As part of my year long project I’ve been experimenting with breaking up images and reconstructing them. In some of my earlier works I chopped or ripped up and then scrambled the photo paper before I enlarged an image from a negative onto it. Only then after the developing,stopping,fixing, washing and drying did I reassemble it into it’s original shape, with the elements of the image being muddled up.
After this I overlaid some circuit board patterns on transparency onto the paper to act as a mask which would leave the shapes of the circuit board tracks on the images. Then I thought about jigsaws and how I could muddle up the pieces as in the earlier experiment before joining them all back up correctly and other ideas.
It was during the jigsaw phase that I thought of making a chess board mask on transparency to cover 50% of the image, expose it under the enlarger, then flip the chess board over and expose a second picture on the newly cleared squares. This was a lot of work if I cut it out of cardboard as the squares in the centre might be unsupported, but I could have printed the checker pattern on a clear sheet of acetate.
Hugo Weaving
Whilst playing around with these ideas I came up with an idea of weaving two pieces of paper or images together that would result in a two images being interposed. I set about printing some images on my home laser printer to try it out. Before I got to the printer though I had a brainwave that rather than doing two images of the police and a building, or pictures of my workplace I could join two images that were related and ask some questions. I was lying in bed thinking about this and came up with an idea of taking a photo of the front of my head and the back, then weaving them together. Then maybe the left and right sides of my head might make an interesting picture.
Our bathroom has good natural light into it in the morning and a large mirror to share the light around so I set up my camera in there on a tripod and did a lot of portraits that might work together in a woven image.
I printed a few out at A4 size and then worked out how to slice one and then slide strips of the other photo into it like an old weaving loom. The first image that came out was “The Front and Back Of My Head”
Complex Machine
Whilst looking into the next one I did some research into woven photographs and searched Google Scholar and the Library catalogue but found very little. One thing I did learn was that in English we have terms like thingyjig, thingymabob,whatsit, etc and in German they have a word “Veeblefetzer” which is thought to originate from the Jewish word for Weaver (Veeble) and Machine (Fetzer). I quite liked the etymology of the word and how it fit in with my project so I chose to call this image series, Veeblefetzer. It means a complex machine that there is no real name for.
Finding Jason
Whilst searching for other artists who might have been weaving portraits together I came across Jason Chen who is a successful photographer / artist who takes images seconds apart before chopping them up and weaving them together in a very methodical and satisfying way. I had never seen this before so felt a little deflated that my “original” idea was far from being original. Never mind, I can find out about Chen and see why he does this sort of work, maybe it’ll be a clue as to why I’ve started the year off on this path.
His website bio states that he shifted from making Tintype photographs to photo weaving in order to investigate what he sees as the Fourth Dimension, “Time” He is based in Philadelphia, in the United States.
His images are indeed stunning and thought provoking and appear to have captured what might be termed today as a “glitch in the matrix” (Hugo Weaving plays Agent Smith, by the way) His academic background in Film and Animation have led him to explore time and his images certainly get the viewer to ask questions about what is happening in the images, why it’s happening, in which order the photos might have been taken and why they’ve been woven together in the pattern chosen.
Wanting to know more about Jason’s practice and ideas I emailed him and like an absolute legend he got back to me quickly with some answers.
On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 1:18 PM Griffiths, Robert W. <R.W.Griffiths@wlv.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi Jason, I’m a mature student studying Photography at the University Of Wolverhampton in England.
I’ve been working on an Experimentation and Dialogues module and have started weaving 10×8 Resin Coated papers in the Dark Room to produce composite images for my year long project.
After thinking up one idea I searched through the web and some of your amazing work appeared via pinterest. It’s the first time I’ve seen something similar ( and far superior) to what I’m experimenting with.
I’ve looked through your website too and I love your work.
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you blindly like this, but I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about your practice?
He kindly answered my queries and his answers can be seen below the questions in the following paragraph in bold italics.
BG: Do you use digital images and printing, or do you ever use the darkroom and enlargers for these pieces?
JC: Yes, I mainly use digital images, printing them on a plotter. I don’t really have access to a darkroom right now. My practice is more about the weaving process than the photograph making process anyway. Although I am an advocate for traditional photo processes. haha. Before switching to photo weaving I used to make dry plate tintypes.
BG: Do you print first, then cut and weave together?
JC: I print the photos first and then hand-cut and weave.
BG: Do you sell the woven images or get them scanned and sell the prints?
JC: I am selling almost exclusively the woven photo. I don’t think reproduction prints do them justice. I have only done a print run with a collaborating artist once.
BG: Do you select the slices you’ll use ? I’ve been using alternate slices up to now but it appears you select slices to accentuate the movement and faces of the subjects?
JC: I am not 100% sure what the question is asking here. But I don’t alter or select each strip after they are cut. I do choose the 2 images I want to weave based on how abstracted I want the piece to look. Does that answer your question?
BG: Could I also be so cheeky as to ask why you want Time to be present in your images? Is this what drives you with this practice?
JC: My background is in film and animation so the element of “Time” is important to me. Plus I am just fascinated by the concept of time, and the depiction of it scientifically and metaphorically.
BG: Would you be ok if I reference some of your work in my research, properly credited of course.
JC: Absolutely. It’ll be my honor. Please let me know if you need anything else from me. I am happy to help.
What an absolute gent. It was interesting to see him reply regarding the selection of slices and whether he chooses some and leaves others out as when I did my first image I had to leave two slices out as I couldn’t push the others together enough to get all of them in.
