mercredi 17 novembre 2004

Window Gazing... 2 Polaroid SX-70 at the Fox Talbot Museum I was in two minds after dinner last night as I wrote my blog "Window Gazing" because I wanted to include more images... and I really wanted to show an image that was more out of the ordinary, but couldn't find it. However, when I turned around it was on my office wall staring me in the face. As I've said before I write my blog after I've made and eaten dinner with my wife and before she has to be readied for bed... so I have a two or three hour window to scribble, type, find images from my files or print anew in the darkroom from a film taken during the day. Sometimes it's difficult... other times it's a breeze. Sometimes I have too many ideas in my head... other times I flick through other Salon blogs to see if anything makes me laugh or cry and triggers a spark somewhere. Every time I read "Indoor Camping: Fixing Up the Fixer-Upper" I'm reminded of how my own grown-up daughters or their children in the USA and Canada fool around... but back-off relating a similar anecdotal story in case I embarrass them. Or I read Bonnie's "Wandering Willow" - especially the other night when she lost her father and, through circumstance, wasn't there. The same happened to me when my father died after I let our cat out of the kitchen window... but I'll relate what happened next in a week or so because after searching on the internet and finding details of my father's Polish 307 Night Fighter Squadron I discovered he wasn't listed under aircrew on the site. As I have his ID and French issued Polish Resistance ID cards plus two photo albums with hundreds of WW2 photos including his arrival in the UK on board the ill-fated "Arandora Star" to later pictures he took of Caen (Normandy) in ruins, General Sikorski at his parade in Exeter 10.9.1942 and hundreds of other mainly 3 x 2 inch photos with hand-written notes on their backs I have a lot more research to do before I start a webblog page that could take weeks to finish... and I can't understand any of the Polish captions! So back to "Window Gazing... part 2" because after I posted last night's (9pm Paris) or lunchtime (12pm CA, USA) blog the "creative" interpretation of the scene from that window taken many years ago in Malmesbury, Wiltshire and which I knew was in the repository of my mind was actually on the wall behind me. The image above (scanned from a non-glossy magazine cover and not from the original which has very rich colouring) was seen, taken and assembled as a montage on Polaroid SX-70 film also using an assortment of Nikon yellow, orange and red filters held over the lens whilst I framed, exposed, sometimes tilted and sometimes moved the camera during the exposures. Several packs of SX-70 film were used and the best edited from the shoot. They were framed under a nine-aperture matte board ready for the "Celebration of Photography" Exhibition held at Lacock Abbey in 1989 on the William Henry Fox Talbot 150th Anniversary. I felt I had captured the "Window" theme quite well... my photomontage was hung next to images by David Bailey and Karsh of Ottawa... so I felt in good company. During the after-lunch presentation given by Bob Lassam, then Curator of the Lacock Museum, in the room with the Oriel window made famous by Fox Talbot from his first "negative" of a subject from which multiple prints could be made... I remember seeing a red dot moving across the speaker's face... it was an infrared-assisted beam of light from an auto-focus camera. How technology had changed in those 150 intervening years... but now only 15 years on from Fox Talbot's 150th Anniversary film negatives themselves are being forgotten... and SX-70 will unfortunately become history too, sooner rather than later. BTW : If any Polaroid image collector is interested in purchasing the above one-off photomontage please get in touch! I'm thinking $450... 8:14:29 PM    comment []