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| Remix |
Thoughts
For my remix,
Lauren presented me with a negative strip of five images of the same subject.
Of course, she specified which specific image she wanted me to use, but I was
partially influenced by the negative strip itself in my process of remixing her
image. When I first looked at the negative, I was drawn to the eeriness of the
negative image and how it appeared as if the subject was emitting some
harrowing screech. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the image to remix it,
but I had created in my mind what I thought the unedited image was going to
look like. However, when I went to scan the negative and convert it into a
positive image, I realized that the image itself looked nothing as I had
imagined. As a positive, it looks as what it depicts—that is, the subject with
his mouth opened, not particularly wide, but in a relaxed manner. It is
interesting that what I thought the image would look like and the mood of the
image was in fact quite different from what it actually was. So, to rectify
that, I chose to present the image as primarily in its negative state. I worked
entirely in Adobe Photoshop to produce the image. I had both the positive and
negative images opened and wanted to somehow combine the two. At first, I
considered layering the two over each other, and I tried a few different
variations. One of the versions I considered, which is very close to the final
image I printed, was layering the two but not exactly right on top of each
other. If either the negative or positive was shifted slightly beneath the
other, it created this 3D-esque effect that, after some time, I considered to
be rather trite. I thought that perhaps having the images as echoes of each
other, side by side but also overlapping, would enhance the eeriness of the
image I originally had in mind. I used the entire scanned part of the negative,
which included part of the consecutive images on the film strip, for the reason
that it lent to the duality of the two overlapping subjects.
It was interesting
for me to see Lauren’s original print against my own because during the time I
was working, I sort of threw away the thought of the original itself. So I
found that the moods between the two images were very different. Additionally,
my remix of her image is heavily edited and her original is a classic 8x10 inch
darkroom print, whose cleanness also appeals to me very much. Our images are
similar in size, but not exact. I’d be curious to see either print blown up to
a larger size. I had envisioned mine to be larger, but I guess I failed to
accurately visualize the scale of the print I made beforehand.
For my original
remix, I gave my partner the raw file of an image I had chosen for the Source
to Self project. It is one of the images inspired by the work of photographer
Uta Barth, so depicts this vague, out of focus and lightly colored scene. Mary
Claire chose to present the image as a tile transfer. The similarities in
presentation are uncanny as her final version of my image is very close to the
size of the print I had made. Additionally, it was interesting to see that the
presentation of the image on tile echoed the fact that the image itself was
made by focusing the camera on window glass. The white lines of the tile that
break up the image mimicked a paneled window, although the context and subject
of the image weren’t known to Mary Claire during her work process. I thought
her explanation of her process was interesting—how she drew from the amorphous
content of the image to further break it down into segments and pieces; that in
itself seems to be another theme that I wouldn’t have originally thought of to
describe my image.
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