samedi 18 juin 2005

Self-Portrait Nude... 2 It's hot in central France At the weekend I came across an interesting site portraying the subject of nudity... but with a difference. Tracy Lee has been photographing herself in a project for more than a decade... the viewer / voyeur is allowed - expected perhaps - to look at how this young woman has changed from her student days to motherhood. The following link takes you to her Artist Statement page which I think is important to read before looking at any of her revealing images in the Galleries at angstbabe.com This is a trying and testing project if you're recording the progression of someone, anyone... and it's certainly no easier when the subject is yourself. I've sporadically tried my hand at this and the problem is always the same... "positive feedback" or rather lack of it. How do you know you have anything captured by the camera when you don't see what the camera has recorded until you develop and print the negative? Tammy Lee has found this out for herself and so made the transition from argentique to numerique... and presumably checks the results of her "self" on the camera's LCD screen or perhaps connects her camera to a computer monitor for near-instant feedback on a larger scale. Of course, unlike compact digital cameras, DSLRs (Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras) don't give a preview of the scene / subject before you create the image [some of the newer Olympus E-system bodies now do this]... you only have playback with a DSLR after the image has been made. This afternoon, inspired by Tracy Lee's images of her "self" I clicked through the last few frames of an odd film that's been lodged in one of my cameras for a few weeks... a roll of Maco 100 Ortho. I'd just returned from my daily sprint en velo soaked in sweat (the temperature was near 100 degrees again) and covered in midges and dust... so stripped off under the garden hose which was hooked over a tree branch. The transition from hot exercise to cold shower was far more pleasurable than the transition from silver-imaging to digital will prove to be... even though it was a bit of a shock initially. It wasn't just a case of not knowing what was on the film, even though I was sitting / moving within the wide field of view of a 24mm lens so couldn't really miss including myself in the frame after tripping the self-timed release... but the film was out of date; I guessed the exposure without using a meter; then didn't have the recommended developer or processing time for the film (used that wonderful standby Agfa Rodinal at 1+25 for 10 minutes at a high 24 degrees C... couldn't get the processing solutions any cooler); and opted for questionable flatbed scanner quality of the negatives as a faster method of getting an image onto Salon.com... An interesting aspect of Maco 100 Ortho film is that being orthochromatic (or red-sensitive as opposed to most black-and-white films which are panchromatic - or sensitive to all colours), my skin tones - already heavily tanned - should have come out darker. However, on reading Ansel Adams' tome "The Negative" I realise now, from his quoted examples, that the considerable amount of blue light being reflected around my courtyard from it's openness to the clear sky was actually toning-down the darkening effect of the film. Looking at the screen image, though, the overall tones are surprisingly accurate... except for the tell-tale patch of sky showing through the leaves of the tilleul tree appears white - although deep azure at the time... and the lack of recorded water from the hose spraying my body. I was in doubt for an hour or so whether to publish these ouvert images publicly on-line... until I recalled one paragraph from Tracy Lee's Artist Statement... "There is nothing wrong with being naked. And there is nothing really wrong with being disturbed or offended by it. But there is everything wrong with judging me and censoring my thoughts and ideas because they do not conform to your own." Re: the main image... it is not difficult to find nudity on the net... but it is more difficult to find on the net than "sex" - explicit or otherwise. There are not many images around of normal nakedness... so occasionally I will undress to redress the balance, so to speak. Here are some more examples of "Self-Portrait Nude" photography on this weblog which I have taken relaxing in a French courtyard overlooked by a convent, lying on a brass bedstead in a dark-chocolate coloured room with honey-coloured floorboards somewhere in the North of England, reflected in a glazed door in London... and reflected in a French hotel bedroom wardrobe mirror... snapped whilst cooling off in the breeze from an open window during a break in art-studies during the summer of 2006 when it was too hot to be outside in the sun. There's also my article on "The Penis in Art" for those so interested. June 7 2007 Update Here's my latest "art nude" self-portrait in a misty shower taken whilst testing an Olympus E-1 camera to see if it was showerproof as claimed. 6:20:34 AM    comment []