Another Collage

I thought I was finished with collage for a while, but I was wrong. I finished this one last week after a little too much absinthe.

New Collages IV

Here's the last of the new collages I've been working on.


Like the ones in my previous post, these are simple collages made by pasting one or two appropriated images on top of an original snapshot.


These have been fun, so much so that while I really should be working on other things (I have a show in June to prepare for), I keep going back to collages. I have three partially completed collages sitting next to me as I write this.


It had been a while, I'd forgotten how much I enjoy collage.

New Collages III

Here's a few more recent collages. Like the other collages I've posted here recently, I set some rules for myself before starting work on these.


The rule here was simple: Start with an original (snapshot sized) photo, and add only one or two elements.


The result is collages that are very simple, but I think they are oddly effective.


Unfortunately, I've become busy with teaching duties, and I have to concentrate on making work for an upcoming exhibition I'm doing this June. So, I've put collages aside for now. I do have a few more of these, I'll post them soon.

New Collages II

Here are a few more of my recent collages. I talked about my inspiration and ground rules in my last post, but to recap, I was using old snapshots and purposefully keeping things simple. After making a few collages with varying degrees of success, I hit upon the idea of pairing an entire photo with an image from a magazine. I had a couple old issues of the New York Times Style magazine lying around, so used those as source material.

My first one is at the top of this post. I’m happy with how it turned out.

Here’s my second one:


I like this one even more. It’s probably my favorite of these collages.

Here’s two more, completed on the same day:




The one with the blue car is my least favorite of these, but even then, I like it. There’s probably a bit of John Stezeaker in these collages, but I think these are more concerned with pareidolia or pattern recognition than Stezeker’s work.

I’ll post more collages soon. Keep looking!

New Collages

Here are some new collages. I started working on them over my recent semester break, and have continued with them (when I have the time and energy) now that school has resumed.

My inspiration with these was my sorting through a large crate full of snapshots I’ve taken over the past twenty-five years or so. I started pulling out the photos not worth saving; poorly exposed or focused ones, blurry shots, boring photos, etc. After combing through the entire crate, I found I had a stack of at least a hundred prints, and decided to do something with them.

I rarely collage with original photos. I enjoy the influence of appropriation and recontextualization on content in collages, and that isn’t as evident in collages made from my own photos.

Knowing this, I decided I needed to set a couple of rules for myself to make these collages work. First, every collage I made had to include at least one original photo (or part of one). Second, these collages were to be simple, and overly complex compositions avoided. Third, I limited how I cut, preferring geometric shapes to cutting around the contours of objects. Lastly, I worked intuitively, not worrying about content or meaning and focusing entirely on composition and how the collages looked.

The first one I made is at the top of this post. I like this one quite a bit, although my partner referred to it as “Baldessari meets Mondrian”. I can see that, but I still like it.

I made a second, similar piece, and while I don’t hate it I’m not real happy with it:


For some reason I can’t put my finger on, it reminds me of the ‘80’s.

I went in a different direction for the third collage:


I like the idea here, but think this could be a little better. I wish it were a little neater, and the intuitive approach didn’t quite work. I want to think think this through some more before doing any more like it.

My next several collages are quite a bit more interesting and successful to me. I’ll post these in a couple of days.

From The Archives: Damaged

Here’s another installment of From the Archives, a (very) occasional series wherein I post old work and write some comments about how it was made and what I was thinking about.

Back in 1993, I was a photography student eagerly leaning new photo techniques. I had an assignment for a class that involved exploring a technique, then reporting back to the class on my success. I decided to try reticulation, which is supposed to result in a fine, almost spider web like pattern of cracks over the surface of a negative. Reticulation is achieved chemically (using sodium carbonate) or through subjecting negatives to extremes of hot and cold water. I decided to try the temperature method of reticulation. I shot a roll of black and white film, mostly random landscapes in the countryside around Ann Arbor, MI, as well as some shots in a local cemetery, and a few shots in downtown Ypsilanti, MI.


After developing the film, I heated a pot of water on the stove, and set a bowl of ice water on the counter next to the stove. I had left the negatives uncut, and plunged the entire 24 exposure strip into the pot of hot water. After a couple of minutes, I removed them from the hot water and placed them into the ice water. Nothing happened. I tried a couple more times, but still, no change in the negatives. So, I heated the water until it was just below the boiling point, and tossed the negatives in. Almost immediately, the gelatin began melting and sliding off of the film. I hurriedly grabbed the film with a pair of tongs, but by this time, the emulsion was so soft that the edges of the film base was hitting the emulsion and removing it in large chunks. I figured the film was a lost cause, so I started pressing my fingers into it, leaving fingerprints in the emulsion. After all this, one final bath in the ice water still did not succeed in achieving reticulation.


