Just Shy of Nostalgia

So much of our lives today concern the digital image: how we communicate, store memories, share experiences and absorb information. The abundance and immediacy of today’s photography is shaping how we view what is around us. The following works are an examination of imagery in our digital world and the technology that filters it. The source images for each project are photographs of myself, but all are stripped of their identity. Through technical processes that reference the history of photography and reproduction of images, my hand is brought back into the role of creation. Each project presents these digital photographs with a new life in the physical world, while critiquing the technology and processes that hold them back.

JPEGS

Every time you take a photo with your phone or standard digital camera, your device saves the image as a JPEG. When the photo is taken, it goes through a series of complex compression algorithms that eradicate unnecessary color information. This decreases the file size and makes the image more manageable for use. For this series, I created my own, oversimplified version of a JPEG compression algorithm and applied it to certain images that exist on my Facebook profile.

Untitled Cyanotypes

The cyanotype process is one of the oldest photographic printing methods dating back to the 1840s. When a mixture of ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide are exposed to light, the chemicals turn blue. The source material for these cyanotypes came from images from my childhood that were in my Bar Mitzvah montage. I turned these images into digital negatives and introduced Emojis into their compositions. These were then printed and used as contact negatives to create the cyanotypes.

Halftone Baby

The halftone is a reprographic process invented in the late 19th century as a means to reproduce images. It uses dots of various sizes to create tones. When cyan, yellow, magenta and black dots are used, an optical effect is created that replicates an image in full color. The source image for this work came from a baby picture of myself. I traced each layer of dots by hand while projecting the original image onto transparent paper. The projection system used is based off of a camera obscura, one of the founding principles of photography. When light is reflected off of the surface of an object it travels in a straight line. When these rays pass through a small hole or lens, they cross and the original image is reflected onto a surface on the other side of the hole. I used my phone as the source for these projections and brought this digital image back into the physical world.