27th February 2024
This week the whole network was still down so there were no lectures or any assessments that would use the IT systems at all. I had emailed Dan the technician the night before and found out that the Colour Chemistry was all up and running so I took a few negatives in and got to crack on with a few of them, before I had a tutorial with Sylvia.
I headed down to the studio/darkroom area in the basement of MK Building which houses the School Of Art. I talked to Dan about the enlarger and with the SISO equipment booking system being down still we worked out that I could book out the B2 Enlarger Medium Format Colour Kit, as well as a couple of contact printers, 120 and 35mm too.
First up was a contact print for each of the films, 66,67 and 68 which were all used in Japan back in January. The first up was film 67 which was a roll of Portra 800 shot in Shinjuku City part of Tokyo, Japan. It started off a bit red but I would expect a bit of an offset as I’d set the enlarger 50,50,0 for YMC, as previously instructed to. I upped the Yellow and Magenta and they began to look a bit prettier.
Next up was film #68, can’t believe I’ve shot over 70 films now, since I started Uni in September 2021. Another roll of Portra 800 I felt like I could probably leave the settings as they were, I’d shot them both at the same time and they were both developed at AG Photo Lab so chances were that they’d be close together.
As it was, there was a bit too much red in this test strip, it didn’t matter in the previous film as there was a lot of warm red lights about in the area of shooting. Here though it made a difference so I altered the settings again on the enlarger and printed a successful contact sheet.
Before I switched to do the contact sheet for #66 which was Portra 400 I decided to pull out a couple of prints to have a go at. These can be seen below, but please excuse the reflections of my hands as I take the photos.
You can see from the table of operations that I made in the darkroom I was cruising ok through these photos and had a tough time with the small security guard in the large opening and how I could get him to be exposed correctly and still be visible so it took a few times and reducing the exposure times. These prints were all done on 12×10″ paper too, as I had a box that was left over from my first year on the course but it means I have to keep these prints in a seperate folder away from my usual collection.
I did also notice that these prints often had a large scratch line going the full length and I’d never seen it before. I did put a piece of paper in on the tilt and the scratch followed it’s normal path so it came out at an angle on the final print. I did mention it to Dan and he was understanding but aware that this is one of the last Colenta machines running in the UK. I did think about it further and I’ve changed from using Lustre paper to using Gloss, as I forgot to change it on the website when I ordered it. Doh. This gloss finish makes it far easier to see the long scratch though. At first I thought it was that original scratch from my Canon A1 after I dropped it in a puddle, then I realised that this was a completely different camera.
Once I’d done a few of these I went for my Tutorial with Sylvia, from which the notes are saved beneath. Once I’d had my tutorial it was back into the colour darkrooms and a contact sheet for film #66 which was Portra 400 shot in my Bronica ETRS at Hiroshima and the Peace Memorial Park.
There were some nice photos on this contact sheet such as the shot through the little arch, over the eternal flame, eternal pond and through to the A Bomb Dome but the one that stuck out to me was that of a group of schoolkids stood with their teacher learning about the history of their country.
It was nice to see that the lessons learned by humanity are passed on from generation to generation, this place along with other memorials such as Auschwitz teach us all the value of being a human and being kind to everyone else. The museum itself was a breathtaking collection of memories, testimonies and evidence of the suffering that occurred on that fateful day, and in the years since.
I chose the photo I called Atomic Lessons from the sheet and chose to make a couple of 12×10 images from it, only I had forgotten to change the borders on the easel so I ended up with a horribly off centre image on the paper. You can see from the gallery below that the first image had the borders messed up and then as i was preparing the next two prints, both the same settings, I messed around with a blank piece of paper, exposing it to the control knob on the enlarger timer (the blue stars), my Apple Watch, and the light coming through the crack in the door of the dark room (straight lines). I think the final image is a powerful one, with the message about education in front of this widely recognised building. I say “widely recognised” but I’ve been surprised just how few people recognise it from the photos I’ve shared since coming back. Maybe I’ve watched too much news, too many documentaries or youtube but this is a building I’ve been aware of since secondary school I think.
