Tasks: week 4 - 10

"As for Vertov, Mochu cites the Soviet filmmaker’s contemporaries Georges Méliès, Segundo de Chomón and later Dadaist and Surrealist collage films as stronger influences, as well as Chris Marker and certain essay films from Orson Welles, David Blair and Jean-Luc Godard, which extend the Vertovian tradition and, while sustaining a documentary layer, also employ a heavy layer of trick imagery and effects”
https://artreview.com/remote-gods-indian-filmmaker-mochu-weird-cinema/
https://en-gb.facebook.com/KochiMuzirisBiennale/videos/185289479054587/

Prep:
Iphone
Clip on lenses
Selfie stick

Editing suite - imovie.

Storyboard ideas: Locations: darkroom, plein air.

Use wide angle and fisheye lenses, to make more interesting pictures.

(Photo tricks can make points - perception, perspective, perceptive reality. What you see or feel vs what you know. Emotive vs factual.)

As suggested in my proposal; "How are our perceptions affected by being boxed in during lock down? Looking inwards, perhaps a box diorama containing mirrors, objects and lights, maybe transparencies, painted surfaces that is viewed by looking into it. That because of the internal reflected surfaces reads as a 'tardis', transmitting back the photographic reproductions of perceptual reality and sapience in the human mind kaleidoscopically as a 'Collidingscape'."

I brought up the idea of a 'Collidingscape' as a method of displaying my work at our exhibition during my presentation and Cath suggested that I consider some marquettes.

My use of model soldiers originally came from an idea I was discussing with my father; as a child during WW2 he told me that my grandfather had returned on leave from Germany with among other loot, some painted lead model soldiers. My father had set these up and photographed them with his Brownie Box camera. Sadly neither the photos, soldiers or camera have survived. So I was knocked out when I discovered the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman, they have taken the staging of model soldiers to the grotesque and macabre, most notably in their installations 'Hell' 1999 and 'Fucking Hell' 2008.

I moved onto using 'Action' men; 1/12 scale figures, they have movable limbs and can be set up as I wish, rather than restricted to the poses of the smaller solid model soldiers. The trick is to get them into poses were they might look like real people, not just dolls, it is painstaking and can be quite subtle.

To the Darkroom and Beyond...

After three days on location shooting film and paper, I spent a day in the darkroom tweaking my processes. I managed at last to begin to come up with some workable colour reversal prints as well as some useful black and white ones. I spend another day scanning, adjusting and photocopying to create the following galleries.

I was first inspired to work with super wide angles and panoramas after visiting those famous symbols of peace, Monet's 'Water Lilies', 1927 at the Orangerie in Paris, and this has stayed with me on and off throughout my various degree projects. I believe that this kind of format is an excellent way for me of not only conveying the enormity of landscape, but also the size of the problem, scale, the fragility of all life perched on a rock flying through space and time.

For the exhibition I think I would like to find a way of projecting endless panoramas, continuous stories without beginnings, middles or ends; cyclic information loops.

Lomo Spinner 360 camera, 100asa Fomapan developed with home made caffenol recipe, scanned and adjusted CS4.

Sprocket holes are contentious, they have been seen as both a statement of analogue authenticity and also as a gimmick that can be 'Photo shopped' onto digital photographs that may lack something. I feel that they are no more or less than any other photo trickery, regardless if they are in or out of fashion.

My original reasons for including sprocket holes was to describe 'establishing shots' as in a moving picture film. I had begun during my Independent Project just photographing the visual purity of the landscape I was working in, to give a feel of telling a story, before adding staged models.

I think that Visual art has always had something to do with storytelling, and although the avant-garde rejected the figurative in the twentieth century, it has seen a comeback in contemporary art.

Eventually I started not to notice the sprocket holes any longer as they have just become part of these photographs. The panoramas can be sparse and have areas with nothing but landscape and sprocket holes as clues, the viewer has to pan to see the figures, so the story unfolds.

The other wide angle shots I take with the sprockets showing I see as movie stills, they have plenty of action packed into them through the pinhole and water filled lens used, that seems to jam information onto the negative.

Now I leave the sprocket holes in all the 35mm film I use, I like the idea of showing that the photograph is analogue and was developed by myself, not sent to a lab.

