Using Photos

I'm always trying to get to something--an image, a color, a feeling--that seems honest and real to me. My work often begins with my own photographic images, but that's just the beginning. I put the images through various processes, working to transform them into something more emotionally expressive. Transformations come about in several different ways: sometimes they're created through deliberate action, sometimes through the very nature of a particular printing process, and sometimes through pure accident. What is consistent is that I'm always looking for that point when what is photographically real remains in the image but finds a new life, vitality and a new reality through the lines, colors, gestures, scrapes, and textures that are layered over that memory. What matters to me in the print, is what that subject matter is trying to express.

This is another multiple plate image; two photopolymer plates and one collagraph strip with lace.Shown here are the negatives I've made and the lace plate below.

I began by photographing myself in an old corset. Images were loaded into PhotoShop and altered. I then "collaged" images to create the second negative. Right now my intentions are to print the plates but leave the lace as an embossing. We'll see how the proofing goes.