Artist Steven Mastroianni discusses his creative process in this short video about photograms. Photograms, or cameraless photos, occupy a space between drawing and photography, between action and mechanical reproduction. In photography, the “latent image” refers to the phenomenon between when light creates an exposure on film, and when that exposure is fully developed for the human eye to see. There’s a unique challenge and thrill to creating something that you can’t actually see in the moment, but have to wait to see how it’s rendered out in the process.
These pieces start out as small sketches where I develop my concepts, motifs, and patterns through drawing. One of the earliest and most common uses of cyanotype was in making blueprints (hence the name), and so I think about how my work resembles those intricate, mechanical drawings. But instead of diagrams for buildings or machines, I’m laying out the plans for imaginary locations and strange mechanisms. I find or create stencils, along with miscellaneous bric-a-brac, and hand drawn “negatives” to serve as analogs to the lines and marks of the original drawings. Those objects and drawings are then laid out on the sensitized paper to create the blueprint. Since the process is in reverse, I need to visualize how solid objects leave white shadows, translucent objects leave shades of blue, and open areas take on the deep cyan. In some of the pieces, I integrate drawing directly onto the paper before it is sensitized, creating an extra layer of detail, with the ink acting both as a resist and as visible marks on the finished print.
18 сен 2024
