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| Indochine - Cyanotype print |
Early last year I mentioned how I admired the work of David Levinthal one of my posts. I like the way he creates elaborate sets using toys and miniatures then, with careful consideration to space and lighting creates drama, tension and narrative. Often, as in his Modern Romance 1984 -86 series, the images have a certain voyeuristic quality and the viewer can easily forget that they're actually looking at models, not real people or events.
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| Indochine - Cyanotype print |
Like Levinthal, much of my work often has a certain voyeuristic quality, I like looking but don't always engage or interact with my subjects as much as I could. Travel forms a large part of my life and this disengaged state of mind is often compounded by language and cultural barriers. My travel photos are often a combination of voyeurism and nostalgia. I like history and and am fascinated by stories of exploration and discovery. For me, there is a romance to travel which doesn't often exist when I am actually 'on the road' and preoccupied with the minutiae of changing money, finding a bed for the night or a toilet in a hurry.
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| Indochine - Cyanotype print |
So, inspired by Levinthal and old travel postcards I set about creating a series of images for a series entitled Indochine. Using model figures, predominantly from a Hong Kong based company called King & Country and sets which I built out of cardboard, foam core and things I found in aquarium suppliers (the Bayon 'face' sculpture) or lying around the house I have constructed my own tale of exploration, discovery and conquest. It's loosely based on the French expansion into Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos) but really just me having fun and being a kid again.
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| Indochine - Cyanotype print |
The series is not quite complete and has evolved somewhat since I first started. Initially all the images were produced as fiber-based, silver gelatin prints, hand coloured to resemble old post cards. But in the past few weeks, with one of my classes at college experimenting with alternative printing techniques, I decided to re work them and produce the series as Cyanotype prints. The Cyanotype process was invented by the British astronomer Sir John Herschel in 1842 and has remained largely unchanged since. It uses two iron compounds, ferric ammonium citrate (green) and potassium ferricyanide, which when combined becomes sensitive to UV light. The images you can see here use this original recipe, coated onto water colour paper and using the contact printing method exposed to bright sunlight to create the print. Once exposure (which takes around 15 minutes for the negative material I am using) is complete, running water removes the unexposed emulsion leaving a rich blue image... hence the term cyanotype. I'm not a huge fan of the blue print, so have partially bleached these with household grade ammonia and then toned the print in a strong solution of tea resulting in the duo tone look that you can see here.
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| Indochine - Cyanotype print |
Anyway, hope that you like what I've come up so far, I'll post more as I complete them.
Be cool
Be cool
