The escape route

Sometimes I make a photograph and in my head there is a background to it, not where it was taken or what it is but a story I create just by looking at the image.

Most recently I created a small series having to do with escaping and finding an escape route. Like my imagery regarding the Island of Dreams, the text is linked to the imagery, and the imagery is linked to the place, or recent stories I have seen or heard, or something unrelated that is juxtaposed to the imagery.

The island of dreams was a small place I would visit, and allowed myself to be transported someplace else. My cameras had no bearing on reality, the images were created using materials found and borrowed and later returned. It was a place I escaped to during difficult times, and a place I still think about. It was like a dream that helped me.

Most recent excursion is also an escape. I make images using paper negatives, I develop the exposed paper in sumatra made caffenol whose beans I roast myself. In camera the paper is exposed for 7 seconds to impress itself as a latent image, and with the lights on in the darkroom they are converted to a negative.

Im not contact printing the images yet but that might be my next step towards making these intangible places into physical objects. As they are now they are scanned on a very old scanner, and life is breathed into them with basic maneuvers like levels, inversion and sometimes burning and dodging. The invisible might become visible, the intangible spirit world might be seen, and the story might be told.

I was at the coast and watched the bridge that crossed the cove as it was destroyed. The sounds were deafening and sounds rattled me. I drove away and saw the substation was gone as it smoldered behind the trees that fenced it off. we gathered what we could and tried to leave, the traffic was choking and across the river, where I remember the stories of her childhood you could see smoke rising. we continued.

The Cove

The Bridge

They Left

Trying to Leave

Author: jnanian

I am a Freelance Photographer in Rhode Island. I make photographs using a variety of methods with and without a camera, and I teach photography online and in person. I make photo emulsions from scratch, I coat my own photo paper and make cyanotypes too. I am a huge fan of Caffenol ( I helped write the Caffenol Cookbook ) and instead of instant coffee, I roast my own Sumatra Robusta beans. I sell them so you can make your own long lasting, film and print developer called Sumatranol. I also sell silver recovery products.

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