Color Photography: ‘Photo-Happenings’

Leonardo, Vol. 10,p. 143. Pergamon Press 1977. Printed in Great Britain COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY: 'PHOTO-HAPPEN INGS' EIizabeth Stein* Since I find outdoor photography in the region of Chicago a pleasure only during the warmer months, during the winterI devisemy own artistic adventureswith a camera indoors. Often photographers produce images with distortions or transformations of the external real world that remind one of surrealistic and other styles of presentation developed by painters. Andre Kertesz in the early 1930's made a series of black and white photographs consisting of weird distortions of the human form [l] and Lucas Samarasemploysbizarre techniques for specialeffects,as illustrated in the recent book entitled Phoro Trunsformations [2]. I have been fascinated particularly by imagesof objects seen on light-reflectingsurfaces, for example on water, and have often photographed them. This led me to devise a simple indoor method for producing images to be photographed in color of a nonfigurative or abstract kind that depend on light reflected from objects onto polished or mirror-like surfaces. The photographic equipment consists of a hand-held Pentax camera with a macro-lens, loaded with Ektachrome X (daylight) or Kodacolor I1 (daylight) film. Instead of floodlights or flash bulbs for illumination, I utilize sunlight entering through a window. (In the winter the low angle of the Sun at the northern latitude of my studio is particularly advantageous ). The props for compositions are selected colorful objects around my home and sheets of reflecting material such as aluminum foil and coated Mylar. By shifting the *Photographer, 1008 Monroe Dr., Bloomington, IL 61701, U.S.A. (Received 1 1 Jan. 1977.) position and by deforming the sheets of reflecting material, the images of objects on them can be vaned easily from recognizable distortions of the objects to nonfigurative derivations of them. Through the macrolens small areas of interest are sometimes discovered which may not have been noticeable to the naked eye. The photographic image obtained from the reflecting sheet can by varied also be changing the positions of the objects and by altering the location of the camera. The slightest distortion of the reflecting surface will radically change the appearance of an imageobtained on it and it is very difficult to repeat closely the appearance of any image once it has changed. It is for this reason that I call thesephotographs 'photo-happenings'. Artists who make kinetic pictures on a translucent screen by reflecting light from distorted polished surfaces are well acquainted with this phenomenon [3]. As will be seen from a study of Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 (cf. color plate), the photographic imagescontain little or no recognizable parts of the objects reflected in the mirrorlike surfaces. The complex, mysterious images are difficult to describe in words and to one who does not know how they were produced they are puzzling. I find this method for producing images for photographs artistically exciting and suggestive of other related ways that might be tried to produce nonfigurative photographs . References 1. A. Kertesz, Distortions (New York:Knopf, 1976). 2. C. W. Glenn, ed., L. Samaras: Photo Transformations (New York:Dutton, 1976). 3. F. J. Malina, Electric Light as a Medium in the Visual Fine Arts: A Memoir, Leonnrdo 8, 109 (1975) p. 117. Fig. 1. Untitled,photograph, color print. 23 x 34 a, 1976. 143 ...