Jehad Nga, The Green Book: Land, 2013 Chromogenic print 24 x 30″
My project is concerned with digitally manipulating the metadata of the photographic files. The process is also shown to be used in the photography of Jehad Nga in his series The Green Book. With this project, I am also interested in the significance of interjecting textual meaning, of phrases and quotes that have meaning to the artist, with the photographic image’s binary data, similar to Nga in The Green Book. “The Green Book, a project inspired by the philosophies of Muammar Gaddafi, saw the artist ‘intercepting’ censored images from the internet in Libya, converting them into binary code, and combining them with the code of each chapter of The Green Book. The result is an unsettling, and oddly beautiful group of images created entirely from preexisting data. Each print while visually magnetic for its striking primary palette and digital abstract forms, also asks sobering questions about technology, government and our place in the digital age.”
James Welling, From the series “Glass House”, 2008, Pigmented inkjet print, 40 ⅞ x 57 ¼”
In the way that James Welling manipulates the color of these photographs through lens filters that creates an augmented view of the Glass House, I intend to manipulate the color of my photographs digitally to create a distorted view of my scenes. Welling’s intention for this series was to have the project be “a laboratory for ideas about transparency, reflectivity and color.” With this intention to examine the landscape of the house and its surroundings through color and reflection, I will diverge from this path by examining the interior space of the self through manipulating the photo digitally and thus manipulating the gaze that the viewer sees this photographic reality through.
Josephine Pryde, It’s Not My Body XII, 2011, Pigmented inkjet print, 31 ½” x 19 ½”
Of interest to me for the purposes of this project is the formal qualities that Pryde uses in It’s Not My Body XII. She overlays images to create meaning in the work. For Pryde this connects the vastness of a desert landscape to images of human embryos and creates a visual impact with this juxtaposition. In creating these photographic overlays I do not intend to bring together two vastly different types of images, but I will refer to the technique overall that Pryde utilizes in order to create meaning from the visual comparisons.
“In her series It’s Not My Body, Pryde makes reference to the history of darkroom experimentation and contemporary medical–imaging techniques. She superimposes low–resolution MRI scans of a human embryo in its mother against desert landscapes shot through tinted filters, engaging questions about the reproduction of images and the impact visuals have on political debates surrounding “personhood” and a woman’s right to choose.”