In the above carousel is my first attempt with colour film: (expired) Vericolor III S 160 iso shot with Vemeer 120 pinhole camera, processed with C41 chemicals.

Above: first colour 35mm film, Kodak Gold 200 asa shot in 360 Lomo spinner, developed with C41 chemicals. As with all my pinhole devices both this camera and the Vermeer do not have view finders, sometimes it can be tricky to line up shots, although I think that hands accidentally included in the shots actually enhance the photos, 'The Hand of the Artist', blurring the illusion of perceptual reality still further.

Props Department

In the next sets of photographs there feature five model soldiers, the number is by no means random. It was by chance that my hand appeared in one of the earlier panorama shots, but this planted a seed in my mind, the artists hand at work, the five model soldiers now each representing a digit.

The colour is getting better but the framing is a bit out. This can be a problem sometimes no viewfinders, especially as with more subjects in the frame and compounded by trying to achieve a 'Romantic' pyramid or triangular composition; there is this vertical axis as well as the horizontal axis.

2nd colour film Vermeer 120mm f 300 - expired Vericolour III 160 iso, processed with C41 chemicals, scanned and adjusted in CS4

'Good Comrades'

The soldiers rarely look in the viewers direction, if they do they are not aware of the viewers presence they are always looking beyond.

First colour film through the Sutton water filled lens pinhole 35mm f 168 - expired Kodak 200asa processed with C41 chemicals, scanned and adjusted in CS4

It is quite difficult juggling the troops, getting them to stand still etc !!!

Ready to start using in date film now; I have procured 10 rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 asa both 120 mm and 35 mm. Hopefully the finer grain of this film will enhance enlargements for the exhibition, but also 'harmonise' the colour, so that photos from different formats could be used in the same series for the exhibition.

'Camarades'

Colour Reversal Developing:

60 sec b/w dev, stop or water (tbc), quick tungsten flash/fog, 45 sec colour dev, extended blix.)

I used caffenol as the b/w developer, it takes a full 5 minutes to have the same effect as commercial developer does in one minute and I think there may be less contrast. I am using the same caffenol recipe as for developing B&W film.

Friend or Fiend?'

No Problems - Only Solutions

I found that the mixed media paper 'flopped' inside the collidingscape generator, it is not really stiff enough to stay in position by itself, I will use some velcro tabs to fix it in place next time. Also the same paper did start to disintegrate with the folding and soaking, I will have to try some other papers like perhaps heavy inkjet photo paper and see if this is suitable.

I have discovered that for the collidinscapes to all appear the same, I need a 'correct way up'. I have decided that this should be with the aperture at the bottom which then serves to anchor the images. To maintain this uniformity I must always load the collidingscape generators with the aperture flap of the paper folding down towards me and make sure that the shutter always open up in the opposite direction to that. This ensures that as the image is inverted it will actually be the' correct way up'.

In order to solve the issues I have been having with framing shots, I thought about getting a director's viewfinder, the kind of thing seen slung around the necks of the great auteurs. However I found that these instruments are not only rather expensive, hundreds of pounds, but they also have limitations for my purposes. After some research I was able to find that there is an app, simply called 'Viewfinder'. This is a much more versatile option and it cost me less than a fiver! This little beauty gives you previews of camera framing for any combination of camera and lens. It can also be customised to any film size format and focal length, plus it logs all your settings so you can leave your notebook behind.

I have also an issue with posing my soldiers more realistically, they have been mainly seated or propped up against rocks. But I have come up with an idea to make it possible to stage them free standing by using wire coat hangers, these can be bent, wrapped around their waists and down their trouser legs out of sight and into the ground.

My cameras are all loaded and ready to go, but as the weather has taken a turn for the worse I have decided to spend some time with material I have already shot.

Inspired by the 'spoiled' d-day films of Robert Capa, starting with selecting several of my negatives and subjecting them to:

Manipulation with heat, candle, hot pins

Treat with hand sanitiser, methylated spirits and bleach

Abrade with sharp tools, sandpaper

Mark with pens

Print with letters

Colour with inks

Scan, inverse, adjust etc

The original images photographed are altered and the negatives themselves as objects, are irreversibly changed!

I would like to pursue this further at a later date after my Major project, other interrogations could include: enlarging, printing out and manipulating further with inks, drawing, paint, collage etc. Printing out as acetates to be used as chemograms in the darkroom, further manipulating using caffenol, colour paper, ra4, resists etc.

