November 2017 – something fishy

GIVE ME BACK MY BABY is my approach on re-looking at the trope of female ghost in Asian Horror films, by portraying the frequently used characteristics of the female ghosts in a new light, showing their roles as empowerment despite the negative connotation and celebrating their womanly ability to reproduce.

The work is inspired by the research that looked into the reason behind the frequent occurrence of vengeful female ghost in Asian myth and folklore

More details in my previous research post:

WHY IS (almost) EVERY ASIAN GHOST EXACTLY THE SAME GHOST

The different visuals are timelapse of either ink spread on wet paper or fruits being squashed between glass panels, the fruits are placed above the light source to get the desired translucency.

The earlier attempt of such method is recorded in my process post:

SQUISH SQUASH SQUAHSH

Here are some of the female ghost features that are portrayed in the video.

Black hair

Blood

Lips

Teeth

Hips and the female genital

The blueberry bursting with the seeds form an ambiguous visual to suggest the process of childbirth

And finally the work on the media wall:

GIVE ME BACK MY BABY , MAN NTU LED, 15m by 2m, North Spine Plaza NTU Singapore 2017, Photographed by Solomon Quek Jia Liang

The artist that I looked into was Anna Atkins. She seemed to have a Anna Atkins’ father, John George Children, and her husband, John Pelly Atkins, were friends of William Henry Fox Talbot. It was said that she learned directly from him about his two inventions, the salted paper and calotype processes. Atkins was also friends with Sir John Herschel who invented cyanotype in 1842. She was knowned to have had access to a camera by 1841, sadly no camera based photographs by her survived, what she was famous for was the series of cyanotype photograms she did with algae as the subject matter.

For the very first step, I tried re-creating the photograms using plants found around campus, which resulted in visuals that are similar to that created by Atkins.

In her prints, Atkins used long exposure to obtain the details of the subject matter, as enough light is able to pass through the object and expose the chemicals. Unfortunately I didn’t get to extend the exposure time long enough for such effect, hence the stark blue-white contrast in my images.

But since the main idea of it is to make use of the translucency of the material, I changed my subject and used daily objects which were translucent to create the photograms. The result was interesting texture and ghostly prints.

And perhaps what interest me about Atkins’ works was not that much about the process, but her choice of subject matter and presentation. To me there was beauty in the way she arrange the subjects. They were not merely documentary, but also beautiful imagery.

For the next step, I printed photo negatives on transparency, and overlap them with the plants I collected .

Distancing the object from the cyanotype coated paper creates a more ambiguous shape with blurry outline

And finally these are the three images that I was most happy with.

It was interesting how when I overlap the negative with the object, it became a calculation of light deduction.’

What i was doing it not to document the plant or simply create a photograph using photonegative and cyanotype, I feel that in this case the object i use becomes a pattern, and by combining the images I feel like I’m creating somewhat between a photograph and a painting.