Impressions
Digital C-41 cyanotypes and montages of antique paper prints | 2013
In Impressions Sylvia addresses the relationships between culture, and technology by blending digital and analog photography principles together. Her work borrows from Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), the founding father of the cyanotype or blueprint, ideas that photographic process would revoluntionise the copying and distribution of visual content. These ideas are somewhat akin to digital technologies wherein everything can be duplicated. Like the Internet Herschel believed the cyanotype could create a revolution in how work was copied and distributed. In her series she creates a condensed history of photographic ideas by capturing literally image impressions of 16th-17th C works to become independent aesthetic works
By fusing early imaging ideas together prior to the advent of photography with emblematic forms from their time - scientific etchings of the flora and the body, viewers are given an opportunity to move through a visual strata of time and content production. In Impressions she has digitally captured traces left behind of obscure 16th-17th century illustrated prints left behind on facing pages. These faint images appear similar to the image outlines made by the first cameras. Rather than seeing media as separate, analog or digital, the artist has blended early photographic aspirations and goals together with hand-made processes and the digital sensor in order to create a new recombinant process.
Her colour reversed digital renderings of etching impressions are produced as image negatives. The original hues of the etched papers when reversed become blue appearing much akin to photographic cyanotypes. Interestingly the origin of the word “photography” hinted at its publishing potential by combining the Greek words for light and writing. The term ‘photography’ also coined by Herschel hints at a new revolution in printing and mechanical reproduction that both the camera and the digital sensor have brought to the foreground. In this series the viewer is given a window to explore and transcend a visual strata of time, technology and observation through a fusion of digital and pre-photographic aesthetics.
Digital C-41 cyanotypes and montages of antique paper prints | 2013
In Impressions Sylvia addresses the relationships between culture, and technology by blending digital and analog photography principles together. Her work borrows from Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), the founding father of the cyanotype or blueprint, ideas that photographic process would revoluntionise the copying and distribution of visual content. These ideas are somewhat akin to digital technologies wherein everything can be duplicated. Like the Internet Herschel believed the cyanotype could create a revolution in how work was copied and distributed. In her series she creates a condensed history of photographic ideas by capturing literally image impressions of 16th-17th C works to become independent aesthetic works
By fusing early imaging ideas together prior to the advent of photography with emblematic forms from their time - scientific etchings of the flora and the body, viewers are given an opportunity to move through a visual strata of time and content production. In Impressions she has digitally captured traces left behind of obscure 16th-17th century illustrated prints left behind on facing pages. These faint images appear similar to the image outlines made by the first cameras. Rather than seeing media as separate, analog or digital, the artist has blended early photographic aspirations and goals together with hand-made processes and the digital sensor in order to create a new recombinant process.
Her colour reversed digital renderings of etching impressions are produced as image negatives. The original hues of the etched papers when reversed become blue appearing much akin to photographic cyanotypes. Interestingly the origin of the word “photography” hinted at its publishing potential by combining the Greek words for light and writing. The term ‘photography’ also coined by Herschel hints at a new revolution in printing and mechanical reproduction that both the camera and the digital sensor have brought to the foreground. In this series the viewer is given a window to explore and transcend a visual strata of time, technology and observation through a fusion of digital and pre-photographic aesthetics.
Digital cyanotype prints | 2013
Project review
“Artist folio: Impressions” in Studies in Photography Scotland published by The Scottish Society for the History of Photography, December 2013.
Dickson, Malcolm. "Dreaming of cyanotypes - the Yin and the Yang of image making," in the book Blueprint Publisher Glasgow Print Studio and Streetlevel Photoworks ISBN 978-0-9569054-6-8 2013.
Impressions was presented at Streetlevel Photoworks as part of BLUEPRINT Exhibition (February 8 - March 31, 2013)
see an artist video presentation, entitled, 'Agency of Light,' wherein Sylvia describes the histories of cyanotype printing and its relationship to the development of photogram process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIvLjCzhltI