Preview
Creation Date
2019
Description
Materials: cyanotype on fabric
Project Advisor: John Shimon
Year of Graduation: 2019
Medium
Photography
Rights
Copyright for this work is held by the artist.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
COinS
Artist Statement
“If you are in love with red then you slit or shoot. If you are in love with blue then you fill your pouch with stones good for sucking and head down to the river. Any river will do”
- Maggie Nelson Bluets
The hazy blue of these prints is created using the early photographic process of Cyanotyping. Originally developed for blueprints and scientific diagrams Cyanotypes are created by applying a light sensitive emulsion to whatever material you chose to print on, and then exposing the material and the image in the sun. While this process carries the history of scientific evidence, working with it freed me from the photographic machine, allowing me to consider the image outside of the darkroom and the standardized materials of black and white printing. Since this process relies on the sun, I often found myself struggling against the environment, waiting for the conditions that would allow me to create these prints.
Like Maggie Nelson’s stones, these images all began with the consideration of things you carry with you - your body, your clothes, your stuff, your memories. I wanted to work with a material that evokes that, which led me to fabric and specifically handkerchiefs. Fabric is the material of memory, it is a living record of every touch it has received, becoming stained, shaped, and degraded with each use.
I’m in love with blue.