Analogue/Digital, hand-bound photobook and wall print, 2018.
UTS, Bachelor of Design in Photography, Digital Image.
Using new and old methods of creating indexical imagery, Analogue/Digital is an exploration of contemporary practice. As a present-day film photographer, the digital is crucial in being able to bring my photographs out from the original negative. Though even more ambiguous than film photography, digital photographic technologies such as scanning are still as indexical except they are formulated by codes and pixels and presented on screens instead of paper.
This project began when I was thinking of hands playing with clay, how things leave ways of referring so clearly without ever having to see the mark-maker. Through methods of indexing such as stamping, to photographs of imprints, to scans, the photobook images demonstrate how clear or how misleading indexical methods can be. However, the more I developed these ideas, the more Analogue/Digital has grown to explore the contemporary practice of the present available technologies in photography and art. My own way of working is very fluid – process and play are very important to me. I make lots of work to try to reach a point where it meshes together conceptually and whichever technology I require to create an idea is whichever I use. This project has been a bit different – the indexed thing was not as relevant as the way in which it was indexed and my project suddenly focused on the way I chose to process.
The Analogue/Digital photobook contains a series of images which have been churned through multiple new and old processes; things have been stamped, scanned, photoshopped, printed as transparencies, chemically printed on paper through cyanotype, scanned again and finally printed by digital inkjet. The wall print is a composite of digital photographs of physical boards. These boards are material arrangements of most of the work-product created during my investigations of the index; rubbings, stampings, photo prints of scans, inverted black and white acetate prints, and so on.
Seen below: digital sequence of the photobook artefact, then installation.
