I’ve been going through the slides from my family’s past to figure out what to do with them and how to do it. My Dad was a diligent photographer, shooting quantities of slides, stills, and movies. When I was a child, he had a darkroom for black and white processing. I spent many hours in there with him and later, on my own. I remember well: “When the little red light by the entrance is on, don’t go in!” In the process of reviewing the slides, I am enjoying the opportunity to see the world through my Dad’s eyes– what interested him, what he focused on, what he thought was significant.
We’ve got a lot of slides.
My task is to cull the images that I think will be of significance to current and future generations, and to discard the others. Each slide will be considered in these terms. The “keepers” will be digitized and stored on a dedicated portable drive, and then opened on my graphic design software, where I can quickly rotate, crop, and adjust the color, contrast, and/or brightness of each. I’ll figure out a way to present a streamlined version of the best images for my family members. It’s a big job; I expect it to take a couple of years.
The batch I have been working with tonight are of a trip my parents took to Turkey in 1973. The 40-year-old slides have undergone some physical changes over time (haven’t we all!), and their color is uniformly distorted. I can correct the color when there are people in the shot. However, in this batch of slides, most of the images are of scenery, buildings, and ruins. I’ve got no reference point about the “real” color except the software’s auto correct semblance of the actual colors, which is only a computer code-driven guess.
In their unretouched form, the color distortion makes the scenes surreal and compelling, perhaps even more so than what is “correct” or “true.” It adds additional other worldliness to a world that is already “other” to me.
The slide’s age turned the mosque this luminous purple.
The colors and the atmosphere in the mosque image are not so different from those above in “Daybreak,” by painter/illustrator Maxfield Parrish in 1922.
Unretouched, exceptionally vibrant and emphatically colored shot, taken from a position seated on the floor.
Cool car, interesting loose urban density, some expected colors, and some weird colors.
Unretouched image inside mosque.
Color adjusted to what might be “real.”
Color correction by software to remove red cast of original.
Manipulated, and starting to look like a textile.
This unretouched image of a ruin in an arid landscape is, in fact, upside down.
Unretouched image of ruins, looking like a parched otherworldly landscape at sunset. the color palette reminds me of Pre-Raphaelite paintings like this one (I’ve only seen the reproduction, not the actual thing), in which color is used to evoke physical and emotional feelings:
John Everett Millais, Chill October, 1870
Unretouched composition, with the base of a gold finial touching the frame at the top. Dad sometimes framed his shots with the tops of people’s heads or tops of buildings cut off, but in this case, it makes a great composition. The negative space of the blue sky is lovely to me.
All Images courtesy of Alan Kraft, with interventions by me.
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I invite your comments.
The impulse to challenge users and viewers has long been at the heart of trompe l’oeil (fool the eye) projects. When the eye sees something, the body believes it.
Two-dimensional patterns (made with tiles, carpet, paint, or…..) can create the optical illusion of three dimensionality.
In the pattern above, do you see stacked cubes with white tops? Or white bottoms? Does the image change back and forth for you?
Here, the colors are rearranged. Is the white surface the top, right, left, or bottom of the cube?
Does this pattern look flat or 3-D? Do you see square holes or pyramids?
Is this arrangement actually possible in three dimensions?
This sketch of the floor pattern at the Accademia Museum in Venice shows square “recesses” in the medallion on the right, anchored in a flat peach-colored field. The 3-D illusion is contained, and I don’t fear falling through this floor.
Would this give you vertigo?
Would this stair landing make you pause before walking on it?
Can you feel the surface ripple?
Does this (actually flat) carpeting make you want to stagger? Or worse?
A computer-generated tile design clads these perfectly flat and plumb surfaces. Architect Thom Faulders‘ client said, “I wanted someone to barf when they look at it.” This illusion, versus the reality of its flatness, comes close!
The first five drawings were made by me. The first and second photos’ attributions are TBD; the third photo is courtesy of George Winteringham, via Patternity; the fifth photo is courtesy of Vurdlak; the sixth photo is courtesy of Thom Faulders.
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This California garden looks like the sea floor. The plants look like sea-dwelling creatures and plants. The imagination swims!
Succulents expert and horticulturist Joe Stead says, “As a kid, I explored tide pools …I marveled at the starfish and sea anemones. I wanted to bring that sense of wonder to this garden.”
With great knowledge and skill, he has selected and arranged boldly colored, drought-tolerant plants to create charming and compelling illusions.
The “sea anemones” are agaves, nestled among red mangaves.
The “starfish” is Echeveria subrigida.
The “kelp” is Senecio vitalis.
All photos courtesy of Bret Gum; written content is derived from the article “How to create a sea-creature succulent garden,” written by Debra Lee Baldwin, in Sunset Magazine.
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