A Blueprint for Memory

The last piece developed since the last post for this project was a the full size of a door. The large sheet of paper worked less well than the strips and so I have been pushing forward with an A4 multi-image door piece, which still needs finishing. I will have more time to complete this in the coming weeks, and I will see where the project goes from there.

Constructing and uploading my personal website has taken a great deal of time besides other things, but now it is up and running.

Thanks for your comment Jo, cyanotype is a photographic process using ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, if I recall correctly (check on Silverprint if want to try it, they have information and also have a ready made chemical). The solution is applied to paper and exposed to sunlight or UV with an acetate of the image you want on top of the paper.

I am using the process as it fits the concept for the project, and it has taken a while to fully define the ideas and achieve the right effects. I have had trouble with access to facilities to complete some of the work as they are very large. Also I have been finishing my Masters degree which focuses on other work for the final module, but I have completed some new cyanotypes on a very large scale.

These pieces are human scale and tie in with other ideas in my work that explore the idea of ‘grounding the image in personal experience’. In other words I take the trace of the photograph and removing it from the conventional format of photographic images, I divert the identification with memory, to the real present as the viewer stands in front of the human scale image. This marks out the physical space in a similar way to my earlier chalk drawings, which are real scale images of doors and openings. There is a detail showing the original photograph and the full size pieces show how the cyanotype extends to the real door scale.

Well that was a long break from blogging, but not a gap of inactivity. Things had slowed down because of problems getting good acetates made for the cyanotype, and still slow progress, and of course no Easter access to workshops. Pressure to bring the MA studies together in a somewhat different direction is taking attention as well as the past few weeks of personal family and other crisis.

The recent acetates are working better and as I have got what I wanted it is time to post some tests up. The grain on these cyanotypes is better than before and also the concept has been better defined now, taking on board some ideas that arrived from other MA work and some useful theoretical reading.

Thanks for your comment Glenda, most of my work is more along those lines, cut photos and collage, and I am thinking of starting another blog (degrees unedited perhaps, as I move towards the finish of my Masters degree). This blog is really about the photography and the memory idea, but it has changed direction and following more similar concerns to other work.

The fragmentation of the cut-photos is leading me to think of other ways of creating images made of seperate components. The drawings here on the one hand take the ideas into a multi-part image, using standardised A4 cyanotypes based around the door metaphor.

The other idea is to develop earlier ‘lock’ images to fullscale pieces that will be to the same scale as the viewer on large paper with just a fragment of the door completed or on strips. These are the two areas I am working on for the next few weeks. It seems that following the same concerns in my different projects makes sense, and the ideas seem to have a clearer direction.

That was a long break from the blog, but I have been busy on the project; with interuptions of course. The Masters degree took up a bit of time finishing the histories and theories module, that and my teaching commitments. Not least of the distractions was a trip to Paris with some of my students. The Pompidou centre was open this time, after previous visits to closed doors. My MA studies led to some interesting new thoghts about the blueprint project and much reading has redefined it in the light of some interesting theories. Roland Barthes and Victor Burgin among others feature high in consideration. Two things have occured in the development.

Firstly, I have noticed that there are similarities in work for this project and other recent work, not least in the fracturing of images and collaging approaches (as indicated in the image), which have changed the direction for the development.

Secondly, redefining the project after the initial experimentation with media. I now have a better focus for the work and realise how I want to exploit the various media and to what ends. More of that later as I work on each piece with the new focus.