Photographs of landscapes as visual purity or objectivity immediately become subjective by the selection of the view, angle type of camera, lens, film, paper, lighting conditions etc.

Another level of subjectivity is loaded as staged objects are placed within the now subjective visual purity.

I have always admired the work of Robert Rauschenberg, who was a deft exponent of image transfer techniques, I intend to combine this with painting.

Subjective representation of objects or subjects is further obscured by duplication and degradation; painted responses that have photographs embedded.

Are these photographs or paintings or paintings of photographs?

Is the illusion of reality or is perception the illusion? Is this a pastiche of the 'Treachery of Images' (Rene Magritte, 1929) or the fabric of perceptual reality?

I currently find myself alarmed by the shift in data control backed by power and money, how hard won rights are now being eroded and protest has become regarded as deviant. There is a pandemic and temporary measures are necessary of course, but inappropriate draconian measures are slipping under the guise of Covid as the Overton Window continues further on its journey to the political right, needs to be exposed. It is vital to debunk myths spun by ideologies, but there is a pervading state of lethargic amnesia that is exacerbated by Covid, so although some are aware of the illusions, less do anything about them.

"By Seeking and blundering we learn" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Better to be philosophical than depressed about the latest darkroom session. Unfortunately even at this late stage I showed myself just how disappointingly unpredictable results can be when experimenting with film photography. Being under pressure now to come up with exhibition pieces I will have to look back to my more successful experiments and try to replicate them so that I have a back up. I have run out of time to rely on breaking new ground, although I will continue to do so. I will list the catastrophes here to exorcise them and then move on.

On a positive note I have enough ruined and spoiled materials from my experimentation and development to be able to put together a series of work consisting blank films and paper or make some kind of collages from them. That could be quite a statement!

Conclusions and way forward:

16 x 20 colour paper unsuitable for reversal or possibly expired - Save for use as chemigrams/ chemograms

5 x 7 colour paper same as above

16 x 20 camera now for future use with b/w and direct positive paper only (possibly caffenol developer and/or reversal technique) and maybe hand colouring

Large collidingscapes same as above (unless I can pinpoint a brand of colour paper that will work)

8 x 10 paper colour reversal works and can be further refined in; 8 x 10, 4 x 5 cameras and the small collidingscape generators.

Continue with extreme diligence to process 35mm colour films. Repeat tests with remotely operated motoriser for panoramas with ND filters and in date colour film.

My concept pivots around Carn Gelli, the high rocky outcrop used as a lookout during the 1797 Last Invasion at Fishguard by the French forces and how a place haunted by ghosts of the past is tormented by an uncertain future.

The submission will include projecting endless panoramas, continuous stories without beginnings, middles or ends; cyclic information loops with blurred peripheral. Their purpose conveys the enormity of landscape, but also the size of the problem, scale, the fragility of all life perched on a rock flying through space and time.

My photographs and mixed media works feature Romantic era Napoleonic soldiers that rarely look in the viewers direction, if they do they are not aware of the viewers presence they are always looking beyond, they are vulnerable.

The intention of the 1797 invasion was apparently an attempt to stir revolution. An infiltration that preceded the idea of the Trotsyist ‘French Turn’. I think this can be compared to what has become known as contemporary entryism, in its many guises.

My aim to pull my show together is threefold; I will attempt to show four panoramas, between four and eight Collidingscapes and two larger A0 image transfers over painting.

360 Panoramas

My panoramas had a setback with two ruined films due to lousy chemicals. I am back on track now, and by trial and error have worked out that I need a good quality six stop ND filter to compensate for the speed of the motoriser that powers the rotating camera head. This is achieving the equivalent of 1/4 sec shutter speed, which with 100 asa film and at f16 (smallest aperture I can go with this fixed lens) produces very over exposed pictures. The cheap filters I have used so far are awful and shift the colours so much that they need to be overworked in Photoshop to look halfway decent. I have ordered the necessary filter and I am certain the next panos will be superb. I have arranged with Karl Sedgwick that the panoramas should be displayed as continuous, there should be no noticeable start or finish, they need to blend seamlessly, this means that I need to turn the camera more than 360 and then trim back.

