Project 4: Digital Submission





For this project I decided to do a combination of solairzed portraits and painting with light. I asked a bunch of my friends to use a lighter to draw a word that was important to them. I then took a 10 second long exposure in a dark room and they drew the words. I had four other people paint their words with light, but I thought these three were the strongest for my concept. My "models" had to draw their words a few times because I accidentally ruined my first two roles of film, but they really nailed it on the last try!

It may be tough to see in blog format, but the portraits gradually move from extremely solarized to only minimal solarization. The portraits above the words show the person who drew the word. Being able to see the person who wrote the word lets the viewer think about what the person is feeling, rather than simply seeing the word on its own. The solarization works in tandem with the drawn words to bring more depth to them. The extreme solarization suggests some dissatisfaction with their word. For example the girl in the first photo. An unsolarized portrait would elicit a much different feeling than the final result shown here. But because of the extreme solarization the mood changes drastically. It makes the viewer wonder if something is going wrong with the love in her life. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the person who wrote "SPACE" is only slightly solarized. This is because of how important space is to him (as a physics/astronomy major), and how much of a positive role it has played in his life. I was pretty worried about this project because destroying two rolls of film made it so I had to rush to finish, but I am very happy with how it turned out despite the bumps in the road along the way.

Here are the contact sheets from the three rolls I was able to develop. The first one was not used in this project.



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