I can’t remember the name of the photographer who took this photograph. But I know he soaked his images in water for an extended amount of time. At first I wanted to take portraits and soak them in water but for shorter amounts of time to see if I would still get a similar effect, but because I was only printing with paper whenever I put small amounts of water on the images, the paper would soak up the water and become crinkled.
So then I came up with the idea of quickly placing the water droplets on the photograph and freezing them. Ideally, this would only work when the photographs were on exhibition in a frame that kept that same temperature. (Otherwise it could also be a ‘performance’ kind of piece where the tears eventually melt and drip down the face of the portraits).
I had three photos to be presented together but two of them melted into the paper as I was shooting the first one so I’ve just included them here in the preliminary process…
Before initial editing…
After photoshop…
(How they would be presented if they were printed out)
I printed all three images on colour paper (if I were to do the same project again I’d leave enough time to print larger images and print the photographs in a store)
In the final stage when I took photos the next morning the lighting was very orange (since I only had the overhead light in my room), so the focus wasn’t on the tears in the photo. Because of this I decided to edit them to black and white (but I think it suits the melancholic tone of the image anyway).
In the end, I could only get one final image but since it’s more about the concept behind the image and because this is almost a performance kind of piece to watch in real time I’ve included extra shots as the tears melted and some video footage.
(Final image above)
‘Tears’ Man Ray, 1930
Visually similar looking photograph (with the black and white and concept of glass tears on face)