Having got frustrated with a lack of progress with the TLCs this week I decided to switch my attention to another project hoping to finish it in time for the Summer Exhibition at the Devon Guild. Some time ago I bought three boxes full of old glass photographic negatives (I am always attracted by everything in glass!) from a charity shop in France. “Plaques séches au gélatino-bromure d’argent” it says on the cover. They are mainly portraits of women, posing in a formal way typical of pictures taken at the beginning of the century and create a fascinating insight into the social history of the period, but there are no details about the identity of the sitters.
Probably they are wearing their best clothes for the shot. Details such as the background in front of a window outside a house with the same chair and window that appear in most of the negatives, build a narrative in my imagination. They probably form the archive of the photographer and I have decided to make a glass construction with part of this precious archive, a collection of forgotten faces.
The portraits will be incorporated inside small glass pyramids that, once put together, will form a kind of hanging tapestry.
Getting the angles of the edges of the pyramids just right will be crucial to ensure that the sides are well bonded when I construct the pyramids. Unfortunately, geometry and maths have never been my strong point, but I think that I have found a way to calculate the angles. I’m now facing lots of boring grinding and UV bonding before I can start on the the final assembly of the construction. I have decided to call it “The other face of the moon”…. (Don’t ask me why?)
