In my second year studying at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts we had a day working with amongst other things, artist Gavin Mitchell who’s work I found completely brilliant and so interesting. He blends the old and the new with a delicate humour and wryness which turns a multitude of found images into a new fabulous creation. OK you can see I liked it lol so much so I now am the lucky owner of one of his works a present for graduating from the Mr Gibbs.
Find his work here
So back to the workshop and looking at projection and content creation, we had been asked to bring some imagery to play with , well with a career and study of photography going back a wee while ! I have in fact a huge plan chest filled with remnants of my early days from college through to the last commercial film shoot I did back in the 90’s! So I grabbed some that I thought looked interesting with a thought that some of my cohort may not have access to stuff as living in halls.
He also arrived with a wealth of stuff from old movie’s on film, trailers for films and a massive collection of old slides sourced from car-boots and many a bric a brac find both here in the UK and on his travels. Looking at overlaying them to create images with stories or indeed oddities .
At first I was tentative, as any photographer will tell you the thought of chopping up transparencies is well? just not done ! fact. The first three were combining some footage and stills from Gavin with some images I took for a property developer of the Manchester Tobacco Factory both before and after. Shot on a magic film called polarpan where you actually processed it yourself? I know ! the resulting images were a strong contrasting black and white . Exceptionally fragile and at times not a guaranteed outcome, we were edgy in the 90’s lol
still available to buy (must dig my processor out ) from one of my favourite places full of interesting photographic and video finds
The shots gave me some great graphic windows with which to play with, placing behind them almost giants of humans going about their business.
Series Windows
I was loving this with the possibilities for projection work for bands or theatre work opening up my mind and making me braver, with a gentle nudge from Gavin I did it !
Using some outtakes from one of my earliest test shoots whilst working as a full time assistant at Avalon in Manchester and clips from processing of some really interesting branches in oil from a collaboration with a young artist who’s name along with the model has long been forgotten (research underway) I began to snip the larger medium format images and recreate as 35mm slides!
Girl in the Wood series
So new from old,I am now in the process of multiple layering of images to create new content for projection . Then scanning them in on my Flextight Precision II another part of my transition from analogue to digital as a photographer , yes you could do it in photoshop but how much more fun is it to be hands on and make something.