Mathew Cetta photogenic alchemy vs James Welling Filters

Untitled- Mathew Cetta 2012

Untitled- Mathew Cetta 2012

Mathew Cetta Is a photographer, he did a fine arts in photography degree in New York and originally wanted to be a retoucher . The set of work we are looking at is called photogenic alchemy, which was a process of destroying the film before you use it to take pictures, the effects of it is hard to repeat and work in different ways depending on the chemicals that you left the film in. 

The list includes Vinegar, olive brine, hydrogen peroxide,cough syrup, ginger juice febreze,cola, boil it, ammonia, tooth paste, bleach. And many other ways of destroying the emulsion on the colour film which messes up the colours in it.

 "I started out my career as a photographer wanting to become a retoucher and I was obsessed with perfection. But perfection is boring!” This was when Cetta was going through a rough patch in his life and just wanted to experiment and explore new ideas. Later lomography picked up his work and wrote an article on how to achieve this effect with the colour film and many other photography sites showed and interest in him.

Looking at his work, all the pictures that are shown all have different effect on them, showcasing all the different chemicals that were used to create that effect, even though it will change outcome every time. All the photogenic alchemy is done on film, and the colours are all surreal and obscure, it looks a lot like a filter. This first picture is of Brooklyn Bridge, the composition of the picture is taken from a street from the Brooklyn side, which gives the bridge a large presence in the picture, the picture isn’t clear and looks very over exposed, which could be to do with the chemicals affecting more than the colour layer on the film. All over the picture you can see streaks, which could be due to the chemicals creating stains in patches over the picture. Around the edge on the top there are stains which happens a lot when you don’t agitate the film when developing as the developer doesn't get moved around enough.

The second picture shows a satellite dish with a butterfly on it, it has a different chemical on than the previous picture. This one is more interesting due to how clear it is in the centre than the picture of the bridge. It has on the left a darker purple than the rest of it which shows how unpredictable this technique is, but also how fun it can be. As he developed his idea of the photogenic alchemy he got better at creating images that were in focus and you could clearly make out what is in the picture instead of silhouette type look, which is present in the bridge picture. 

He says on his blog he had no subject to take the picture of, he just takes his cameras around where ever he goes and takes pictures of things that interest him. He takes pictures of everything he can find that catches his eye.

untitled- James Welling -2006-9

James Welling was an artist we visited in unit 2, where he was an influence for colour. He uses filters to get contrasting and complementing colours around a glass house. His work is varied throughout his career, and the work I am looking at is Glass House. He produced this piece work  due to how this house hasn't changed since the 1950s, where as with the filters he has made it look and feel different depending on the colour, each individual colour makes you think something different about the house. This effect added with Welling revisiting the house to take pictures adds to the change and how it hasn't changed. I know this by the style of the house and its interior, which welling said hasn't changed from when it was first put in.

This picture was taken with a digital camera, and due to how similar the house is on all angles it is unknown which side it was taken from but majority was from the front. This was taken with Welling holding filters up to the camera, where he uses a mix of green, yellow and blue. This adds and interning effect to how the light from the sun is going through the filters.

Unlike Cetta, Wellings pictures includes no people for a subject as it all centerer around the house, although they chose film or digital due to the style of work thy were making, as they were both taken in the 2006 and onwards, where digital was around.It all came down to how they worked and what they wanted to achive.Both set of pictures look very surreal in their nature of chaining the normal to something very different. The difference in them is more, the digital is all very random. Where the filters are predictable and is very easy to recreate.