Studio Sketchs

Sketch #1

In order to visualize my families’ photographic archive I decided to lay out a slide carousel onto a light-table in order to examine themes, repeating motifs and find standout images. A few insights; my families album comes across as “cute; this is in stark opposition to the way I feel about my family, I did not have a ‘cute"‘ childhood. So then why does the archive say something that is in opposition with my personal narrative? There are also many many birthday images as well as images of children. Why do we think it’s important to document these moments of celebration and the fleeting moments of childhood?

Archive Visualization

8.5 x 11 print of one fo my families’ slide carousels laid out on a light table. Photographed and then printed.

Slide Tryptic

Select slide images photographed and enlarged to 12"x12. Photograph of my mother: (Middle) Brother and sister praying (Left) Double exposure, Chicago skyscraper and grammy? (right)

This image is intriguing to me for two reasons. First, the imbedded religious connotations. Two children praying by their bedside in-front of a painting of Jesus is an archetypal image in American culture. This reminds me of the classic prayer that reads.

“Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my Soul to keep[;]

If I should die before I 'wake,

I pray the Lord my Soul to take”

This prayer has rather dark undertones for children to be uttering. Why has it become colloquial? Why is this image so ingrained in our culture? Christian-centralism?

The second point of intrigue is the frame. Something about the phrase “processed by Kodak” removes all the richness of the religious connotations and commodifies it. Could this frame be used to commodify other images?

This image of my mother is beautiful. I’ve never known her as young, she was already rather old when I was born so I was never around when my mother looked like this. Seeing her in this way is rather odd. Also, something about the wood deck is both visually appealing as well as reminiscent of the relationship I have with my father. He’s a carpenter and I can see him in the woodgrain of this deck. I also believe that he may have been the one to take this image. At least for me, this image becomes a portrait of both my mother and father in the prime of their youth.

I take no interest in the image of the skyscraper. The only point of interest is the fact that it may possibly be located in Chicago where mu father grew up, beyond that I have no interest in it. What fascinates me is the residual image left over from a double exposure, I can’t tell who or what it is, only that it indeed is there, a ghost of an image.

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Sketch #2

In this sketch in wanted to experiment with both projection and text. I wanted to see how rear projection would look on a photograph. After discovering that this process works really well I want to create an installation or a series of real projected images. Specifically a series titled Letters to my siblings Where I use rear projection techniques to imbed text into a series of images of myself interacting with one of my older siblings. The text would read as a letter that I’ve written to them through the framework of family systems therapy, a branch of CBT that investigates how the structures of a family system can lead to trauma.

This mode of rear projecting also offers opportunities for installation. When viewed ‘in the round’ the back of the photograph becomes a stand alone image that is then re-contextualized when viewed from the front. The viewer is left with two images between which they can alternate.

Lastly, here is a documentation image of my projector setup.