Mediating the Image Workshop:

Transformations through process and material: A 3 Day image-making project

Taking the image on a journey, back and forth across analogue and digital languages, using processes, media and materials - disrupting the image and shifting meaning.

The history of image making through technology - from the pencil as mark on paper, to technology of printing, to emergence of photography, through early daguerreotypes to digital screens and VR and AI – how do we encounter the image – the inter-relationship between image/object/surface - how do we ‘read’ the image in relation to its surface/form/space?

(Text from workshop resource, 2024)

MA Printmaking participated in a 3-day workshop alongside the students from MA Drawing. We were instructed to bring an A4 printed image with us on the first day, which would be the starting point on a journey through various forms of image manipulation. I couldn't decide on one image so I chose two photographs from my Deconstructed Relics series.

Drawing and Photo Collage

Charcoal powder, masking fluid, indian ink on cartridge paper, 90 x 50cm

Detail before removing the masking fluid

detail after removing masking fluid

Section of drawing after cutting it into two works

On the first day of the workshop, we were provided with drawing materials and paper with which to draw from our image. I realised how much I had missed drawing as soon as I had taped my large piece of paper to the wall and gathered charcoal, brushes, indian ink and masking fluid. I was interested drawing in the feathered quality of the colour photograph resulting from the distortion of objects through textured sheet glass.

I cut the large drawing into two smaller works and re-taped them to the wall. I wanted to incorporate the relic form from the second black and white photograph, so I cut the oval shape along with smaller pieces from the photograph and began to play with collaging on top of the two drawings.

Drawing and photo collage

Drawing and photo collage

My next step was to use the 'stencils' of the cut out photographs to frame sections of the drawings, acting almost like viewfinders. I photographed these and printed them as new works. For me, they work much better as 2D prints, because there is an ambiguity about their form due to the layering of their parts.

Digital photographs

Monoprint

I used Photoshop to split the colour photograph into its highlights, mid tones and shadows. I was then able to alter the hue of each of these and then drag them all back together again to form the photograph, which had a much more painterly quality than the original.

Photograph showing highlights only with colour alteration

Photograph showing mid tones only

Photograph showing shadows only

Adjusting hue of each colour layer separately to create a 'painterly' edit

Monoprint set up

We were shown how to use the press to create layered monoprints. In retrospect, I wish I had used these digital colour separations more as a guide for painting each layer. However, as an experiment in creating a painterly monoprint and transforming my original photograph, I was fairly pleased with the outcome.

Monoprint on Somerset paper, 30 x 41cm, 2024

Monoprint on Somerset paper (ghost print), 30 x 41cm, 2024

Monoprint and digital photograph, 29 x 41cm, 2024

I am very interested in printing on to photographs as I love to create works which have a glossy realism combined with the printed/painted mark. Monoprint allows for layering in far looser, freer and quicker way than woodcut.

In the work on the left I have combined the photograph with the monoprint.

In accurately colour-mixing from the edited photograph, the monoprint works as an expressive 'other' to the photograph. Both work on different planes, but have a shared perspective due to the edges of the mirrored worlds lining up. Again, I find the works most effective when they combine photographic imagery with the painted/printed mark.

Lumen Prints

In my woodcut printing recently, I have been trying to find ways to create luminosity through colour, layering and tints of white. I came across lumen printing whilst researching other forms of 'camera-less' photography. I was inspired by the artist Shaina Gates who folds black and white photographic paper into geometric forms and then exposes them to sunlight, sometimes leaving them as folded sculptural works, or opening them to reveal the facets of the fold.

Shaina Gates, Lumen print on black and white silver gelatin paper. 25 x 20cm, 2021.

Shaina Gates, Photogram on black and white sheet film, 2022

Shaina Gates, Photogram on black and white sheet film, 2022

6 sheets of different black and white photographic paper exposed to natural and artificial light. Each covered with objects and cut out photographs, some folded and containing small items.

