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Weird and wonderful - research 2/2

Writer: RosaRosa

Updated: Jan 15, 2020

At the beginning I wanted to take pictures using a piece of wood that I cut with the laser-cut machine to create a shadow on a body.

Then I decided to do this pictures just as a personal project.

I've took the pictures in the studio using an analogue camera Mamiya 645.

I had some troubles to had a the shadow strong enough. I wasn't using the right lights.

But I manage to have a big shadow to use on the body.

This is a small version of the laser-cut.



contact sheet I



I've showed the pictures to Mohini for the critic group and everybody said that these pictures was better then the other ones that I took for the subject.

And I prefer them too.



 

contact sheet II


I've choose tho print this one a little bit reframed size a A3 :




And the next ones size A7 will be on the wall next to the big print:



 

So now I have the pictures, but I still need to think about the project and the references and I'm might try to take new pictures to see if I want to try new things or not.





I made this hanging test for my pre-exam and after talking with Martina I decided that I want to use the sublimation to print on a fabric.

There is a really thin fabric like a veil, Maria used it and she hang her print in the space.

I really like it and I think I'm gonna do something similar.

I use to use a veil on the body for my photography so that could be a way to keep the veil in my practice but in a different way.



 

REFERENCES




Lucien Clergue is a great photographer that I've always admired for his nude photography using the light to create stripes on the body.




Ed Emrich is photographer that I(m following on instagram for a while, he use projection on body.



Jean-Philippe Lebee is a french photographer, he does a lot of really different images but I really these two.


 

Oral December

For the subject Weird and Wonderful I had trouble to find something I was happy to go with.

The first idea I had for my project was to take a picture of a woman on a bed smoking a cigarette, using inspirations such as Nan Goldin, Gregory Crewdson, Edward Hopper, Richard Tuschman. I wanted to create an ambiance ‘cosy’, ‘intimate’. Create a setting like a Hopper painting and let the spectator to create his own story with the picture.

I had trouble to find a bedroom like I wanted, but I decided to run a first series of test using digital camera and natural light.

I realised that, even if some of the pictures are quite nice, it’s not what I want.

In the same time for a personal project I took pictures in the studio using a piece of wood on which one I cut an ornamental pattern using the laser cut machine.

I always like to use the light to create shadows and for this time I wanted go a bit further I the process by making the design I was going to use for the shadow.

The body become closer to the sculpture and the shadow is sometimes really sharpen and is covering the body like clothes.

I like when the body disappears and create something else.

I choose 5 pictures of the roll. I want one big and four smalls.

One of the ideas for the print could be to make a canvas using illustrator to play around and having a big canvas with all the images on it.

One of the other ideas could be to do the same thing using a canvas but then by using sublimation print on a fabric. Print on a really soft and thin fabric to recreate the same softness that I have on the picture. And I could suspend it in front of a wall or a window.

I’ve made prints on the smooth mat paper but when I’ll be back at school on the beginning of January, I’ll use the sublimation to print on the fabric.


 

Sublimation


So, I decided to print my pictures on a fabric by using the sublimation process.

I've made a file with the 5 pictures disposed like I wanted them and print it like this, by doing this, the fabric become the canvas.


I hang suspend it in a plastic stick just from the top and I leave the bottom floating to create a soft movement.

To suspend it I use fishing line so we want see the string and that doesn't break.


I really like the result, it's soft and I've never tried to print on something else than paper before and I have to admit that I like the result very much.






 

Critical self-review


At the beginning I wanted to take a picture with an atmosphere like in Hopper’s painting, but the tests I’ve made are really different and I didn’t get the atmosphere at all.

However, I had to learn how to use a digital camera to realise the test, so this is going to be helpful for later if I don’t have time to do analogues pictures and process them. Although I still prefer film photography, it was nice to experiment with something different.

For the first project I wanted to take a picture of a naked woman sitting on a bed smoking a cigarette, but I had a lot of trouble to find a place that I really liked, and when I did find somewhere to shoot, the model cancelled twice for the first tests and I was starting to be short on time. I managed to do some tests but not in the right place.

After all that could go wrong has happened, I decided to give up on this project and to focus on another idea, the very first idea I had at the very beginning.

I wanted to work with shadows because that’s something that I always do and really like but for this time I tried to push myself further into the project and for that I made a pattern on Illustrator and I went to the lab to laser cut it in wood. This way I was able to have the pattern I wanted to project the shadow on a body.

For the photoshoot I booked the studio and borrowed lights, but the lights weren’t strong enough to have a strong shadow, so I used a Harry light to have the shadow I wanted.

Turns out that having the shadow where I wanted it to be on the body was harder than I thought but I managed it anyway. I have chosen to use an analogue camera, the Mamyia 645 because I like the format and analogue is important to me, the results are so much softer, and I think in gives a big presence to the image.

For a while I thought I didn’t have any references but that wasn’t true, we’re always influenced by images we saw during our life, so, I did some research to find an artist that could’ve inspired me, and I found Lucien Clergue, Ed Emrich and Jean-Philippe Lebee.

I choose to print on a fabric by using the sublimation process because that’s something new for me and the result is softer than on paper, and it create a movement really delicate and smooth. I can say it’s a real revelation.

At the end no matter the struggles that I could have, I was happy with the final results and learned that you have to trust your instinct and being organised is essential.

 
 
 

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© 2019 par Rosa Bonté. 

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