His response about Time was also intriguing, I can see how working in animation and film would force an artist/creator to stick to a timeline when editing and how liberating it might be to move away from linear progression of time, taking odd steps into the future or past to confuse the viewer. His mention of the depiction of time is fascinating to me too as I am also interested in scientific principles as a person with an engineering background. Time travel films have made a big impression on me over my life, Twelve Monkeys being my favourite time based film. He mentions time being depicted as metaphorical too. I’m unsure as to what he means by this but in my mind it means that it’s being substituted for something else, whether it’s an aging person in a photo with a person younger than them.
Chen’s artist statement on his website:
The work I create is an exploration of my insecurities and the feeling of duality.
Two decades ago, I came to America as an immigrant. I adopted a new name for the convenience of the English speakers around me and so I would feel like less of an outsider. For many years, I was willing to lose my identity to feel more included.
After studying Film and Animation in college, I began to reconnect with my past and try to understand my potential future. Although I can comfortably call this place my home, I still can’t help but feel unwelcome during difficult times in our country. This feeling pushes me to create.
The artwork itself is cut and woven by hand. I believe a physical connection to the materials adds a layer of personality to the work, even if it has flaws. I use the weaving process to deconstruct and reconstruct images to create a sense of time and movement.
Sometimes I think that if I stand at just the right angle, I can gaze into the sliver between two parallel universes to see the distortion of time and motion. I imagine it much like a video glitch in-between frames.
Jason Chen, thatchinesekid.com, November 2022
The statement shows how he feels duality through his work and I particularly appreciate the last paragraph about gazing through the sliver into a parallel universe. Interesting too that he uses the word “glitch” as a distortion.
Chen also mentions that the “physical connection” adds personality to the artwork and I felt this from doing my simple first experiments , the effort and fiddliness of the weaving process definitely feels like an investment of time and thought into the piece.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Jason immensely for his response and offer of help if required. I was truly taken aback that someone had the time for me like this and I appreciated it greatly. Check out his website and Instagram page if you get the chance.
Veeblefetzer #2
Whilst I was waiting the short time for Jason to reply I got on with some of my other experiments. I took a picture of the front of my head and also a photo of my face from an old school photo from when I was maybe 8 years old. I thought to interweave these two to see what the result might be.
I chose to cut the “older me” portrait diagonally and the “younger me” vertically to see if it gave a stranger look than the simple checker pattern seen above. You can see from the final result that I tried to overlap the eyes and nose, using layers in photoshop to print the images out at a similar scale and position on the paper. the nose and eyes line up quite well and it leads to a strange image.
The image might have be better if I had colour graded them to give a similar tone to the skin, the “older me image” has a very blue tint and the child picture has a more natural tone. This image is titled “Me & Me” It’s an odd likeness of me, and I can also see my son Ewan reflected in the mixed up image. I did also think of merging a photo of myself and a photo of my son or daughter together too. That may come another day.
Veeblefetzer #3
The next image I made was constructed from two side profiles of myself, left and right. I titled this image “Sideways” and cut it vertically and horizontally as I did with Veeblefetzer #1 “The Front and Back of my Head” but this time I cut it a little more finely, where the previous image was every 1 cm I chose half centimetre increments for this image.
Because I cut the 1cm lines first it meant that the halfway-between lines went a bit wobbly so next time I’ll do them all in order. As a result of the unevenness of the lines there appear to be some lines that are wider than the others too which gives it an untidy appearance to me.
My hope for this image was a resulting piece of work that showed both my sides in one image but for some reason it seems to show mainly my left side, it looks to me as though it might be the uneven cuts that caused this.
I noticed after looking at Chen’s website and work that he often skips across a couple of rows at a time to give some better interpolation of the more important areas of the image. It might be worth me looking into this style also.
Looming
With the thinner strips of paper going through it was a bit of a struggle so I had the idea to jam a strip in and hold it in the right place to get a strip in with less hassle. I could only do this with the odd strips and not the even strips or it would get stuck. Weaving looms have something called a Shed Stick that creates the small tent (or Shed) between the odd and even “Warp” threads so that the “Weft” threads can pass through more easily. The strips of image being slotted into the Warp are placed in by hand where they might be fed in using a shuttle in a traditional loom.
There is also a part of the weaving process on a loom called “Beating In” which uses a fork or comb like device to pull the Weft threads against the previous threads to make it as tight or close as possible so that you cannot see the gaps. `this was a tricky operation doing it with paper as I had to use a blunt end of a pair of tweezers to shove the strips tighter together.
A useful video by Fibers and Design Weaving can be seen here on YouTube as to the terms and method of doing this. I’d never heard of a shed stick before and sussed out that I could do this to make it 50% quicker to do the job. More automatic looms have complex machinery in them that raises alternate parts of the Warp so that you can throw the shuttle through both directions but in this small operation it’s not possible.
The final image came out ok but as I mentioned I wish there had been more visible of my right hand side. I’ll attempt to make the next one a little more even.
I noticed also how difficult it is to weave the Weft strips in when it gets closer to the end of the image. It’s because I have the slits cut in without reaching the end of the paper meaning it gets a bit tight. I thought to cut the strips all the way to one end of the paper, not both obviously or it would all fall apart.. Then I relooked at some of the reels on Chen’s instagram page and I can see that this is exactly what he does. He cuts the strips all the way to the edge of one side, this allows him to lift up the strips to go over the Weft strips more easily, especially when it would get to the tighter parts.
As part of the task to reinterpret an image from our independent research I am going to select some images and try weaving them together using different methods. I quite fancy picking a Liam Wong image and merging it with a Masataka Nakano image of a similar part of Tokyo, one from day and the other from night.
Keep an eye open for this in a future post this week.
[…] then went into the weaving phase where I have mixed images of portraits together, along with a night and daytime scene in Tokyo and recently the 10×12 images of […]
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