Art History- Double Exposure Research

In the urban sense- Miki Takahashi- 2012

        It was taken by Miki Takahashi in 2012 and is a self portrait. There is no title but the title of the whole series is called 'In the urban sence”.It is meant to represent her feelings on the ‘in the urban sence’ and portraying herself and the outside world. In the pictures she is on the foreground of the image, and inside her head are the urban landscape of where she lives. It communicates feeling and is very aesthetically pleasing.  There is an ethereal feel to the pictures, this is due to how the pictures are layered which make it feel dream like. The colours in the pictures are very bright with the rest of the picture very pale, where the bright colours are 2 of the 3 primary colours.
In her portfolio it states that it is digital photography, If this is the case she has taken 2 pictures and blended them together in photoshop by using masks. The Pre-production way to achieve this would be to expose your film twice in the same frame, which is very unpredictable as planning the framing would be difficult. I suspect It was digital due to it being in the modern day with access to photshop and digital cameras are so easy to come by as film is still not as common especialy when you are an Internet artist who would want to put the pictures online easily. I want to use the film method as It would involve no post-production.

        The pictures are taken at 2 different times of day, the portrait in the day and the city at night. This creates a big contrast between the colours and the pictures. I like that there is a split. It shows us that she relates to the city and all the emotions that are inside it. When taking a double exposure with film you have to think about the lighting on each, and make sure they do not clash. This is more pre production where Takahashi uses post production.
The pitures make me think that there is more behind the pictures than meets the eye. It looks very emotion and where she has a connection to the city, It is possibly where she lives and grew up so she has a connection to the place.

     I'm using the influence of her style and use of portraits and landscapes/cityscape behind the portrait, but I will use a film camera.

In the urban sense- Miki Takahashi- 2012

This is another of her pictures form the same set of work. It is very similar in the sense of herself on one layer and a city behind her as they fade into each other, creating another dream like sense. I think that it shows herself, as it is japan behind her and that is where she is from.
The image has the girl on the left and the city on the right and there is a 3rd split with the girl in one of the 3rds.
The city again has been taken at night and the person during the day giving a very dream like contrast. The colours are very dark which relates to the urban theme that is in her pictures.

Hodachrome-Persona-2015

Hodachrome- summer portraits  - 2015

Hodachrome, is a lomogroahy user who has posted some of his work, and wrote some how to guides to producing double exposures. This picture has no title but is in a collection of all of his double exposures. It is a boy and fire works. Both taken on film, Presumably at  the same time, or taken in different sets, as I  have seen a way people on lomogroahy use a hole punch to reference the start of the film. This was taken In Tokyo, as is all of his  pictures, he explains that he loves the 4 seasons of Tokyo, and his sets of double exposures represent this work with all the seasons in mind.  This picture is the one that caught my eye as the person isn't as detailed as Takahashi. Which adds another depth of mystery to who this person is. Which is the same for his other work persona where all the people and other background settings are silhouettes. 
The pictures colour is blue whit the explosive red of the fireworks. This realty separates the pictures from each other as they are layered, it makes it more obvious. I think that the colours of the film are also different from what you can see with your eye which suggests that he has used film, as its an effect that only happens with film. where the persona image is very similar with a silhouette but has buildings and trees as well, with red flowers in front of it.

The colours of the fireworks contras with the blue sky and with the fireworks could have been multiple exposures. 

I think that the work is very dream like much like Takahashi, which I think is the desired effect when doing double exposures.

It was taken with film although it looks very similar to Takahashi, who used digital. I would say that is down to the skill and the familiarity with using double exposures of the artist. Hodachrome uses film as he has a love of film like me, which is why lomogoraphy is a platform for him to use and would not have been able to do this without lomogrpahy around releasing the old cameras pushing the 'dont think just shoot" idea, much like the "decisive moment" from Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Where as Takahashi has a different way of showing her work as she sells her art so it has to appeal to a wider audience compared to Hodachrome as he is doing it for fun.

