Sunday, October 21, 2012

distressed



My recent domestic alterations of photographs involves the washing machine. 

In hopeful ignorance I threw a print in with the soap and towels.  Curiously risky adventure, what if the ink washed off onto the towels?  Of course the photo fell completely apart and attached itself as bits of paper onto the laundry.  Unwaveringly optimistic that these little flecks of image could be put to use in a meaningful manner, I picked them off each towel before the laundry went to the dryer.  The remaining pieces I later rescued from the lint trap.

I am obsessed with this process.  After a steep learning curve involving details like: what size print falls apart best; to how to keep the pesky pieces from floating and attaching themselves to my clothes; I am still obsessed. 

The distressed photo works best as separate piles (one pile from each photograph) of torn apart pieces and am thinking hard about what an installation of these piles could look like.  In the meantime, I am experimenting with how to reassemble and combine the pieces with unwashed prints.  The images shown above also have handwork of stitching, gauze and needle holes.






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