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.