Shoot 1-Film Destruction Lemon

In this shoot I used a colour 35mm film in the Nikon EM. Its a camera that shoots in Aperture Priority mode. Before I shot I soaked the canister in a lemon juice and vinegar solution for an hour. This made the films colour layers decay. It produced a very red tint to the pictures, where a lot of the sky came out very off colour. In a few you got a green smudge or dot. This was not as extreme as I had thought it would have been or how the pictures that Mathew Cetta or the lomography community had achieved. I would love to try it again and use different chemicals and look into using different methods such as boiling it.
I shot a verity of landscapes, close ups and portraits, to experiment with the different subjects and what effect the lemon would have on the picture. I found that the pictures were effected at random,and didn't have a reason for creating the green smudges or red tint. Some frames on the film also has smudges and tints on where there was no exposure taken, this was due to the film sticking when it was being used. Again I found myself not taking pictures with a theme, as I don't always use up film in one place and will go on until I finish a roll so I don't waste film.
The picture that demonstrates the effects the most is the one of the blue bins, It has a very big green smudge and the red tint is very evident around it. You can also get scratches and black lines on the image with is where it was scratched while I dried the film after the lemon soak.
Next shoot I am looking into double exposures, but will come back to this at a later date as the prep for the shoot took up to 2 weeks, with drying the film. I would like to look into boiling the film or using cola, which also gives some strange effects. I think that I did not get as dramatic effect as I was hoping for was due to the type of lemon juice I used. As I used some from a bottle rather than an actual lemon.

Art History -Film Destruction

Boiled- Mathew Cetta 2013

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. 

Lemon Juice- Mathew Cetta 2013

He went through a stage in his life where he didn't like the perfection of retouching and hence set on doing something unpredictable. He also set up a kick starter that would bring his manipulated film to the public but it never took off as it is quite simple do yourself, and no one will process your film for you as it would contaminate the chemicals and destroy the other films which isn't good for business

This pictures was made with lemon juice soaked and the other was boiled film, It is taken of Brooklyn bridge in New York. It was taken with a 35mm colour film and destroyed and developed in a normal way. It looks like it is an effect that has been added after it was shot as its looks like an overlay, but it was done before the picture was taken. the chemicals degrade the layers of colours on the film which absorb different light frequencies. and depends how far it degrades and how the chemicals react will produce the change in colour and lack of picture quality. I like how the colours have given the pictures a post-apocalyptic feel, as it all looks gimy, they different colours also add to the pictures mood. as the red and green mix hides the pictures behind but the lemon juice makes it look very dream like. 

link boiled film-Dopa-2014

In the Lomography community there are a few examples of this techniques showing all the unpredictable outcomes. There are a few recipes and ideas to try. The common one is a soup, where you will boil the film and maybe add some other chemicals.
This boiled one from the community was taken by user Dopa. He is German and boiled his film for 10 min and then dried it in a dark room. It must have degraded a few layers on the film to bring the blue out.
All this wouldn't be possible without the driving force of lomogroahpy and the inspiration it gives for people to try and experiment with different chemicals and idea. As its very obscure in what you can do. also very unpredictable, so all the artist would have had to be persistent to try new things.
I find that the blue is very calm colour, and the shoot that this is from gives that feeling due to the colours.

Boiled with detergent - Hodachrome 2013

User Hodachrome did a similar thing, But in the dark room applied detergent to the film which created the dots that are scattered across the image. I think that this could make the destruction even better although it would be hard to proses at a store as they might reject it.

 Lomography users call this process souping, where you boil the film and add other chemicals sometimes.Lomogrpyh was formed in 1992 but wasn't until the early 2000s when loomogrpahy started up pushing the "dont think just shoot" lomography being a leading figure in the experimental side of the film world and camera production, as they sell and make different cameras that allow you to do very different things from the standard camera. Such as the super sampler that has 4 lenses and the 360 degree camera that can take a picture of 360 degrees. If it wasn't for lomogrpahy in the early 2000s I doubt a lot of the experimentation with film would be low key and wouldn't be as easy to do.

For my first shoot I want to look into lemon juice or boiling, as they look very different. I would also like to see the difference with shooting before or after you dip it in chemicals.

Truth, Fantasy or Fiction

The best part about the starting point is that you didnt have to use all 3 words as you could have chosen just one, which gave tou a wide range of ideas to choose from.

This is my overall view of truth fanctacy and fiction, I looked into many things such as surealisum and how I could make very thing look sureal, I looked into books and storys, where I could have told a story though my art as I went a long,  Looked into camera techniques to where I would change how I took a picture to make it look fantasy like.
I was very interested in macro and getting close up tho things, as its something I had never done before much like portraits which I could have mixed with surealisum. I found that I should stick to my strengths and use film and photoshop and the the techniques around that to change the image (the truth)

Initial ideas involve film and digital, sticking with my strengths of effects, colour and photoshop.  My initial ideas were post or pre production to effect the truth. I wanted to do both but figured that it was a very broad and have chosen to focus on pre production techniques, "destroying the truth through pre production techniques".

Starting with ideas such as double exposure, filters, prisms, long exposure, film destruction , partially covering the lens. Looking at a few artists who use each technique. I have also looked into using expired film and combining all of the above to create some hybrid of techniques.