I contacted John Whapham in the Photography department at Camberwell and he invited me to come and speak with him about my ideas. He told me that black and white photographic papers contain different chemicals which is why, when exposed to light, they each have a different colour tone. Older paper works best, apparently. John gave me some small samples of a variety of papers which I took home in a paper envelope so as not to expose them to the light.

I used some of the fragments from my deconstructed relic photographs to see if I could again re-make my relic-like forms within the lumen print.

I folded two of the pieces around some small objects with the idea of enclosing hidden artefacts.

The light source was natural light which came through a conservatory and windows, as well as a daylight lamp which I attached above the prints. I left them for nearly 10 hours and waited to see if they would work!

Showing the set-up of the lumen prints

It was fascinating to see how each paper changed colour throughout the process. Immediately, I could see which paper worked best in creating the light traces that I was aiming for. The first print of the bird skull and sequins had the depth that I was looking for; in particular, the skull has a strange inverse form. I was also intrigued by the print which contained the string of pearls in its folded shape. The purple-coloured matt papers, which both have a grain and resemble watercolour paper, are less precise and 'photographic' in look which makes them less successful for me. The last print is so obscured that it makes me think the paper had already been exposed to the light too much.

I scanned the two best lumen prints and printed them in larger format. Both works I will certainly keep and include in further work. In particular, the pink pearl print has a quality of luminosity and trace which captures my attention and makes me want to continue working with it in some form.

Lumen prints can capture traces of physical presence and touch. In being made from light, the prints are ephemeral and there is much ephemerality in their aesthetic. They are like the most fleeting fossils, like memories. The pink print has something of skin, of the body.

Digital scan of lumen print, 28 x 40cm, 2024

Digital scan of lumen print, 29 x 42cm, 2024

More Experiments in Layering: Coloured Perspex

Inspired by some of my colourful photographic edits, I bought some samples of coloured perspex to see how they would interact with my dark aquatint prints. I became really excited by the coloured glow that forms around the edge of the perspex, which subtly illuminates the frame of the print.

Aquatint print behind yellow perspex

Aquatint print behind layered yellow and pink perspex

Aquatint print, yellow perspex 'shelf'

Aquatint prints, coloured perspex. Imagining perspex as pages of a book

As I approach the pop-up show in December, I have increasingly been considering display and framing, and considering how I might use coloured perspex in my work. Reliquaries are described as 'frames' by Cynthia Hahn in her 2017 book The Reliquary Effect. She writes: 'the reliquary is better defined as a space containing the ineffable; a never defined by confining container, a shapeless but also shapely frame' (Hahn, 2017 p.14)

Paul Thek, Untitled. Wax, paint, polymer resin, nylon monofilament, wire, plaster, plywood, melamine laminate, rhodium-plated bronze, and acrylic. 35.6 x 38.3 x 19.1cm (1966)

The artist Paul Thek, in his series of artworks entitled 'Technological Relics', presents an Untitled wax sculpture enshrined within a neon acrylic box. In this work, the container serves to obscure our vision of the object inside. Thek is quoted in Paul Thek: Artist's Artist: 'It's almost impossible to tell what's inside unless the viewer has his nose to the glass. They're ambiguous; they can't be seen all at once' (Falkenberg, H and Weibel, P. 2009).

The brash colour also lends an unpleasant power to the object that is both clinical and unclean. Thek refers to this jarring contrast in the same publication: ‘The dissonance of the two surfaces, glass and wax, pleases me: one is clear and shiny and hard, the other is soft and slimy…’. This resonates with Hahn's comparison in The Reliquary Effect between the 'oldness of the relic and the shiny new-ness of the reliquary' (Hahn, 2017. p.9).

There is something pleasing to me about the solid blackness of the print and the soft coloured luminosity of the perspex. I am also excited by the solid edge of the perspex when seen from the side. This edge; its luminosity and both transparent and reflective qualities make me confident that I will use this material in future works.