I registered to attend an on-line workshare event through group I had started following on Instagram for women using alternative printing techniques – https://www.luxetlibera.org/ . The group was founded by Dale Rio who is a photographer and teacher [https://www.dalerio.com/ accessed 20/07/22]. The group ‘seeks to recognize the leading role the female-identifying artists play in the fields of film and alternative/historic process photography and to create new opportunities for them’. For the event I was going to present some of my platinum and palladium images that I have produced for the exhibition in November. This would be the first time I had shown my work and as I was going to be in the office at work, I didn’t want to show the actual prints, so I scanned them and produced a short PowerPoint slide show. We only had ten minutes each, so I selected eighteen images that gave a flavour of the project. I did not really put them in any order as I wasn’t sure if there would be time to get feedback.
On the morning of the event there were only six of us on the zoom session, one of which was the founder. Some seemed to already know one another from other events. I was the only one from outside of the US. The work was very creative with mine being the only social documentary project. The techniques varied from the use of silver gelatine to cyanotypes, photograms and silver lumen.
I used the following PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate my project
These were difficult acts to follow as I did not really think my work was that creative using platinum and palladium, but they kindly provided the following comments in the chat function:
From Kimberly Schneider to Everyone 09:46 AM
Michele, don’t be so hard on yourself. You are creative. Beautiful work, but I would suggest thinking more about sequencing. And editing, so the work can be more cohesive as a whole. But I do really enjoy these images. Keep up the good work!
From Tina Tryforos to Everyone 09:47 AM
I love how you are using this expensive and difficult process to represent such quiet moments and scenes of everyday life. The prints are beautiful
From Marian Howard to Everyone 09:53 AM
Michele, the black and white format allows the story to be heard. For me, the images present another side to the stereotypical idea of New Zealand
From Rachel Guardiola to Everyone 09:53 AM
Michele: also book format sounds great for your project!
Michele Usher 