet plate work, but it's very expensive to get into, and I see this as a way to practice some of the skills I need for that process while not breaking the bank.
In terms of people to look, Caitlin Eadie, a previous student at the city of glasgow, has also used the method of cyanotype gelatin prints in the project called "HER" i managed to see an exhibition of this project at street level photoworks just before it ended.
I have always wanted to explore cyanotype and to try using it on other surfaces, and seeing Caitlins work in person really did push me to try it out for myself.
Here is where I will be documenting mistakes I've made along the way and how I went around them.
Over Pouring!
A mistake I made many times in the early stages was pouring on the wrong part of the mirror, and when it came to trying to spread the mix around the mirror, it would leave gaps. What I tried to do to compensate for this was to pour more onto those spots and let the overflow fall back into the beaker that it came from at a corner. This wasn't always successful, however, and when drying some of the mixture would bulk up in a corner of the mirror and be much thicker than the rest of the mirror making it very unbalanced, much darker in those spots and require longer exposure times to get an image in those parts. I also noticed that even when trying to see if these mirrors were still viable, in the washing stage, the emulsion would start to peel and flake, losing its integrity. This left behind fun and interesting textures that did inspire me to think of how to do this on purpose but it wasn't right for this project.
Results would look similar to this at times.
STORING IN THE FRIDGE
I tried storing a couple mirrors in the fridge while waiting on the emulsion to dry as this is how gelatin is typically treated and is what people recommend to spread up the process. When checking on the emulsions a few hours later I had noticed that it had started to freeze. When this would defrost it would damage the emulsion I think from the water? I ended up making new emulsions for them as they were not long in the fridge and I had more of the stuff ready to go.
Oh, one i nearly forgot was that one of the mirrors must have been slightly popped out of place when I purchased it. I didn't realise this till I got home, I presumed it would be easy to push back into place, but I ended up breaking the corner of the mirror. It's a shame, but not the biggest problem in the world, I decided to use the image that I felt fit it the most, but it wasn't an intentional break and I don't mean for it to add any more meaning to the work.
I will have a separate post for the recourses I have used to teach myself about this process. In this post, it will be looking at how I've used these resources and how I've got on with doing it myself, mistakes and issues I found along the way and how I got around them.
The first step is just getting a table spoon of non flavoured gelatin and mixing it with 100ml of COLD water. The water needs to be cold so as to make the gelatin bloom to let it hydrate properly to avoid it clumping together. When adding the gelatin, I didn't add it all at once. What I did was I shook the spoon gently as I stirred the pot. I did this to avoid the gelatin clumping together, making for an even mixture.
After this, I took my graduated cylinder and put a paper coffee filter over the top, and poured the gelatin mix in. I use the paper filters to remove any potential debris in the mix that could have come from the sachet I ripped open or general dust.
I then take my jacquard cyanotype kit and mix 5ml from bottle A and another 5ml from bottle B and put them into a beaker.
Following the advice I got online, I took the cyanotype mixture and mixed it with 25ml of the gelatin mix and stirred this briefly for about 5 minutes. Once I'm happy with the mix i add it to a beaker.
From here, I am able to store the mixture for future use or I can start the next stage of pouring onto the mirrors.
When storing the mixture either at this stage or if i have left over, it will solidify. This is okay, all I need to do is fill a pot with hot water from the tap and put the beaker or whatver its being stored in into the hot water just to heat it back up turning it back into a liquid. Just need to make sure no water gets into the beaker otherwise it will dilute and ruin the mixture.
Before pouring the mixture onto the mirrors, I like to make sure they are as clean as possible. I tried wiping them down with glass cleaner and kitchen roll, and I also tried using dust cloths, but I feel like these both ended up leaving debris and streaks on the mirrors. The best method I'd found with what I had at hand was just giving the mirrors a quick rinse under the water and leaving them to dry near a window it only took a few minutes and would leave the mirror spotless.
At the point of pouring onto the mirrors, after trial and error and a bit of research, I found that pouring from the centre of the mirror and eyeballing the amount was the best way to go. You start from the centre, and then you tilt the mirror to get the mixture up to the top left corner, top right, bottom right then bottom left, and let the excess fall back into the beaker.
From here, if the pouring didn't go well, it's very easy to rinse the mirror and try again, or if it did go well, we move on to the next step!
From here, I moved the mirrors I'd poured onto straight into a cupboard in my hallway as it's as light proof as it's going to get in my flat as the mirrors are now technically light sensitive but nowhere near as sensitive as typical film. It's fairly cool in the cupboard, helping the drying process. I kept them in little plastic trays flat on their back onto the kitchen roll just to help absorb any of the moisture from the wood. It takes several hours for the mirrors to dry.
I found I could also store the mirrors in my fridge to speed up the process of them solidifying significantly, but a few times I tried this, they started to freeze, and I was worried about the extra moisture from this when it would thaw and also concerned about the mirrors shattering so I tended to avoid this.
Now that the mirrors are dry, we are now on the printing stage! For this, all that's required is to choose a negative line, line it up on the mirror, once happy place a glass plate on top of the mirror. We do this to make sure there's no gap at all between the mirror and the negitive. Otherwise, the image would come out blurry. Once I was happy, I would turn on my UV Lamp. I found after trial and error, the best exposure time was between 15 and 20 minutes for the UV lamp I had at hand.
Once exposed, i turn the lamp off and immediately place the mirror into a plastic tray that's filled with cold water, warm / hot water would heat up the gelatin and potentially ruin the print or worse case turn it back into a liquid. When in the tray of cold water, I'd gently agitated it by gently tipping each corner of the tray to just get the water moving over the print to wash it thoroughly. I would know it's done by picking it up and seeing the colour of the water that would drip off the mirror. If it was still blue / yellow, i would keep it in the water bath, but if it ran clear, I knew it was done and ready to be dried.
To dry the prints, it was the same as before, I would put them in the cupboard with paper towels under them, but instead of being flat on their back, I would prop them up allowing the watter to run off them.
That's the full process! If I was unhappy with a print due to too many blemishes or if something went wrong it was very easy to start over, i would just run it under the hot tap and very gently scrub it with the green side of the sponge and it was ready to start all over again.
I didn't mean to add a poll and I can't seem to remove it without deleting the full post please ignore this
anyone in the uk that cares about trans people should sign this petition to protect the rights trans adults to physically transition through nhs services
Introduce a law to legally protect the right of those aged 18 and over to transition using NHS services. This should specifically cover phys
as of posting it has just under 17,000 signatures, the goal is 100,000
I am a woman, legally or not. i am a lesbian, legally or not. I will not have my sense of self removed by some rich mold riddled children's author or the supreme court.
Here is where I'll be making more of an effort to post my end of year work and my process. Above is a first attempt I made of printing on a mirror but I'll actually most my thinking of the project and the process of getting to this stage and how I ideally hope to progress with my thinking in the hopes that the end products get more refined!
I went out today taking portraits with black and white film instead of colour to see how they turn out! I think it worked for a lot of them but you loose that gleem of night life and the glow of the neon lights aren't as interesting to me without the colour. during this when shooting the portraits also I think I've decided to either combine tobacco shops with the images of people in a typology or will just have the images of the people or the buildings on their own as I need to narrow it down. I just need to see the work placed out in front of me when home to see how it is all looking.
origamiaround
gummygunk
izzy806
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
discoholicmusic
