This probably looks familiar. It's based on my profile picture, which, in turn, was based on my Fuck #instagram photograph, from about a year ago. This image, however, is an entirely new one.
The original photograph was low resolution — too low to do anything with. So I tried something that I never have before. I printed the original at its actual size, and then scanned it at a very high resolution. The result was a grainy, but informative image that I could work from. For the following to weeks, I set about redrawing the picture in an digital image manipulation program. While it took a long time to do, the drawing itself was easy, because I had posterized the picture beforehand. It's not like I had to do gradients or anything. Anyway, what I ended up with was an 18"x21" (golden rectangle) version of the one seen here, completed November 16, 2013.
I intended to make this picture my lithography 1 final project. It was to be printed in CMYK, using photosensitive plates, and an industrial press. Unfortunately, no aspect of the printing process went well. There are a few theories, floating around as to what went wrong, but the fact of the matter is that nothing my professor or I did seemed to solve the problems I was having. Magenta alone took nine consecutive hours to produce six dissimilar, and heavily flawed prints.
What I am left with is this digital image, and my concept. Although I have always liked the images off of which this one is based, the selection/creation of this one was inspired by some ideas I had been exploring throughout the semester. The work of Jackson Pollack, as expression beyond words; Gerhard Richter's painted photographic distortions, such as the 1996 Selbstportrait; Thomas Ruff's titillating nudes — KN30, in particular; Van Alphen's writings on the loss of self in Francis Bacon's male portraits . . . it all intersected a point of recent self discovery: the fact that I have alexithymia, the inability to recognize emotion. This condition, paired with its frequent partner, Asperger's, goes a long way towards explaining my way of life. Specific to this project was the idea that my entire self is created/defined by the lives and voices of others, in a sort of Lacanian mirror relationship. I am ultimately inaccessible, because I can never perfectly express my essential self; it's arguable whether I even have an essential self.
No comments:
Post a Comment