Post Resolution Work

My large A0 print, I am saving for the Free Range exhibition. I have been working on some post resolution work.
As it is highly experimental I am not displaying it for the degree show. I stated earlier, my work is two different chapters of the same book. This work is the sequel to that work.

These are my original scans:

These colour papers are intense. They represent a dystopian nightmare alternative world. The reason for this is the first half of the series, the empty abandoned interiors that I have been stuck in, and the natural outside world that is a painful release from the first half of the series.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I inverted the scans, and experimented with the levels and colours, they are still very blue but the colours in some really are not far off. I learned the ISO of colour paper is tricky. The ISO of the magenta is somewhere around ISO 25, but the ISO of the blue is 100. I cut out the magenta,, with two magenta filters that cut 2 stops on the recommendation of one of my tutor's Peter Renn, I now feel I should have used blue filters to filter out the Blue and bring it down by several stops to bring it more in line with ISO 25.
The colours are still quite basic and would need more work to get them to somewhere I might want to display them. However I feel that when the colours are inverted the photographs lose their strange nightmare feel.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While experimenting with colours I adjusted the midtones in the colour balance adjustment in Photoshop. this was pretty much the first thing that happened, Richard Mosse eat your heart out.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I retouched these as negatives to retain their nightmare aesthetic. I altered the colours in them though, so each had a strong colour dominating its composition, I think some work really well and accurately display my intentions, but others just dont fit, I feel the some of the series works better in its original negative colours.

The Editing Process

I spent a day editing through my images to decide which ones to display, and how to display them. I edited through my prints so it was easy to move them around and see how they would play out on a wall.

I took a while to get a grid that I was happy with.
I liaised with Ellen Nolan for a large amount of wall space. I was considering displaying the A0 print I had, though I really wanted to save it for the Free Range exhibition as it takes up considerable wall space.
In reviews people say they see my 10x8s as part of a different series. I see them maybe part of a different chapter, but they are definitely pat of the same book. I went through those prints for a connecting edit too.

I like this edit, with the silver river leading into the heavens, and the path of it repeated in the print at the bottom with the path going through it. People who know the areas have commented on their strange aesthetic, they are backwards! Usually with film emulsion the photograph is viewable on both sides of the film, but with paper, it can only be viewed on one side, so the photographs are backwards. The sky swirls with an ethereal light; the ground is dark, oppressive, angry, aggressive. When I edit, I chose to have things different, I could have put the images with the ground at the bottom, the rivers in the middle, the sky at the top, but the series is representative of a dream, a dystopia, so it needed to be mixed up, adding to the unease of the 'chapter'.

An edit of 10x8s

I retouched these files. I haven't tried to perfect any anomalies in the scanning, however I have brought detail out from the highlights, doing this revealed intense light ray developing marks.

These are starting to reflect a dystopian nightmare. It really has the feeling of the strains of everyday life, without directly showing anything directly mundane. These photographs stand in for my feelings surrounding the subjects discussed, while giving a tantalising glimpse, albeit nervous, uncertain view into a release -
"feelings and emotions towards the passage of time: time moving ever forward, my worries over forging a career after uni, my consideration over the choice to study a Masters degree, my fears, my memories of choices made in the past, the rural wilderness I choose to escape to and my desire to float on down the river and into the horizon."

Each viewer is invited to read these images their own way, as I will not present anything that puts the work in any boundaries that specifically defines what it is about.