My mistakes were pretty easy to figure out. First, I likely developed the film using a hardening fixer (many fixers have a hardening agent designed to strengthen the negative so as to prevent damage). A non hardening fixer may have allowed reticulation to occur. Secondly, I should have rolled the developed film back onto a developing reel before putting it into the pot of hot water, This would have prevented the film from hitting itself and removing chunks of emulsion.


I filed these negatives away, chalking it up to a failed experiment (I’ve never actually tried reticulating negatives again myself, although I’ve had students make it work). I have used shots from this roll a few times, however. This is a kwik-print made about a year after the failed reticulation attempt. It’s a collage made using one of the damaged negatives as a starting point.


Here’s the original shot for comparison:


A few years later, I used another of these shots in a mixed media piece. Here’s the original shot: (with my thumbprint in the emulsion):


Here’s what I made with it:


Looking at these shots now, I like a lot of them quite a bit. The layer of visual noise, and the changes in texture and composition resulting from the missing chunks of emulsion make these mundane scenes interesting. Maybe this was a happy accident after all.

Fuji Transfers

When Tom and Christie were married in September, Christie asked me to make Polaroid lifts of their wedding photos. It sounded like a great idea to me, except for one thing: Polaroid film is no longer being manufactured. I’d heard that Fuji instant film would work, but that the process was somewhat different than when using Polaroid film. So, I did some online research, and gave it a shot.

The basics are the same. If you’re using a Daylab (or in my case, a Vivitar slide printer I bought on Ebay), you need to start with slides. If you have a good quality flat screen monitor, it’s very easy. Load slide film into your camera, set it on auto, mount it to a tripod, open the images in Photoshop, hide all the menus, and shoot. The slides come out perfect. Based on my research, I over saturated the color on the photos a little before I shot slides of them, to compensate for a tendency of the transfers to look washed out.


The fuji film I used is FP-100C. It’s a color instant film the same size as Polaroid 669 film, and fits easily into the slide printer (Fuji also makes an instant black & white film, which I haven’t tried). Exposing the film was a little tricky. The Fuji film has a slightly different ISO than the Polaroid film, and the VIvitar slide printer has limited exposure adjustment. Try as I might, the prints all come out lacking details in the highlight areas, not a good thing when you’re making prints of a wedding dress. I actually think that the Fuji prints are high in contrast, as the dark areas of the prints also lost detail. The next time I try lifts with this film, I’ll try lowering the contrast of the images before shooting the slides to see if it improves things.

Aside from the contrast issue, the Fuji prints looked pretty good. The color balance is much better than the Polaroid 669 film, which always had a very distinct cyan cast (the Fuji black & white lifts show a cyan cast in the blacks, but I kind of like how it looks).


As for making the lifts, Fuji film is similar, but also quite different from Polaroid. FIrst, I found that warmer water to soak the prints in worked better. I did all my Polaroid lifts at 160 degrees F. Fuji film worked better around 180 degrees. The soak time was shorter, it took about 1-2 minutes in the hot water to loosen the emulsion on the Fuji film. After transferring the print to a tray of cool water, the emulsion easily slid off of the backing, with little fuss. That’s a big improvement over Polaroid film, which can be difficult to remove from the backing.

The Fuji emulsion has a very different feel from the Polaroid. It has an almost cellophane like crispness, unlike the mushy and easily damaged Polaroid emulsion. It can be handled quite a bit, something that would have left you with a tray of Polaroid soup. It’s a little less malleable than the Polaroid film, but not so much that you can’t get some good wrinkles and bends into the image. The one thing I really do not like about the Fuji film is that the edges of the emulsion tend to curl, and it can be very difficult to unroll it and get it to lie flat. Many of my lifts of the wedding photos have a distinct dark edge caused by this curling.

The reading I had done on Fuji lifts said that the Fuji emulsion would not stick to paper like Polaroid emulsion, and needed to be glued down. A couple of sources recommended picking up some of the ‘glue’ that held the emulsion to the backing, and spreading it on the receiving paper. I found this impossible. First off, there is no glue, it’s obviously gelatin. Secondly, the shorter soaking time means the gelatin does not dissolve. I found that coating the receiving paper with acrylic medium before transferring the emulsion to it worked much better.

Overall, I mostly liked the Fuji lifts. The color is a significant improvement over Polaroid 669 film, and the emulsion is easier to handle. I do wish it were a little more malleable, however, and the curling of the edges is really annoying. Maybe, if The Impossible Project decides to resurrect 669 film, they can solve the color issues, and we’ll have a great instant film for doing lifts.

Congratulations, Tom and Christie! I have 22 lifts from your wedding photos to give you when I see you next week.