No Saint

12 x 12 inch frame with gold leaf. Image is transferred on. I titled the work No Saint.

Gold Leaf

I have started having success with gold leaf at last after a long time of experimenting. The image looks different as the light hits it on various angles. It references daguerreotype images and negatives. The gold coming through the image is really beautiful. I am happy with the edges of the image and of the gold leaf. I painted black underneath the gold.

There is a doubling. Gold as a precious metal is desirable and can be made into objects of desire. Mick is desirable and images of him are objects of my desire. By creating a "golden Mick" I have created a double object of desire.

Printing Papers

This is difficult to tell but this is printed on metallic paper. It is super glossy and gives the print a depth to it. Also it gives the impression that the image is underneath a think layer of glass.

Some more experiments with transferring images. I used Acrylic Gel. It was easier to stick down as it is not a sticky as binder so I could move it. I used a roller to make sure it was evenly glued. But when I came to rubbing the back from the image it was more difficult as more of the image came away so I couldn't get all of the paper off. So you can see that the image has a white layer on.

This was using water colour paper. I like the texture it has created and the image seemed to transfer more easily.

I am experimenting with transferring images onto a painted golden background. I am interested in exploring the Icon. A precious image. The use of gold is intended to give a sense of value to the work. To make it a special and expensive object. I have more practice and experimenting to do with this process.

From Little Red Rooster

This image was donated screen shot from one of my friends. I cropped it into a portrait shape.

Screen shots of Mick at the Checkerboard Lounge

These are two re photographed screen shots. I find these images very intimate. And there seems to be is a certain voyeurism attached to them, he is totally unaware that they are being taken. I feel more ownership of the screen shot images. I have the chance to personalise them much more than the copy images from books and the internet. It seems that I am actually taking the shot of him from life.

Screen Shots

I have started experimenting with making screen shots from my new IMAC. I printed this one then photographed it cropping it in the camera. I am going to compare the quality of the copy with the quality of the printed film shot. I havn't printed this yet.

Looking Closer

Looking/touching/turning the pages

Identification

" The moment of identification, unlike illumination, does not distinguish photography from other visual images, or even from encounters in the world at large. At work in any personal exchange, identification plays an integral part in the formation of groups. Moreover, it is not just the identification of a subject that is at stake but, often identification with it. The personal and the social position through which the beholder is looking can bring what she or he sees into focus, or distort it beyond recognition. The encounter with an image might seem more one-sided that a meeting with a person, but it, too is susceptible to the slippage between one kind of identification and the other. Whether scholars seek to avoid such slippages in their work, or to confront or exploit them, they disturb the simple relation between representations and subjects, between images and people, between photographs and their referents. Something had to be in front of the camera."

Photography Degree Zero, Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, page 75.

A Photograph as an icon and an index

"In relation to photography, similarity generally means visual resemblance: a photographed portrait, like a painted one, is an icon. An index, however, represents its object through contact: it points at its object, or it is itself a trace of, or mark made by, that object. A thumbprint is an index. Because the item had to be there for an indexical representation of it to exist, it is often thought that an index is inherently more persuasive that in icon. A photograph is both an icon and an index; it is like an icon with a seal of approval, or, as Barthes calls it, a "certificate of presence" ".

Photography Degree Zero, Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, page 76.

Copy images 62

The above images are copied from A Photographic Exhibition. A book I purchased from Paris in Jan 2014 

The above images are copied from a book titled Mick Jagger The Photobook. Purchased in 2012 from Auckland City Art Gallery

Gazing

I used a slow shutter speed to create movement and distortion of the face and head. It is intended to create sense of ambiguity to the image. Scale is explored again here. Is the head giant or the photograph alley tiny?

Subterraine

I allowed the light to shine through holes in the roof. Plays with scale.

Negative images

I lined a long box with images. The light coming in from the end turned the images into negatives.

Mirror Mask

Here I was experimenting with cut outs and mirrors. I was happy with how the cut out is not isolated as in the previous shots. I liked the reference to where it had been cut from; the negative space or the context. I think the focus on the edge of the second photo is working well, this emphasizes the 2D image and the cut edge.

I became an image

I became an image

I made myself an image and cut myself out so I could meet Micky as an image. I need to make sure the work doesn't look like a bad Photoshop job. It needs to look like exactly what it is...........a photograph of images. I am using lighting and shallow depth of field.

Micky's Room Ideas

I made a diorama with images of Mick. Cutting them out and standing them up. I used shallow depth of field and lighting to create a mood and trying to making sure they dont look like collages. This is all experimenting.
I was interested how the cropping and placement of the image made it look so incomplete.  I was aware that cropping by framing a subject does not give this effect. The viewer assumes there is more body to be seen but it is just not in the frame. We are familiar with the conventions of cropping but only by the frame of the camera.

See the example below

Micky'sRoom

Dots

The camera cannot see Micky. I can see him through the camera and he is three dimensional but the camera can only focus on the surface of the paper. The series of dots that make up the image. When I enlarge the image big I too can only see dots. This is heart breaking and I feel sorrow. Where is he ?? Where is his image? It has disappeared

Everything I want it to be

The images are everything and anything I want them to be for me. His face never lets me down. It is always there looking back at me, engaging with me. It is always consistent staying the same each time I look at it. I can bring to it my own ideas, my own imagination and fantasies. The image always gives and never takes. It always fulfills whatever my dream is of the moment.

My Gear

Lighting and Tripod

I have bought a new tripod that enables me to do much more accurate copy work. Small battery operated lights also assist with the job. After many experiments I am now setting my camera on 200 ISO, F7.1, Shutter speed between 1/8 to 1/40 second depending on the image. I am using manual and Auto focus depending on the size of the image and looking for the rosette pattern to focus on. I am shooting in RAW as it records more data and then desaturating later if it is a black and white image. There are many more mid tones when I use this approach.  

To Look is To Gaze

In the context of this project "to look" means "to gaze". I am looking I am gazing at an image.

Micky and I

Looking and Image, Subject and Object

This obsession takes the form of looking at images of a person. I am interested in the meaning of the word 'looking' and the word 'image' in the context of this project. The image replaces the real person as the real person is unavailable. By looking at image after image of this person I am able to bring to it my own interpretation through desire, fantasy and imagination. The image becomes the real in my imagination. The subject (person) becomes an image and the image can become an object (the photograph) 

The Obsession Project Abstract

The starting point for this project is the idea that desire and fantasy underpin obsession. I am using documentation processes in order to explore this idea using myself as the obsessed. It is predominantly a photographic project with the possibility of extending into other media.