Photography - A New Skill
Today, we had a look into Photography and some interesting techniques that go along with it. To start we had a look into some influential photographers and started to think about the techniques Photograms and Chemigrams.
Man Ray - An artist we looked into who classed himself as a Painter above all other mediums. But, delved into many others. One of the other mediums was obviously photography. He started with camera-less photography and then experimented with Photograms. But in his photograms, Man Ray embraced outcomes of absurd compilations and ‘luck of the draw’ arrangements of objects. This emphasised abstract and uniqueness of images made in this way.
We were tasked with making our own Photograms in the dark room using light. Before we made the photograms, we made a collage of objects that would be placed on a piece of photographic paper in the dark room. I used many random objects and thought it would be best to embrace the randomness of the placement and see what outcome it would create in the dark room. In the dark room, I placed the photographic paper under the light, the aperture was set to 5.6 and the exposure time was about 8 seconds. I then placed the photographic paper in the processing chemicals for 2 minutes and it revealed the image the collage of objects created. I was surprised at how effective the method was and the textures it created with positive and negative space. I had a netting texture underneath the rest of my collage, but i didn’t show through as much as i would have liked it too, however it does fade out quite nicely, which grew on me.
After using the first technique and processing it by submerging them in the processing chemicals. I made a new collage of objects and repeated the same process with the light. However, when it came to the processing stage we were tasked with experimenting with the areas we process. We could brush the processing chemical on the paper or use our hands, sponge it and expose them in unique ways. This gave you the option to expose some areas and leave some blank. This would be interesting if you wanted to make some interesting typography with an experimental texture with the exposure - could even make a drawing on it (while squinting really hard as the lighting is low in the dark room)
I enjoyed experimenting with the darkroom and using light and chemicals to create interesting outcomes. The collage of objects that were exposed on the photographic paper, made some interesting outcomes. It will be interesting to revisit these in the future if i ever have any experimental processes i would like to try.
The following day, we moved on from the photograms and delved into the Chemigram process. For this task we were tasked with finding some interesting objects from the outside world. I found objects like feathers, flowers and leaves. As well as this, i looked into Pierre Cordier and the process of chemigrams.
Being the inventor of Chemigrams in 1956, Cordier combined the physical aspect of painting and combined it with photography. The process was very experimental and stated that he encouraged accidents and thought the improvisation was comparable in the same way, to classical music or jazz. The chemigram is able to be exposed to full light and imagery can be created by using chemicals on light sensitive paper.
For our process, we took our object from the outside and dipped them in the processing chemicals, which would leave an image that was printed by the chemicals. I really enjoyed using the feathers, but found that the feathers got too saturated in the chemicals and when placed on the paper would make it look like a feather-shaped blob - so i had to trial and error the right amount of chemicals on the feather. I trialled this by dabbing it on a scrap piece of paper a few times and them placing it on the light sensitive paper. It created some strange textures that were reminiscent of a feather but it had a more fluid feel. The feather was my only decent outcome, as everything else just looked like i’d sprayed droplets of the chemicals all over the paper and didn’t really bring out the texture or shape. I enjoyed the Chemigrams but didn’t enjoy the process and i didnt get very good outcomes that i was satisfied with. But like Cordier said, its like jazz, so maybe i just needed some different objects to improvise with. I improvised with my objects and they didn’t work. So, I should just move on and make a new one - keep making and experimenting to get different outcomes. I think its a good lesson that not everything you make has to be perfect and can be interesting in its own way.
