Into the Light

Into the Light is a 16mm film series taking William Henry Fox Talbot’s (1800-1877) early photographic work in photogenic drawing into the world of motion picture. Photogenic drawing describes a number of techniques that Talbot first experimented with, but I am most interested in his use of early colour processes: tinting with bromide, iodide and chloride, as well as with cyanotypes which produce a Prussian blue image, and a relatively unknown process called chromatypes which produce a beautiful red image. With photogenic drawing and chromatypes, because the photographic emulsion is not fixed, the photographic image perpetually continues to darken over time until all detail is lost. Because of the intensity of the film projector’s light, the act of projection would in effect erase the image. Going back to the early photographic process, when the future of film is in question, illustrates  at once the ephemeral state of the medium and the potential longevity of its reappropriation by artists.