Excerpts of New Orleans

I have always loved the energy and spirit of New Orleans.  I grew up in the south and felt an attraction and connection to the cultures of New Orleans. The convergence of so many influences in the Mississippi delta has created a unique place in the landscape of the south.  It is a city that shows its European influence but does not conform to the stifling formality of the old world; a city that has been the birth of language, culture and many musical genres.  I visited the city many times in my youth and I felt what I remembered of New Orleans would translate well to the Polaroid transfer processes I had been working with for the last few years.  I have been photographing wrought iron and other architectural details and printing them using the transfers methods.  The wrought iron had originally caught my attention because of its beauty and functionality, its varied state of repair or disrepair, and its environment.  I knew that the variety of architecture in the different neighborhoods of New Orleans would be great as a continuation of this work.

 

When I originally started working with architectural details my goal was to create timeless imagery.   The muted colors of the dye transfers and the soft edges of the emulsion lifts give the images an ageless feel.  The architectural excerpts have been removed from their context, making them anonymous.  There is nothing dating the images or linking them to a bigger picture.  They are small glimpses from a bigger structure, easily overlooked by the average passerby.  Due to Hurricane Katrina my original intention of timelessness has been abandoned.  These photographs were taken months before the storm, imparting them with a deeper, historical sense.  I feel that they are no longer timeless but tragically dated.  Many of the structures I photographed have been affected by the winds and floods.  What remains after the storm and reconstruction will not be the same New Orleans.  I am now working to make my images a reflection of the city before all this occurred.

 

 I was first attracted to Polaroid transfer process because of the options of printing photographs on non traditional surfaces.  I also love the many steps of these processes, my hands are in action, being a physical part of the artwork is important to me. It is a process which I continually learn about each time I create a piece.  With the New Orleans series I am projection printing 35mm transparencies on 8 x 10 Polaroid negatives.  Then the negative and positive are run through a processor.  When doing an emulsion lift the positive fully develops, is separated from the negative, allowed to dry and then submerged in boiling water. Once in the water the emulsion separates from the original substrate.  When doing a dye transfer instead of letting the positive fully develop, the positive and negative are separated and the dyes from the negative are forced, with heat and pressure, onto watercolor paper.