Rome Inverted

After a ruinous trip to Rome, where all my medium format film was trashed in-camera, there comes a time for strategies to try and rescue some of it.
My formula is simply to make callotypes and let the chips fall where they may.
That way I relinquish all responsibility and rational thinking to the spirits of the unknown streak of light and heavy spots pretending to resemble a crazy moon. Voilà.

Happenstance

Some images are better remembered by being totally untraceable and hard to define.
They seem to come out of nowhere and materialize before our eyes in no time.
This is one of them. Its source is undefined and its purpose more so. It resulted from an illogical step by step using two unseemly negatives.
The result is an intriguing photograph rich in ambivalence, hard to pin down.
I cannot keep my eyes from it and that is enough.

Scene From Somewhere

In the past few years I have intensified the recording of segments, or parts thereof, in the lives of my children. Impossible task as we all know. I try perhaps in vain to commit to visual memory as much as I can. Sometimes there show in the negatives one or two images that raise my pulse. This one in particular, taken ten minutes out of school a week ago, rendered something absolutely beautiful. A moment in time which extends itself to enter the visual lore of noir mischief. I may have seen this scene somewhere in a cinema house in my past. Maybe eastern European. Most definitely English. Kent all the way, with its relentless beauty even under severe grey skies and some hint of desolate earth. And a bit of sun, miraculously.

Acrylic Smear

                                                             
                                                                   Acrylic Smear
The present project shows the interaction between two radically different mediums. On the one hand there is the traditional negative-derived imagery, and on the other the free flowing untamed smear of the acrylic, used to coat over parts of the established positive.
The resulting images can neither claim to be photographs, though they are, nor paintings, as they are not. They are hybrids borne by complementary associations.
I call them “smeared” images. The smear taken as a superimposition both in tone and flow produces a resonant echo. It also acts as a denial that pretends to obscure their visual definition by force of the layers of colour imposed upon them.
Thus accepted the resultant pieces acquire a derivative truth by assimilating two visual currents, not always necessarily happy in conjunction with each other, but not altogether unpleasant, in this particular case.

Nature Mother of All Metaphors

Adam King Devant le Miroir

Arte Condenado a la Ignominia del Olvido - The Vatican Gardens