Collidingscapes

When I scaled up from the 8 x 10 colour darkroom paper I had mixed results reverse processing with my 16 x 20 colour darkroom paper, so I decided on my back up plan using direct positive paper. Although I am familiar with this DP paper at other sizes and thought I would get predictable results I was completely surprised and disappointed with what was developed. I conducted further tests and can only assume that the batch I have received is somehow fogged, I am currently disputing this with the supplier, I didn't really need this at the stage I am at now. In order to pull it back I decided on plan C, which is to use standard multigrade B/W darkroom paper, which I have done and from eight shots I think I have four that are suitable, so this is a start. If the supplier does the decent thing in time and sends me out a fresh batch of DP paper I will shoot some more collidingscapes on that, but time is tight and its all weather dependent, fingers crossed.

Setting up my photo studio for photographing images that were too big for me to scan (below). 2 lights and digital SLR with 50mm lens

I found using handy velcro tabs were great to hold the tricky colliding scapes in place.

Pinhole Material for Image Transfer Paintings

At the same time as taking the collidingscape exposures I was shooting colour darkroom paper in my homemade 8 x 10 pinhole camera. The same paper I have had some successful results with reverse processing. My intention is to either display a selection of these photos and/ or use my best two favorites for image transfers. For the first stage B/W I developed five of these in regular developer, but they came out very blue, so I knocked up some Caffenol C and developed the remaining three in this at the first stage. The result was much more pleasing. For the image transfers I already have the wood to build the stretchers, the paint, canvas and gel is on order. John Benyon is ready to print at A0 for me using the same paper and inks that I have already tested and found to be fit for purpose.

The new larger mask for my scanner arrived and below is the same scanned panorama with the sprockets showing, this is a warmer version that actually needed much less adjustment, things are looking promising!

Now that I have some control of aspects of colour film photography, I feel the need to loose that predictability again by trying the soup technique for example; soaking film in miscellaneous potions possibly relevant to a concept for days, weeks, years before or after exposing. The initial result giving random colour shifts and other unknown variables. I thought for example that if I had more time on this project I would collect heather, gorse, other plants and grasses from Carn Gelli, boil them up to reduce into a concentrate that would connect the colour shifts to the place.

As my pinhole paper negatives that are reverse developed to colour positives, refined to a point and then printed as image transfers; this is where I loose some control over the process through the duplication and degradation, something left for chance to interrupt.

Its tame, release, tame and release again, searching for and revealing deeper meanings.

I made three more excursions up Carn Gelli and managed to just about pull it together, I think I have enough material now to edit back and put together my show.

My focus was to produce an online submission, which was fortuitous for me continuing on from the Independent Project, as photography well suited to this brief. We have been advised to provide a physical submission as well and I will do my best to adapt to this, I think my best shot lies with concentrating on scaling up the image transfers.

As Gerhard Richter once stated “I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant,” and there is a parallel here with pinhole photographs that give equal focus to the foreground and background, to the figures and the landscape. As I make the image transfers which will be the pinhole photographs over a painted studies that themselves are scraped or blurred, as subjective or objective perception. I could increase blur by scraping the photos in places back to the layers beneath, also adding another more translucent layer over the photos to be scraped again obscuring what is already blurred. To convey the confusion perceptual reality has navigating a moment.

Whilst working and cogitating on my final pieces A0 for the submission, I have decided that I will go ahead with the first under painting even though it annoyingly (and accidentally) looks like abstract expressionism, but that was the result of me repeatedly interrupting the information, it will of course be eclipsed by the photographic transfer and only partially visible in the layers beneath. For the second one I am thinking about taking a leaf out of my Ivon Hitchens' book, I will have the subjective truth of painting obscured by the subjective truth of the camera. This under painting will consist of the luminosity I need and the crimson as before, but it will be put together with other elements to merge painting and photography deeper; "This principle runs throughout - dark-light, warm-cool, in-out. Circular shapes, square angular shapes. Large sombre areas - short quick notes, and so on. Thus all the area of the canvas should be consciously planned in movements as well as representing objects." (cited by Khoroche 2020, p 80)

I am slightly undone; as all my A0 colour prints are scanned and printed at 300 dpi, any illusion that they could be paintings is crushed by that alone, you can see the dots on the enlargements, plus my under-paintings just seem to clash with those photos themselves. They fail on too many levels. I think the reverse developed colour pinholes are better off being displayed online just as the photos for now, if I had better prints I would go to the trouble. In fact I think I could just transfer them onto canvas without any painting underneath or any disturbances over them and they would both convey the concept and have an aesthetic.