Tutorial
Between the colour sessions in the darkroom and pulling prints out of the colenta machine I went up to the second floor for my tutorial with Sylvia and she was running a bit late as the others had been talking about their work seriously. When I went in, she was surprised and thought that I was after lunch, but we agreed to meet at 13:45 in the foyer.
I had sat down with Beth from my course who was working away on a table in the foyer and when Sylvia came to talk I didn’t want to kick her out of her space so she sat and listened to my conversation with Sylvia. It was good to get her ideas too and little snippets of advice.
I had shown Sylvia this blog and the posts about the three shoots within the factory that would produce the images for my exhibition and she did like some of the images that I’d selected but said that she wanted to see more photos from the shoots, possibly even printed out.
We talked about why I had chosen these particular images as part of my story of life within the factory and I talked about maturing over the last 35 years of life within the factory grounds, from being an unenthusiastic apprentice to being a conscientious manager with greater responsibilities than I ever planned to have.
Linking my selection to the essay about atmosphere and the images that I’m analysing is also important to allow the whole body of work to tie-in together for a comprehensive and cohesive conversation.
Some of the images I showed Sylvia included the fork lift door bld 2 image and I explained that I’d been going through the door for over 30 years and as an apprentice it was my job to go out on Friday lunchtime to go to Andros’ chip shop with a big order for all of the Maintenance department. It was also the door that I attached an electronic sensor to, so that it would warn oncoming fork lift trucks whose masts were too high, to this fact, thus preventing a crash. I spent a year (1994-1995) of my BTEC HNC in Electronics and Microelectronics getting this working so I have an affinity for this doorway. There is also some great light that shines in from the area outside and into the factory gangway so it’s a good source of light in the event of a blackout.
The photograph of my office with the light coming through the glass was also one of my favoured images as the story of it is also a long one. When I was an apprentice this room was used as a location for the punch cards and tape to be created which were used to program the metal cutting machines. It was the equivalent of a floppy disk, CD, DVD, USB or hard disk and the machines to create the tape/cards punched out lots of pieces of card as per this video. The room used to be full of little dots, everywhere and I had to clean it out with a dustpan and brush on a number of occasions.
This same room is now my office and whilst there are no longer lots of dots around and the repetitive click/clacking of the machines the socket for the comms to it still remain and I bet that very few people in the factory today would know what its purpose was.
The light spilling out of the room feels like my personality spreading out of the room into the rest of the factory, I like to think that my integrity and honesty is plain for everyone to see and compared to some of the positions historical incumbents I must be a breath of fresh air. The yellow warning sign on the window is also good to note and serves as a warning that maybe the factory isn’t everything in life. I do like to think that I “work to live and not live to work” The fact that this is my office, even though it’s not anything special is still amazing to me as I’ve always had minimal ambitions during my career and have just followed the paths that have opened up for me over the years.
Sylvia suggested that I could try other people looking at the images to see what their opinions would be. What do they think of the images? Is it something that they’d expect to see? What do they feel when they look at the images? Have they seen this side of the factory?
I mentioned to Sylvia that I also had an archive of old photos and documents from when the company was going to close in the early 2000s and she said that she’d like to see some of the archive and I should bring it in for the next tutorial, which would be next week.
After this I also showed her the Photo Book that I had created from my trip to Japan and discussed how I didn’t think that I could use any of the photos I made in Japan for any of this year’s projects. She looked through the book and seemed to like it giving me some feedback on some images and the book overall. I was pleased with her reaction to it, and I still struggle to bring it out and show it off with a bit of impostor syndrome still niggling at me that it’s not a good book and not worth showing to people, but I’m fighting at that all the time and telling myself that I’m a good photographer.
Next week is March and another tutorial about the Practice element followed by some work on prepping for the exhibition at the Eagle Works in April. I’ll have to bring in some photos printed out and also some of the archive on my iPad so she can take a look. I’ll go through and select some candidates for the photos I might choose for the exhibition too, shorten the short list a bit.
Next week we also have two talks on the Thursday which I have booked as holiday from work so I can attend. I’m looking forward to those and they’ll appear in a future post.
Be First to Comment