S&S w1 My way of working

During the month we had a challenge to taken series of images the way Ed Ruscha did. As you can read in earlier posts that, I thaught, it was not for me. I definitely see that it was new and exciting in the time Ruscha came up with the books. I have seen it enough and have done things like that over 30 years ago myself and moved on.

I see the values ​​in having this kind of collection photography for archives and posterity so that you can compare times. It is about the past and present that you compare and with that you stand still or look back. A bit like artists painted in the Middle Ages. That while I would love to look at the future. This, for example, as the futurists did. In a sense, my work is similar to theirs. It is just a pity that that future does not look that bright in terms of climate change.

I came up with taking images of flowers. Because I did things with flowers before and because of the one project I thought I could live with. Also because of that one Ed Ruscha project that seemed different to me than the others; colored people. Here we see plants that represent symbolically colored people and white pages that could be filled in by me, the viewer. A bit like the herbarium that I had in my youth for which I occasionally collected new plants and let them dry to add to the collection. What made the plants different than a stamp collection? You could decide for yourself how, in which direction you put them to dry. No flower was exactly the same as the other because the leaves or stems went in a different direction, every dried fower is unique in a way.

Nevertheless I also did re-photographing by making cyanotypes from flowers because that was what Anna Attkins did in 1843.

Cemres question during this weeks webinar was: “How does this flower project relate to your research project”.

My immediate answer is “not”. I definitely enjoyed the process, the making of his small side-project what had started as an “Ed Ruscha”. I was able to turn it in a direction that was “me” and be happy with the result. But why do I call it “me”. First of all it is about nature. Secondly it is like searching, experimenting, manipulating, combining, thinking and rethinking all the while playing with the subject. The result, the book still has to be made.

Sometimes it seems as if the project is creating itself. Every time something surprising happens, I decide whether I will let myself be led to that, so that I end up sideways and I have to start thinking again about how I can still fit that into the whole. Sometimes I also have to take a step in place or return to the main route because the chosen path does not seem to work or because it has strayed too far from what I am doing and I have no idea how I got there or how to combine it. But that process is what interests me the most, keep it engaging.

I taught to have finished the elements of the book and to be ready to finish it but because of Cemres question and something Michael Turner told I think I have to move on and travel a bit further. Why not try to experiment with the depth/bump map technique and see what that will bring and if it will it be an add to the book?

What is there now? (see process in posts before this one)

1. My own stamps with one of the images

2. Prints of the images on different papers printed (with a special emulsion to be able to use inktjet)

3. Self made aspergus paper.

4. Pages with dried flowers.

5. Cyanotypes

6. Scans

What to experiment in the coming weeks?

A. Using the depth map idea I have in my screaming landscape photography.

B. Taking images on Whasi roll film.

C. Experiment further with the yoghurt and painting emulsions to print

D. Bind the book

E. Adding latin text with the flowers

a mind map about similarities and differences in the work

First attempt playing around with the depth map

I will bind a book at the end. For my students I organised a workshop printing about a year ago with Hans van Ommeren. He told us a lot about possibilities, the look and feel of paper. He made hand-bound books in small numbers, editing the edges op pages to convey a feeling. Or he sanded holes in the surface. He added with color with pastels for accents. Every pages was unique because of the way he worked. Hans has since died but I notice that I now regularly think back to what he taught us that day.

https://www.hansvanommeren.com/objects/

https://www.hansvanommeren.com/objects/book/

These images are from book objects made by Hans that I was able to feel and touch.