Necessary Complications

Some would say I like to make things unnecessarily complicated, and that might be true. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to just press a button and be done with a picture, but I simply don’t know when to leave well enough alone. Take for example my new series Pythagoras… Named for one of the earliest mathematicians (who came up with the Pythagorean Theorem that describes the relationship between the sides of a right triangle.) My images use basic geometric shapes to create abstract photograms. Not complex formulas here, no cosines or tangents, just some spheres, rectangles, pyramids, cones and corneums. And since I can’t just let those simple shapes alone….

  1. I 3D print them….
  2. And then I photograph them…
  3. And then I laser etch those images into an aluminum plate…..
  4. And then I make collodion wet-plate photograms on top of the laser etched images.

Then I am done. For now…. and I call this series “Pythagoras.”

3D designed objects
3D designed objects

 

3D printed objects photographed
3D printed objects photographed

 

Laser etching the photographs of the 3D printed objects onto the aluminum
Laser etching the photographs of the 3D printed objects onto the aluminum

 

several of the etched plates BEFORE making the wet-plate photograms
several of the etched plates BEFORE making the wet-plate photograms

 

a video of how I pour a plate (this plate is not laser etched)

 

The finished product: Pythagoras #22, a 8"x6" collodion wet-plate tintype photogram
The finished product: Pythagoras #22, a 8″x6″ collodion wet-plate tintype photogram

You can see more in the Pythagoras gallery