Selling Myself

Blending digital and analog processes

Aren’t interviews a funny thing? You sit in front of strangers, either online (weird) or in person (even more weird, what with the pandemic), with a fake grin on your face, trying to appear simultaneously relaxed and confident and friendly, whilst masking the nerves and fear and desperation, all the while panicking if you’ve remembered everything you’ve researched about the company in question, praying to the universe/God/Gods/ to let this be the one that you get because you really, really really  want this one and you cannot face another interview. You are spent.

I’ve had many interviews recently. In one of them, my mind began to wander.

I began to notice how I repeated certain phrases in each one. “I’m keen to share ideas and learn my from colleagues”, “…it was a challenging time, but I have reflected on it and this is what I would do differently in the future…” and so on.

I began to think about what my voice sounds like (very Brummie) and then I wondered what does my voice look like. I recorded an eight-minute snippet of one interview for a job I really did not want and used the sound wave visualisation to create a digital negative. From there, it was a hop, skip and a jump to make a cyanotype. 

I have been thinking about the fusing of very modern technology with the slow, almost meditative, traditional techniques and this was a perfect opportunity to experiment.

Part of the process its to invert the image during processing but this did not create the strong image I wanted.

I created a second batch without the inversion but still pushing the contrast and enhancing the highlights and shadows.

These were exposed in slightly overcast conditions and in a shadowy area. I lost my nerve and exposed the prints for 22 minutes, where around the 15 - 18 minute mark would have been better, as the untreated areas would have created more dynamic prints.

Interesting; Laughing;

Thank You, Opportunities,

Have I Lost You, How Many

The paper was treated a few months ago at home, in a non-light-tight closet, at night, hence the uneven application.

There’s a metaphor there, if you care to look for it.