Under Glass
Under Glass is an experiment in lumen prints – photograms made with ultraviolet light from the sun. In a camera-less photographic technique, I arrange botanical objects on photographic paper and expose them to direct sunlight producing an image. The work is driven by my interaction and emotional response to my process and its results.
I’m drawn to abstract compositions with a strong feeling of pareidolia where the real-life thing evoked is just out of reach creating a sense of mystery and disquiet. The vague feeling that the work is representational, but you can’t quite vocalize what it represents. My process tends to yield images that resemble biology and microscopy, both unnerving and beautiful, like diagnostic images from some disturbing dream. I choose compositions where something appears to be happening: secretion, rupture, flocking, swarming, absorption, chiasma. The images might each best be described by their own visual tasting note: “A strong sense of pond water up front with hints of bioluminescence and a subtle finish of putrescence and decay.”
My Process
When the sun is bright, I start a day of printing with a trip to the produce section of the supermarket, a walk around the neighborhood, or maybe even just a stroll through my yard, collecting. I look for plants with interesting shapes. I imagine what something might look like sliced thin, what it might secrete when cut or crushed, how much light will pass through it.
When the collecting is done, I prepare my specimens. I arrange my bounty on the kitchen counter, get out a knife and cutting board, and begin preparing my palette. The specimens will be pressed tightly between pieces of glass against the surface of the photo paper, they must be no thicker than one or two millimeters. As I slice, I think about the resulting shapes. Do they reveal an inner structure? Is the shape different from the original object? Can I cut a different way and get a different shape? I pay attention to the specimen’s composition. Is it dry? Is it juicy? Is it acidic? Is it translucent? Will its color transfer to the paper?
Now, it’s time to set the stage – an 8 x 10 piece of photographic paper on sheet of glass. In dim, incandescent light, specimens laid out and waiting, forceps and tweezers at hand, I begin my composition. Sometimes, I’ve had something in mind from the very outset, but, more often than not, I let the specimens in my palette speak to me and tell their story through the positions and relationships on the page, creating emotional tension and narrative in an abstract composition.
Pressed between two sheets of glass, I take the composition into the sunlight where a new drama unfolds. The ultraviolet light of the sun beats down penetrating the specimens to varying degrees. The infrared energy of the sun gets trapped between the two pieces of glass creating heat and, in this crucible, the specimens begin to change and interact with one another and the photo paper to create subtle, new colors and forms with unpredictable and sometimes astonishing results.
In this moment, I am transported back to my childhood, making mud pies, playing mad scientist, like some sort of visual Dr. Frankenstein, I’ve cobbled together disparate, once-living specimens and energized them in the rays of the sun in the hope they’ll come to life and create something new and magical. And I wait, and I watch, picking just the right moment to stop the experiment. Have I created magic, or a monster, or both?
The exposure at an end, I remove and discard the specimens, concerned only with the shadows and impressions left behind. I wash the print to remove any residue and hang it in dim light to dry. In this state – the fugitive state – the print is still sensitive to light, still changing, and will eventually disappear. So, I scan it at extremely high resolution to capture the minutest details of this fleeting state.
To preserve the print, I bathe it in standard photographic fixer, dramatically changing its appearance, sometimes improving it, sometimes not. When I’m feeling playful, I’ll paint on the print with photographic chemicals before its final immersion in the fixer bath. I’ll mix caffenol – a coffee-based developing solution – with fixer right on the surface of the print, splashing and swirling the two together with watercolor brushes. Finally, I’ll wash, dry, and scan the print one more time.
I delve deep into the scanned image files to discover the final artworks. I zoom in close to see detail not visible to the naked eye. I stack and combine the two scans. I tweak the post-production nerd knobs to enhance and reveal subtle colors. I might invert the image or change the white balance, searching for a pleasing color combination. I pan through the image at different zoom levels looking for interesting compositions. I’m the photographer wandering through a world I’ve created deciding what view to put a frame around.
