heart-shaped hips

Gum bichromate print from an x-ray.

two hearts

A torso x-ray printed via cyanotype, once on each side of the paper. Hearts made from orange ink and gold leaf transfer. The piece is about 2.5 feet tall.

collarbones

A Van Dyke Brown print, using an x-ray of my broken collarbone. Actual piece is about 2 feet long or so.

mute

Photo of an ad in a magazine, with a reading glass placed over one eye. Printed, and then I dripped bleach on the print.

glass girl

Photo of a picture from a book, printed, sliced up, mounted on plexiglass with scotch tape, with a color photo of fire behind it.

blue girl

Cyanotype version of the green girl.

Advent series: philosopher (Van Dyke Brown)

I don't think I even did anything with this image except take a photo of it in a book. I did use the negative to make a VDB print though, so here it is.

deconstructures pt. six

More here and at my website.

mother & child (taken)

Solarized version of this one.

Ben: Polaroid peel pt. two

The other side of the Polaroid from yesterday.

Ben: Polaroid peel pt. one

One side of a peeled-apart Polaroid.

Deconstructure 03 (exhibit version)

The fifth piece I had in the Various Perspectives show.

This one was originally in the first Mansion Show in June of 2008. Part of the Deconstructure series.

The Skull (exhibit version)

Fourth of five photos from Various Perspectives.

I posted this one here before in a different form. That first one is a scan of a print that I made in the darkroom. For this new one I scanned the negative directly. I melted and scratched up the negative, so it's all rippled and bent. So the point of focus may be different every time you put it in a darkroom enlarger or negative scanner.

Window Girl (exhibit version)

Second out of my five pieces from the Various Perspectives show.

David Prifti is in possession of this original print, which he uses in his classes to show kids how to be adventurous in their photography. He could easily just show them his own work exclusively to demonstrate that, so it's certainly an honor to have my work used for that purpose.

The process of how this image came to be is a long one: the picture of the girl is taken from a book or a magazine, I can't remember which. I made a print of that, and then scraped up the paper and burned it with a lighter. Then I took a slide of the piece (which was part of my college application portfolio. It worked!) I recently found that slide, scanned it into the computer, removed a few distracting dust spots, changed it to black and white, and printed it out 16"x20" for the show.

In hindsight I can't decide if making it black and white was the right choice. And then I smack myself in the face, because somebody liked it enough to buy it, so don't worry about it, stupid. But something just seems off about it to me, I guess because I've been living with the color version all these years. But even printing it out in color wouldn't have captured the tactility of the burns and scratches anyway. So in the end I think the black and white works just as well in a digital print medium, and it fit in better with my other pieces, which were all black and white as well. For the record, here's the original, with yellowed burn marks and all, mounted on a white board which I "smoked" with a lighter:

Various Perspectives: success

Big belated thanks to everyone who came out to the Beebe Estate in Melrose for the Various Perspectives show. It was great fun as usual. Above are some of my pieces from the show. I'll be posting them individually here over the next few days.

melted flowers

A black and white negative that I melted a little bit over a flame and then printed. This is actually a scan of a slide of a print. So that makes this particular image the great-grandchild of the original. I think? Whew.

deconstructures pt. four

See similar ones here.

fixer splash

A blank piece of photo paper, coated with developer and fixer in varying degrees with various implements. After the paper dried I cut little windows in it and mounted it on cardboard stock with fragments of other prints underneath. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

cyanotype hand

Cyanotype printed on weird little Chinese paper found at Super 88.

alternate invite

Alternate version of this piece. For this one I laid strips of cardboard over the paper for a few seconds as I exposed the image, which is where the lines come from. The face has a different scratch mask over it. And I solarized the area around the face, which is why everything is gray instead of white. Although it should be black, not gray, so I'm not sure what happened there.