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POLAROID IMAGE AND EMULSION TRANSFERS

 

IMAGES (l to r)

Portrait of the artist and the most wonderful dog in the world c. 1973 Taken by my dear friend Michael P. Gilbert.

"Fifty", a self-portrait on my fiftieth birthday.

"Dual", a sandwich slide using both positive and negative images.

 

 

 

 

"Waterlily 2"

"Waterlily 3"

 

 

 

"Family Closet"

from a cross processed slide.

"Christmas Morning c.1950". (My interior decorating genes are also in doubt.) Those are matching Annie Oakely outfits for my older sister and me...Mom just got the bathrobe. Anyone want to watch a little TV?

"Grandma in the Desert." I am descended from a photographically challenged family, but what better way to show the folks back on the farm in Iowa just how big the desert seems, than with a tiny waving grandma.

Image transfers blur the lines of time. Photos taken today can look like artifacts from the past. I used to feel that my transfers were failures unless they were perfect..no peeled off emulsion. I would work on repairing and touching up every little flaw. Now I look at the peeled patches as positive space, not negative. As shapes with a purpose or meaning. Each viewer can read their own interpretation into the photographs, like an ink blot test. My work in slides has been experimental, and image transfer takes them to a different level. As I manipulate the images my involvement is greater and less involved with photography. Although they still begin with photography.

 

I think I like making emulsion transfers because working with the emulsion is like working with a piece of fabric. A very fine and fragile piece of old silk that will rip or crumble without the slightest provocation. The resulting images have an increased dimensionality..the folds and wrinkles make them seem to still be floating freely. If you watch them long enough...maybe you will see them drift into a new position.Emulsion transfers are especially fun with old slides. They impart the look of artifact, and fleeting moment in time. The ones are from old Kodachrome slides, c.1950. The color held up pretty well, considering they also survivied restoration from floodwaters in 1986.

 

 

 

copyright 2005
all rights reserved
Donna Fay Allen
Updated 8-1-2005

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CONTACT: dfallen@surewest.net