While I am not completely happy with my colour transfers, I was listening to an interview with David Bailey, he was discussing the difference between his photography and his painting and that as far as he was concerned photography was black and white and painting was for colour. I remembered that many of the photographers I has been referencing did work solely or mainly in black and white: Robert Capa, Don Mccullen, Steven Pippin, even Gerard Richter's earlier photography was black and white. Meanwhile all the painters I had been looking at painted in colour.

I reviewed my earlier image transfer tests when I had used black and white photographs, and saw that perhaps they were more successful and that I had become fixated on the colour transfers as I had invested so much in producing the source photos. So I decided to take a step backwards in order to proceed forwards and I scanned two of my earlier black and white pinhole negatives that were developed in Caffenol C to have them printed. So the plan now is that the black and white photographs are printed with their sprocket holes, denoting that they are undoubtedly film photographs, the underpainting serves to interject colour into the conversation and I will go back to my earlier colour palette of Prussian blue, lemon yellow and burn sienna as I think this will now work as I had originally intended.

Meanwhile I have made 2 more stretchers (55 x 19 inches) to start on black and white pieces. Both of these over the shoulder shots have been scanned at higher resolution. They are quite ambiguous in themselves and having a Noir cinematic mood, so to juxtapose this I might use a simple fairly light palette with a touch of earth tone beneath based on my previous Ivon Hitchens research.

I have not seen exactly what I want to achieve with these transfers yet, I do know that it has to have a certain aesthetic, this does make it difficult, but also easier to reject work that I consider does not have that aesthetic.

The black and white transfer tests seem to have this aesthetic I am after, the large prints were at least scanned at 1200 dpi and that makes all the difference. Although I am not proposing them in the same way as I would have the colour ones, as illusions of paintings, these are very definitely film over paint.

Derrrida's Hauntology ties in neatly with my idea of the past haunting a place tortured by an uncertain future, and the transfers certainly have a spectral/ noir atmosphere.

"Spectrality does not involve the conviction that ghosts exist or that the past (and maybe even the future they offer to prophesy) is still very much alive and at work, within the living present: all it says, if it can be thought to speak, is that the living present is scarcely as self-sufficient as it claims to be; that we would do well not to count on its density and solidity, which might under exceptional circumstances betray us." Fredric Jameson, (Cited by Davis 2005)

In the carousel below are the results of several 16 inch tests and one 55 inch finished piece.

360 Panoramas

The panoramas above were taken with my motorised 360 camera, on fresh Kodak Pro Image 100asa film using an ND 6 filter and developed with RA4 chemicals in my darkroom. The colours are vivid and there was hardly any adjustment needed for either the exposure or colour.

I have trusted that my final body of work for the project will come out of experimentation in the last few weeks before the exhibition; still believing that resolved outcomes are the residue of crucially creating art. I hope I have enough time to both separate those that stand out and correlate other pieces worthy of presentation into a series.

During one of my recent photo shoots some hikers walked through the set in front of a camera that was actually taking a photo. Initially i was a bit put out, but in any case the particular photo did not come out for some reason, probably due to a miscalculation with filtration or exposure. However this gave me another possible conceptual bonus; as I am already considering ghosts of the past that haunt a place that is equally tormented by an uncertain future, so I would like to stage passersby walking, like giants blurred through the frames of a few shots, I think it may be a strong idea. Aware or oblivious to the past, present or future of the space or place they inhabit. Unfortunately I have run out of time to stage these particular shots, something to consider for the future now, hopefully like Kubrick I can use the notion on another project.

Further Experimentation:

Over the course of the project I have stumbled over many processes and experiments that I wanted to try out or pursue further, but these might have taken me in different directions. I have put them on the back burner for now and will continue at some point during the summer after submission.

Here are a few of the ideas I am very excited to continue with:

Reverse develop dark room paper and canvas coated with emulsion with commercial developer/ caffenol
Test out multipinhole cameras with b/w and colour film

Reverse develop b/w film with caffenol to make 40x40 super slide format positives for use with slide projectors.

Hand colour photographic slides.

Try out the 'soup' technique of soaking film and darkroom paper in potions prior to developing.