For several weeks now, I have been taking Mark Watts’ Go Retro with Film: Introduction to Photography class here at the Flower City Arts Center. I’m taking the class as I have a strong interest in working with film, however I have not worked in the darkroom in literally ages (literally). Getting back into the swing of working in the darkroom has been a real kick and has inspired some really interesting ideas for my AIR project. I don’t want to disclose too many specifics regarding the ideas, but I will be using tactics of processing and developing images in the darkroom to enhance the conceptual nature of my final show.
I want to share with you a little bit of the process we’ve been working with in the darkroom with a few images.
Firstly we develop the film and get images (negatives) that look like this:
From then I made a contact sheet to gauge which images I want to make full size prints of. They look like this:
After deciding on my final image: I took several tries and made a final print of it, enlarged:
In addition to this I want to share with you some of the things I have been up to recently. I just got back from NYC, where I met photographer Benjamin Fredrickson. Benjamin is a portrait photographer living and working in NYC who’s work concentrates on portraits of members of the LGBT community. Think a contemporary Robert Mapplethorpe (yes, NSFW.)
In addition to meeting this incredible photographer, who was a huge inspiration for this project, I went to the Whitney Museum of American Art. There was an exhibit I found particularly useful called “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940–2017.” Some of the art contained therein were works created about and during the AIDS crisis. I was moved by the exhibition and found a new energy in creating work for this project.
I look forward to updating you further on the progress of the project and be sure to look out for the classes I am teaching this upcoming semester. In addition if you are interested in private lessons, please don’t hesitate to contact the arts center and request me!
Over and out
Maxwell