"FInger Prints" - photograms of glass fingers

Process- To make these images I take a mold from a part of my body and reproduce it in glass. The glass then becomes the negative which light is projected through onto photo-sensitive paper. The images contains qualities of both glass and the body.

In the 18th century, with the use of Technology, the western world changed from a text based society to a visually dependent society. Visual learning became not just a luxury but essential to our modern day life and education. The development of optical equipment made originally to help understand the world now supplies us with mass-produced images. Microscopes, scanning devices, and telescopes allow us to visually reach beyond the limits of our eyes and open up the micro and macro worlds of our existence. Our modern reality exists of fantasized, fabricated worlds on TV and computer screens.

My inspiration for the "Finger Print" series is from documents of early microscopic discoveries. These early hand drawn records showed forms that exist beyond what we can see with our eyes. The photographic process of using the enlarger to project light through an object of glass enlarges the view of the object in the same way a microscope functions. This process creates a metamorphosis of our perception of the object and our body.

              

Saliva Prints- "Spit Photograms"

The "Spit Print" series contains information that exists from human saliva however through enlargement have removed the physicality and cultural connotations of the saliva. The viscous quality of the images can resemble qualities of glass or other fluid materials. The rings of the bubbles look somewhat like a topographical map of a moon surface giving a sense of micro and macro. This metamorphosis of discarded bodily fluid, something socially found to be disgusting, becomes beautiful and unknown.

Process-  I project and focus light through my saliva onto light sensitive paper and develop it as you would normally with black and white photography. These prints are all at least 36 inches wide. 

"Products which cross such boundaries thereby become products of great cultural attention. What is both inside and outside the body (feces, spittle, urine, menstrual blood, etc...) tends to become taboo because of its ambiguous and anomalous status." -Susan Stewart's, "On Longing"