Using light, chemicals, and a resist on photographic paper I create abstractions which may at times appear photographic but which are made without camera, film or negative. I fuse the materials of photography with the techniques of painting and printmaking to create art.
The first image I have chosen to look at is the black and white image that I believe is very similar to an image of space although I feel that he has used the technique of splatting chemicals onto the paper with a small brush or bottle using it to spray the chemicals and to create the effect we can see in the image that I have chosen. To create this he wouldn’t have used fix or stop except to make sure the image was permanent overall I feel that this is something that I could create in the darkroom myself as its a rather a simple example of a chemigram.
The second image I have chosen is an image with a more orangey tone to it, this one seems to have more of a theme almost looking like a landscape although it is impossible for me to know this as the website that I had sourced this image from gives very little information on how it was created but what it is raising awareness of, after ongoing problems in Japan he created these images. The brushstrokes are meant to be organic looking as if they are traditional Japanese ink paintings and I feel that I can see this within his work.
I find the process of creating Chemigrams to be interesting as there is no predetermined outcome that I as a photographer can create unlike photograms there is nothing that I can project light onto and nothing that I can control and I find that this creative freedom is somewhat a challenge for me.
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