Further Experiments with Multiple Exposures

After my initial experiments with multiple exposures I took my Wide Pic Panoramic camera on holiday with me; this was when I realised that the Wide Pic Panoramic is not really designed for rewinding a frame at a time. I lost half a roll of film attempting to create some double exposures when the teeth stopped winding the film on. It seems I was lucky when I created my initial multiple exposures at Anglia Square and would have to re-think my work process. These new images were created by exposing the whole roll of film, rewinding it completely and then exposing it a second time.

I have said before that the equipment I am using takes a lot of control away from the artist; fixed shutter speed and aperture, a machine in the chemist prints my images automatically. Exposing the entire film twice in this manner also means I have no control over which images are overlapped, or even if the frames lie cleanly over the top of one another, indeed some of the images have two overlaps. The resulting images could perhaps be described as para-surrealist; the loss of control providing free associations between frames. And while perhaps not ‘semi-conscious’ image making, I tried as much as possible to free myself of as much responsibility as possible. To this end my only concerns were finding compositions with strong horizontal lines to complement the ‘panoramic’ view, providing a vague uniformity in the images so that where they overlap they would hopefully complement one another, and also to try not to take the same photo twice.

Some of these images are more successful than others – echoes in shapes and overlapping text for example are very pleasing – but I still feel the images are a series, regardless of whether or not one is stronger than the other. I have been given the opportunity to exhibit some of my work in an empty shop unit in Anglia Square as part of the Magdalen Street Celebration and would like to exhibit a series of images. There is an unconscious relationship between the overlapped exposures in the individual images, the next stage is to find a way in which to arrange these chance pairings as a collective group.

Wide Pic Panoramic Camera

Today I collected the first batch of prints made with my Wide Pic Panoramic Camera. The first and most striking thing about these images is their letterbox 'panoramic' border. The thick, black wedge divides the image (the borders are part of the image not external to it) clearly into thirds and makes horizontal lines of composition immediately more potent and arresting. The border here must be considered a part of the image as it qualifies the composition. This is more or less subtle depending on the strength and darkness of the lines in the middle section of the image.

The border invites a particular way of seeing and a uniformity within the images. Sifting through the prints it feels as though each image is part of a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces tessellate and can be arranged to create a new landscape.

Another effect of the 'Panoramic' view is its cinematic framing. To arrange them in this jigsaw manner where there is no right or wrong progression creates movement in and between images as they are placed in succession. I wish to expand upon this process later by mapping a journey through Anglia Square.

This roll of film also marks my first tentative experimentations with multiple exposures. Due to the simplicity of the equipment I have been using, coupled with the fact I am not well acquainted with it, the effects created by these multiple exposures were barely in my control; I wound the film back what I believed to be roughly a frame and took the next image.

Fellow NUCA graduate Jo Surzyn uses multiple exposures in her work to create a landscape which 'is an abstraction, suggestion, representation and even perhaps provocation... [which] represents a single location but points towards a larger context.' Where information is lost or blurred the reader is asked to make their own interpretation. It is like seeing the sketch from which a painting is made. Here the image's subjective margin is opened up and the reader is required to project their experience into this space. John Berger explains that;

Overlapping images and grouping them as above provides a wider context for the overall image and better represents the way our memories are formed and recalled. The multiple exposure images simultaneously provide a greater context while remaining vague , insofar as giving a sense of place as opposed to a definite trace. I intend to expand upon these experiments in multiple exposures and mapping/merging images in the coming weeks.