Created a makeshift darkroom to develop a couple prints before starting my MA at the RCA. For this one, I used a silver print I had exposed in sunlight and then developed it before using Pot Ferrocyanide and a hand-made stencil to create the writing. I would not suggest doing this at home and will never do this process again outside of a professional environment - didn't realize how dangerous it was.
I learned about this manual technique at an online seminar with Marky Kauffman through Soho Photo Gallery. I really appreciated her being so open about her process and learned so much from her. There were a couple prints that I tried to do with just sun lightening and fixer, but in the end I couldn't give up the degree of permanence...
For our first project in the print program we've been asked to create a print which incorporates a word, somewhat à la Ed Ruscha. Words are hard for me, and I think a word is the most difficult thing.
I spent the weekend in New York, as I've done at different points from a very young age, and across from our hotel there was a graphitto "homesick" and it made me think about the word nostalgia. Nostos (νόστος) algos (ἄλγος) literally means homecoming distress - a homesick of sorts, and I suppose I relate to that -- within the idea of the journey home there is also a pain which happens in a sort of retrospective manner -- the painfulness of memory which the word nostalgia has come to represent. Present also in the word νόστος and its odyssean roots is this idea that home is this sort of unattainable destination, because time and absence change a place in an irreparable sort of way.
