Photospheres / the holiday or holyday pictures, 1981,
Fulton St. New York City

-The original material comes mostly from advertising sections of contemporary
mass market magazines.

-Some of the material comes from travel brochures or newspaper sections advertising travel. Also sections advertising liquor, cigarette, perfume and other
accessories.

-Any time the material is re-photographed (i.e. an exposure is made) I call the exposure a 'bounce'.

-The images in these sections are looked at, (scanned really) because sometimes they appear to be truer than they really are.

-Their 'sophistication' appears to know nothing about the practical and serious ways of a practical and serious world.

-Their authenticity and authority are quite unsuspecting. Pirating this fiction can be reckless, sometimes unpredictable. Film has the natural ability to appropriate. It's authorship always subject to negotiation.

-Re-photographing pictures that have been previously available to the public are, in effect 'ordained', and weight significantly more than the spiritual displacement they sometimes suggest.

-Artificial intelligence, like fiction, whether displaced or fabricated, makes reference to the 'particular'. These particulars, existing within the picture, contain 'sensory detail'. These details can be terrifyingly beautiful.

First Bounce - A black and white photograph is made of the original material - usually of the entire page on which the image appears.

Second Bounce - The black and white photograph is bounced to a direct positive or velox at a local 'stat house'. A stat house is a commercial business that produces stats, veloxes, direct positives, blow-ups and acetates. After the velox is produced, it is re-touched and spotted.

Third Bounce - The re-touched velox is re-photographed in black and white and blown up to approx. 8x10 inches.

Fourth Bounce - The new 8x10 is bounced into an acetate with an 85 or 100 line screen at a stat house. (The screen helps hold tonality) All magazine images already have screens in them, but I have found once you start to bounce this image around, it is best at somepoint to re-enter or re-introduce a new screen. Any stat house can do this. It is simply requested. Any image can be transferred to an acetate.

Fifth Bounce (the introduction of color)
The black and white acetate is re-photographed with Tungston Color Film. (see note) The acetate is hung up approx. three inches in front of a solid 'magazine color'. This acetate is maybe 11x14 inches. The 'magazine color' is a large area of color that has appeared on the page of a magazine. The page is ripped from the magazine and hung behind the acetate. I very much like the red in Johnny Walker ads and the yellow in Cutty Sark ads and the green in Barkly cigarette ads. These colors are especially bright when lit. For the last year it seems there have been a great many pictures in magazines using the colors red, yellow, andorange. Since the acetate is transparent, the color comes through and fills all the areas that are negative.

Even though the fifth bounce is re-photographed, I feel like it is more 'filmed' than photographed. (explanation) The camera is worked in front of the image. By worked I mean, when I look through the lens, I move the camera about, on the face of the image - sometimes from the left or right sides, top or bottom, sometimes straight on - but mostly from angles. Looking through a lens onto a flat two-dimensional surface, that already has an image on that surface is somewhat like lying - in the physiological sense - an unnatural act. Things start to happen that are quite surprising.

Once the crop is made I start to pay attention to the focus. I usually call this 'shooting to'. I usually shoot to a particular part of the picture (this 'part' automatically becomes a 'detail'). Because of a closed setting, an f-stop of 2.8, the rest of the picture will be out of focus. Seeing the image in this way is not too much different from how the eye sees and focuses on images.

This bounce can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours to produce. It may require anywhere from two to five different shootings and sometimes result in several 'versions' of the same image. There is a great deal of time spent just looking through the lens of the camera. It's because of this amount of time why I sometimes feel this bounce is filmed.

The film is processed at any number of labs here in New York. I have found every lab to have noticable differences in the final 'wash' of the chrome, (chrome is another name for a color slide). Some labs like Foto Rush have a lavender wash, some like O'Henry's have a blue wash. Color Wheel has a green one. Modern Age, a neutral, almost no wash. Portogallo a purple wash. It's actually quite consistent and not a day to day thing subject to temperature or chemicals. I use these labs much in the same way that a painter uses a tube of paint.

When I get the chrome back, I have an 8x10 inter-negative made.
Color C prints are made from the 8x10 inter-negs. The color prints are usually 30x40's or 40x60's. The prints are mounted and framed in thin black Neilsen metal sectional frames. These frames have an edge very similar to the outer line of a lens frame. Note: Re-photographing black and white images with color film. I have found that even though the blacks and whites almost become colors themselves, there sometimes exist a blue or lavender cast to the blacks and whites.

Photospheres: (throwing the picture half way around the world).

Photospheres are analagous to chemically produced photographs but instead of using film, computer compatable tapes are used. Photospheres are not pictures as they are ordinarily understood. They are more like data scans converted to data displays. A great variety of electronical image manipulation is possible since the image is electronically recorded on magnetic tape. Photosphere have over one thousand computer programs to alter, enhance, eliminate, and detail. These programs are called 'wash cycles'.

Recording an image in London and feeding that image via satellite through a digitizing computer program, say in Houston, then returning the image back to London where the image is reconstituted and bounced to South Africa where the information is 'sequenced' and displayed on a screen is sometimes referred to as photosphere.